Snacks tonight.

[subdjoe]

Anyone know what whine will go well the the Presidents waffle tonight?

[Joe Cocker]

Missed it, I was out back working in the yard. A two buck chuck cheap enough to recycle if it comes back up.

NATO

Germany pulled out

Turkey will let them use a base to fly in and out of and support air craft controll

Italy will fly jets just to look nice in the no fly zone, no shooting in the no fly zone for them

France and Great Britain ready to do some pounding but need our Infrastructure

NATO has 7 Tommy hawks, 170 ,190 USA still have?

WOW four nations plus Obama, why not some Muslims? I guess they don't make war.

[danceswithdogs]

I missed his snivel too. His voice gives me a headache. Maybe 3 bottles of wine PRIOR to having to listen to him would be a big help.

[subdjoe]

I watched about half of it. Kept waiting for him to say SOMTHING. Finally gave up...after all, he has never managed to say anything of substance, although he does manage to say nothing while seeming to say everything if you don't listen. Contradictions, evasions, blaming others, and some outright lies. No different from any of his other talks.

Of course, there is no question that Libya -- and the world -- would be better off with Qaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.

Nice trick, if you can pull it off. Kind of hard to dislodge a dictator without military force, or very credible threat of it.

Oh, and while the US is one of many...well, a few anyway...nations involved in this, the US is bearing the lions share of the cost. From the NY Times:

From the air, the United States is supplying much more firepower than any other country. The allies have fired nearly 200 Tomahawk cruise missiles since the campaign started on March 19, all but 7 from the United States. The United States has flown about 370 attack missions, and its allied partners have flown a similar number, but the Americans have dropped 455 precision-guided munitions compared with 147 from other coalition members.

Besides taking part in the airstrikes, the American military is taking the lead role in gathering intelligence, intercepting Libyan radio transmissions, for instance, and using the information to orchestrate attacks against the Libyan forces on the ground. And over the weekend the Air Force quietly sent three of its most fearsome weapons to the operation.

The strategy for White House officials nervous that the Libya operation could drag on for weeks or months, even under a NATO banner, is to hit Libyan forces hard enough to force them to oust Colonel Qaddafi, a result that Mr. Obama has openly encouraged.

“Certainly, the implied though not stated goal here is that the Libyan Army will decide they’re fighting for a losing cause,” said Gen. John P. Jumper, a retired Air Force chief of staff. “You’re probably dealing with a force that may not be totally motivated to continue this for the long haul.”

Ten days into the assault, the officials said that Libya’s formidable integrated air defense has been largely obliterated, and that the operation was shifting to a new phase devised to put even more pressure on the country’s armored columns and ground troops.

For the Americans, six tank-killing A-10 Warthogs that fire laser-guided Maverick missiles or 30-millimeter cannons arrived on the scene this weekend. The United States also deployed two B-1B bombers, as well as two AC-130 gunships, lumbering aircraft that orbit over targets at roughly 15,000 feet, bristling with 40-millimeter and 105-millimeter cannons. The gunships’ weapons are so precise that they could operate against Libyan forces in cities, which so far have been off limits for fear of civilian casualties.

www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/29military.html?_r=2

The intelligencia in Europe decries US military strength...which has allowed european countires to build down their military forces sine WWII, but now relies on that to allow Europe to seem to take the lead in Libya.