Europeans already “Feud over Leadership

Europeans already “Feud over Leadership” as Allies attack targets
in Tripoli  

Explosions and anti-aircraft fire could be heard in and
around Tripoli today Monday in a third straight night of attacks there against
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, “while European nations feuded over who
should take command of the no-fly zone. On the ground in Libya, pro-Qaddafi
forces were holding out against the allied campaign and an amateurish rebel
counter-attack.

God help us all form the stupidity of the British and Europeans
intent on war with all

Pentagon officials said there were now fewer American and
coalition airstrikes in Libya Sunday night and Monday, and that the number was
likely to decline further in coming days. But Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of
United States Africa Command, who is in charge of the coalition effort, said
there would be coalition airstrikes on Colonel Qaddafi’s mobile air defenses
and that some 80 sorties only half of them by the United States had been flown
on Monday and the US is having a re-think due to its own public opinion’s and
concerns form terrorist attacks in the US like 911.

President Obama said that the initial stages of the operation
aimed at eliminating Libyan air defenses were being coordinated; the American
forces would turn over full responsibility to its partners to establish and
maintain a no-fly zone. But it is still “U.S. policy that Qaddafi needs to go,”
he said at a news conference in Santiago, Chile, with that country’s president,
Sebastian Pinera.

We have got a wide range of tools in addition to our
military effort to support that policy,” he said, citing economic sanctions,
the freezing of assets and other measures to isolate the regime in Tripoli.

But as NATO members met this Monday in Brussels to try to
work out a common position that would allow the organization to participate in
the no-fly zone there seemed to be confusion about who exactly would carry the
operation forward being as when it all goes horribly wrong which it surly will,
no one wants to be held responsible for the consequences.

NATO approved on Sunday plans to help enforce a United
Nations arms embargo against Libya, but so far it has not been able to agree on
how to proceed on either that or the no-fly zone.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said that responsibility
for the no-fly zone would be transferred to NATO. But France raised objections
to that, with its foreign minister, Alain Juppé, saying in Brussels on Monday
that “the Arab League does not wish the operation to be entirely placed under
NATO responsibility. It isn’t NATO which has taken the initiative up to now.”

Turkey, a NATO member that has opposed the use of force in
Libya and was still seething over being omitted from a planning meeting in
Paris on Saturday, refused on Sunday to back a NATO military plan for the
no-fly zone. But its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, denied that his
country was against NATO participation in the operation, saying only that he
wanted assurances that it would be brief and not end in an occupation.

In a letter to Congress on Monday, President Obama made it
clear that the United States has demanded that Colonel Gaddafi withdraw his
forces from the embattled cities of Ajdabiya, Misrata and Zawiya, cease all
attacks against civilians and restore water, electricity and gas service s to
all areas. There was little evidence he was complying.

Sir Michael Black-Feather the English first minister said;
NATO has its head so far suck up its own self-importance’s backsides that they
can’t agree on anything, secondly not one of them understand a man like Gaddafi,
but being as England has no voice in NATO or even in England under British rule,
they would listen to what I would have to say on matters anyway and seen hell
bent on war, another war that won’t be won its seem to me that all these so
called educated men and women never did history.

The rebel fighters trying to retake the eastern town of
Ajdabiya said they were driven back on Monday by rocket and tank fire from
government loyalists still controlling entrances to the city. Dozens of
fighters fell back to a checkpoint around 12 miles north of Ajdabiya, and
rebels said at least eight others had been killed during the day’s fighting,
including four who had been standing in a bloodied pickup truck that the
fighters showed to London Times reporters.

There were conflicting reports about whether the allies had
attacked loyalist forces in Ajdabiya. While planes had been heard overhead, the
rebel fighters said there appeared to have been no attack on the pro-Gaddafi
forces holding the entrance to Ajdabiya on the coastal highway leading north to
Benghazi. Ajdabiya is a strategically important town that has been much fought
over, straddling an important highway junction and acting as a chokepoint for
forces trying to advance in either direction.

As they returned from Ajdabiya, the rebels appeared to have
fallen into disarray, with one commander at the checkpoint trying to marshal
the opposition forces, using a barely functioning megaphone, but few of the
fighters heeding his exhortations. In the western city of Misurata, forces
loyal to Colonel Gaddafi were still at large and were using civilians from
nearby towns as human shields, Reuters reported, but that could not be
immediately confirmed.

As it gained force, the allied air campaign met a rising
tide of criticism from around the world, notably from Russia and China, which
abstained from voting on the United Nations resolution. “In general, it reminds
me of a medieval call for a crusade,” Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia said on Monday, after the Russian foreign ministry criticized the allies
on Sunday for “indiscriminate use of force.”

As Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates began a visit to
Russia, Mr. Putin called the resolution “deficient and flawed,” saying, “It
allows everyone to undertake any actions in relation to a sovereign
government.”

A commentary in China’s state-run People’s Daily newspaper
said that the Western actions violated international law and courted unforeseen
disaster. “It should be seen that every time military means are used to address
crises, that is a blow to the United Nations Charter and the rules of
international relations,” the commentary said.

On Sunday, a vital Arab participant in the agreement
expressed unhappiness with the way the strikes were unfolding. The secretary
general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, told Egyptian state media that he was
calling for an emergency league meeting to discuss the situation in the Arab
world, and particularly to discuss the killing of civilians in allied attacks
in Libya.

But on Monday, Mr. Moussa spoke of the allied actions in
more measured tones, saying, “We respect the Security Council’s resolution and
we have no conflict with the resolution, especially as it confirms that there
is no invasion or occupation of Libyan territory.”

Of course Mr Cameron defended the allied attacks before
Parliament, saying they had averted “a bloody massacre in Benghazi now trying
to save his own sink not trying to look a Tony Blair?”