let me know if there comes a point at which conservative whining about their own victimization gets boring even for them and the topic of the thread can be resumed.
thanks.
o what the hell.
this is an interesting viewpoint. the excerpt in english, from the guardian blog:
Quote:
3.39pm: Michel Goya, a French defence expert, has made some interesting points in an interview with Le Monde. He said given the military weakness of the rebellion, the objective is limited to a halt to the fighting as a prelude to negotiations. He also reminds us of how long air strikes lasted against Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo.
It took two months of bombing and several tens of thousands of air missions combined with the threat of massive ground intervention to make Milosevic bend in 1999.
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the original exchange from le monde (in french):
http://www.lemonde.fr/libye/chat/201...ens_id=1481986
among the other points goya makes is:
---it would be a good thing were some of gadhafi's armor to defect to the rebels rather than merely getting incinerated in open ground because the rebels are hopelessly under armed.
--there is activity off the radar directed at helping the rebels become a coherent force militarily, but that will require time.
--so the objective is as stated above, to force a stop in the combat by continuing to incinerate people with the idea of negociations because
--gadhafi's capacity to react has been underestimated to this point.
the last claim surprises me a little---i wasn't aware of any scenarios as to the effect of the aerial attacks.
certainly nothing on the order of the wolfowitz clown-time scenario that made it plausible for the gullible to see iraq as a short action.
it's obviously difficult (and the interview says as much) to use air power on troops that are close-in to civilian targets....so there are obviously limits to the current mode of operation.