Barack Obama said that the US was looking at all its slippery slope options at this point but stressed the shared cockup international nature of the measures against Libya, such as the enforced but thusfar ineffective no-fly zone.
Speaking at the Foreign Office in Britain, presidential hopeful - so bad she can taste it Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, suggested it would be legal to arm, train, advise the rebels.
"It is our interpretation that [UN Security Council resolution] 1973 amended or overrode the absolute prohibition which the US originally initiated on arms to anyone in Libya, so that there could be a legitimate transfer of arms if the US a country should choose to do that," she said.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, also refused to rule out the possibility of oil for arms arming rebels.
When asked about the decision he said only: "It was not on the agenda for discussion. It is not part of any agreement today but most certainly will be tomorrow or the next."
#1
It appears the rebels are a rabble not a military force. They lack competent military leadership at all levels.
All that weaponry will do is make them a well armed rabble. They will continue to be defeated quickly by any organized and trained military unit unless the rabble vastly outnumbers the military or mercenary.
Posted by: The Other Beldar ||
03/30/2011 10:46 Comments ||
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#2
And that strategy worked sooooo well some 20-30 years after we did it in Afghanistan.
#3
What kind of arms? Anti-tank mines and advanced anti-tank missiles? Gonna train these guys to use a TOW or Javalin? What about the artillary, what kind of arms will trump that short of their own artillary? Give'em some SAMs then fly some close air support - oops sorry about that A-10 or C-130, still practicing you know.
And why stick around and use them and die, when they could just...walk. Sneak off, head off south, sell a couple of weapons and retire nicely, call it Operation 2 Fast 2 Furious and act shocked when this stuff shows in other theatres.
I undertand that some systems may have some safety features, but like that tablesaw which stops when it detects flesh I have to behave as if it doesn't becuase my hand is not worth being careless.
#5
This whole op is insane. They never had a plan, they never developed anything. It is just an ad hoc series of events that somebody in the administration whips out with no serious thought. When you take a plan that is dogsh*t from the beginning, and you examine it in detail, it is still dogsh*t, but worse.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/30/2011 17:10 Comments ||
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#7
It is just an ad hoc series of events that somebody in the administration whips out with no serious thought.
When you have a Junior Senator occupying the Oval Office and anti-Military Liberal Hen Hawk over the state department, both of whose only mission for the military, what do you expect?
Her Thighness is now meeting in London to form a Libyan government out of rag tag rebels who are high-tailing it out of the Qadaffy kill zones.
Posted by: Pearl Whusoque4619 ||
03/30/2011 17:42 Comments ||
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#8
both of whose only mission for the military, is to promote open gayness in uniform. (uh, war? What's war?)
Posted by: Pearl Whusoque4619 ||
03/30/2011 17:44 Comments ||
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WASHINGTON An Interior Department report to be released Tuesday says more than two-thirds of offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico are sitting idle.
According to the report, obtained by The Associated Press, those inactive swaths of the Gulf could potentially hold more than 11 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The report also shows that 45 percent of all onshore oil and gas leases are inactive.
President Barack Obama ordered the Interior Department review earlier this month amid pressure to curb rising gas prices. The White House says Obama will address his plans for the country's energy security during a speech in Washington Wednesday.
Fair use commentary: this news report is a typical MSM FUD: it incites but doesn't explain.
The question is, WHY are the leases inactive? I could suggest that it's because the Department of the Interior won't release permission to do test drilling in the leased area. Without that permission you can't drill. There may be required permits that haven't been issued. How long have the oil companies been trying to drill in these leases? When were permits requested? Without that information you don't know who to blame.
Er, well, Obama knows who to blame, "greedy big oil", and you'll see it at the presser on Wednesday.
To be clear: if a lease has potential but the oil company is just sitting on it, then there should be a mechanism to fix that. Leases can and should be time-limited: use it or lose it. But to the extent that Interior is holding up the permissions and permitting, which we know (from other news reports) that they're doing, it's the Federal government that is to blame.
Not that Julie Pace at the AP will tell you that.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/30/2011 12:57 ||
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#1
Not to mention the Dept. of the Interior's repeated violation of a COURT ORDER in imposing a moratorium on gas exploration in the same region after the BP blowout. If you were running an oil exploration company, would you be willing to risk more money in a field where the RULE OF LAW has been suspended? This uncertainty can explain a lot.
#2
For perspective [PDF]: the USA in 2010 imported 9.1 million barrels of crude a day on average. 11 billion barrels is about the total of US imports over 3 years.
Not a great deal, but it would have helped.
Leases ARE time-limited. 5 years in shallow water until you have to have drilled it and submitted a plan to produce
(assuming you found something.) You pay a competitive bonus up front for the right to look. Then you pay a royalty (1/6 in shallow water) of everything you produce. In deeper water the terms vary due to cost and lead-time.
#6
I could show 'em a lot of idle leases, idle because @ $100/bbl they're not economically viable but the might be some day. "Could potentially hold" doesn't equate with "recoverable reserves".
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
