No Fly

Want to make Iran more compliant and stupider? just send in a force to eliminate Ghaffifi fast and quick. If the despots out there knew that they were vulnerable, things might reform faster. Remember, Democracies don’t seem to have wars, only despots. Check out that theory over the last 60 years. But as your artcle elsewhere suggest, can their be liberation without ldeadership?

Joe, what relation does the size of Libya have in the decision to have a no fly zone?

Planes have to operate from a base or carrrier NOT in Libyan territorial waters. Tankers won’t be able to fly over Libyan territory.
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Planes have a relatively limited range. Anywhere they fly to in the country, they have to be able to fly back from.
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Or they have to have landing agreements with the surrounding countries, which ain’t gonna happen right now.

JK advocating a military intrusion?
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How novel.
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If it gets really bad in Libya should the US send in advisors?
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Emphasize *NATO* all you like it’s more US blood and more US treasure you are making the case for.
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Of course “we” can pay for it by beating down those greedy public sector unions.
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For all the pretend disagreements between JK and the neocons it is striking how, at their core, they philosophically agree.

How novel.
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Low, Paul… See how his “primary” proposal “colors” the rest…

Joe,
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afguy is spot on. A no fly zone is a nice idea, but due to logistical issues its physically impossible to establish one right now.
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Of course, if the Air force went to more long duration low cost drones instead of short duration high cost fighters for air superiority work, this wouldn’t be true. Although doing so would demand infringing on the pilots’ supremacy in the AF, so it’ll never happen.
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And on the subject of drone air superiority i’ll never forget what an Iraqi fighter pilot in Balad told me in 2003. “They told us to take off and shoot down the American planes, so we explained that our radar locked on at 15 miles, and the Americans’ radar locked on at 25 miles. Then we went home.” Something to think about as a rebuttal to the “dogfighting skillz/top gun” crowd.

“Low, Paul”
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If I had a nickel…

Not to forget, the pilots also have to visually identify their targets if there’s any doubt about their identity.
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Don’t do that, and you could have another incident like we did against Iran, where an air liner was mis-identified as an attacking MiG on radar and shot down.
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How’d that look on the “Five O’clock News”?

The drones we have right now are long-duration because they use propellers, high-lift wings and little fuel. Jet aitrcraft are, by definition, NOT very long-duration.
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Prop jobs aren’t very fast, so any combat aircraft would be able to run away from them. Also, not much in the way of a radar system.
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“No fly” zones still have to be enforced by fast aircraft with sophisticated radars that can “look down, shoot-down” because that’s where the target arcraft will be flying.

afguy,
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My point isn’t that we have an unused air to air drone capability, my point is that we should have developed one by now, and could have if the AF wasn’t so obsessed with sucking up to fighter pilots. Much like the way naval procurement is distorted by that services obsession with subs and carriers, or the marines and beach assaults. Or the army and tank/artillery battles.
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The problems you list are real, but they’re also all very solvable. LTAs, AWACS, etc. can cover radar, turboprops can provide more speed, although, if you’re just looking to deny airspace, you don’t actually need to chase things down, just put more cheap stuff up in the sky, each one sectoring off part of it.
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But like I said, it’s not that current drone systems can do the job, they can’t, its just that situations like this are part and parcel of why we should be developing capabilities like this instead of spending $250+ million each on fighters that can’t, and haven’t, taken part in any of the wars we’ve been fighting for almost a decade now.

Clearly this military is not interested in supporting Obama on ANY decision to attack another country. Liberals have a track record for blaming the military as soon as anything goes wrong. Look at Abu Grahib. They made sure to not have a carrier task force nearby and they’re not offering Obama any help. Quite the contrary.

NATO could not get near Libya. NATO is code for the USA.

“NATO is code for the USA.”
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That was my point.

Liberals have a track record for blaming the military as soon as anything goes wrong. Look at Abu Grahib.
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Really, rdw?
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As for Abu Ghraib, exactly who was responsible? Civilian contractors? No one? Didn’t happen? Or you just don’t see a problem with what happened?
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As for the rest of your posting, am I mistaken or are you cheering what you see as an intentional lack of military support for the CiC?
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Are you cheering for a military coup here, rdw? With Petraeus as viceroy of the country, perhaps?
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You seem to experience a leg-quivering, muscle-clenching orgasm whenever his name is mentioned…

What the hell, why not, Joe? Let’s embark on another mission to save Muslim lives only to be repaid with more ingratitude. It appears that the more Muslim lives that we save the more they hate us.

Emphasize *NATO* all you like it’s more US blood and more US treasure you are making the case for.
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Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that Joe Klein actually means NATO forces here.
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How many more civil wars do you think Europe wants to militarily get involved in?

Just read that the Brits sent in two planes in under Libyan radar to successfully rescue 150 oil workers from the oil fields. Let’s let the Brits handle the no fly zone and we’ll hold their coat this time.

Let’s embark on another mission to save Muslim lives only to be repaid with more ingratitude.
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Oh, I agree. The relatives of the 100k Iraqis we killed liberating them should be sending us Christmas cards but seem to have lost our addresses.
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Snivering little ingrates. Don’t they understand how much we did for them?
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And where’s that d*mned oil we promised ourselves? After all, WE did say that THEY would help pay us for blowing their country to bits.
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Some people don’t know how good they have it…

blaming the military as soon as anything goes wrong. Look at Abu Grahib

Yeah, who would think of blaming the military for soldiers abusing prisoners and photographing the results.
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Ridiculous.
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One of the nice side effects of having a Democrat in the White House is it gives Right Wingers pause before expressing full throated support for more military intervention. No matter what we do, we need to protect ourselves from the ‘greeted with flowers’ delusion that everyone we might care to arm will see our White Hats. We’ve been down that road a few to many times.

Given the divided loyalties of their military right now, it makes me wonder just how functional and coordinated their radar system is.
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Flying in right now, undetected or unconfronted, might not be the great feat one might expect.

“Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that Joe Klein actually means NATO forces here.”
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As long as JK has no skin in the game-blood of others, wages of others, health care for others-he is all in.
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See a theme?

afguy@7,
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There were a lot more bodies in Saddam’s mass graves than were killed as a direct result of US action. And than there was also Kuwait, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Our reward for that was 9/11.

Or, conversely, we just had a couple of EA6′s jam the crap out of them.

“Liberals have a track record for blaming the military as soon as anything goes wrong. Look at Abu Grahib.”

I blamed (and still do blame) the war criminals Cheney and Rumsfeld who gave the military their marching orders. And, the notorious prison’s name is generally romanized as “Abu Ghraib”, not “Abu Grahib,” which makes no sense in Arabic.

You have to remember that paul is a “if you’ve seen one Muslim, you’ve seen ‘em all” kind of guy. Anything one of them does bad taints all 1.6 billion of them…..

paulie, I’m sure the dead appreciate the distinction between being killed by Saddam and our “benevolent” version of terminating their existence.
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The Saudis didn’t appreciate what we did in Europe, in Bosnia and Kosovo, and attacked us on 9/11?
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Outrageous! I’ll bet we extracted a serious retribution on them for that, didn’t we?
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Wait… we didn’t?
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Oh, that’s right… we blew the crap out of Iraq, who had NO representatives among the 9/11 hijackers.

PD,
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I’m more convinced than ever that paulie is a paid troll.

Part of the problem with Abu Ghraib was inadequate training of the people involved. They were, after all, Reservists. This was not something they were REALLY prepared to do.
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That said, what they did also indicated someone with a serious moral compass problem.

Sorry, our security interest in Libya fell drastically after the nuclear program was discontinued. Their oil interests are less important than others in the region, and they pose a little threat to Israel. In addition, this new development has achieved a long term security goal, namely, chaos has created a vacumn preventing a regional power from rising in the region. The only threat to the U.S. and its allies is the possible rise of extremists seeking haven and/or training terrorists in that region.

In short, the calculation, regardless of however great the loss of human life, or violation of human rights may be, it would be an investment with no return to waste military resources on Libya, in fact, it could yield a negative backlash.

That doesn’t mean I support the tragedies propogated by Qaddafi; I’m just saying, from the military’s viewpoint, this is why it is pointless to interfere in Libya.

“NATO” tends to mean that the U.S. does all the work, takes all the risks and gets stuck with all the bills. Don’t even suggest to me, at a time when we’re discussing reneging on public pension promises and cutting Social Security benefits that we should be spending our money on no fly zones in Libya.

Thanks guys for the information.

You are quite welcome.

rdw56: Liberals blamed the Bush administration that had responsibility for the undeclared war. Liberals I know felt the soldiers were used as scapegoats that were used by civilian authorities that encouraged “any means necessary”. I would much rather see Bush, Rumsfeld, Feith, Cheney, et al in jail than any of the soldiers who participated in the torture.

libssd,
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“I would strongly support humanitarian aid (food, medicine, etc.) to eastern Tripoli, until the Qaddafi regime is toppled.”
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I would go one step further. If Gadhafi uses his air force to boom and kill his countrymen, I would, together with NATO, be for setting up a no fly zone over Libya.
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NATO aircraft can operate out of southern Italy and with tankers for refueling they could cover all major population centers in Libya.
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We operated a very successful no fly zone over Iraq for many years. Doing it over Northern Libya would not be a problem.
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I’m a Navy Aviation Veteran and I served two tours aboard Aircraft Carriers in the Mediterranean Sea.

You make very good points, and I tend to agree, although I don’t give a rat’s-a about Israel and the Zionists. But from a practical cost benefit basis, let it go where it may on it’s own. This is all theory and the US foreign policy establishment will do what it always does. Guess what that is.

you all fall into the same silly trap. Was the military responsible for Abu Grahib? Well, Yes. Was the military responsible for the countless acts of bravery, sacrifice and courage by the same military? I would think so. So why did they cover ONLY abu grahib?

One of the nice side effects of having a Democrat in the White House is it gives Right Wingers pause before expressing full throated support for more military intervention

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What are you babbling about? How has Obama effected conservatives in any way?

rdw56: Are you so isolated in your reactionary world you didn’t read Judy Miller and all of the media that supported our occupation of Iraq? Including Joe Klein.
You never saw any of the reports by embedded reporters?

afguy@7.4,
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Oh, that I were. Imagine getting paid for doing what you enjoy anyway.

Paul Dirks@7.2,
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I’ll be happy to cut Muslims some slack the moment they start making an effort to divorce themselves from the radicals in their midst.

that Joe Klein actually means NATO forces here.

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There are no NATO forces without the USA. NATO is the USA. What Joe means is USA forces with the political cover of Europe. Clearly our military had no appetite for doing the Europeans bidding. We’ll do for them what they did for us in Iraq.

part of the problem with Abu Ghraib was inadequate training of the people involved.

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The people involved were the most experienced in the entire prison. They had been guards in PA. They were improperly screen and supervised.

You never saw any of the reports by embedded reporters

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Embeds provided 95% of the reporting for conservatives. I’ve touted them constantly. They broke the back of the so called gatekeepers. The MSM has no shot at dictating coverage. They can still drive certain narratives as they did abu grahib but only so much for so long. Joe was for it before he was against it. As soon as he realized his liberal readership was getting hostile towards him he changed his mind. Joe might have been Petraeus sharpest critic and would not report the surge worked for a full year after the fact. He then tried to give credit to everyone but Petraeus. Joe is a Colin Powell groupie. It was painful for him to see the collapse of the Powell Doctrine and the ascension of Petraeus as a consensus pick for greatest General of the post Vietnam Era.

The embeds destroyed the MSM regarding war coverage. John Burns of the NYTs and a few other MSM reporters gained credibility. Joe was a train wreck.

rdw@4.6: Nice flag-waving exercise… bet your arm got a lot of exercise with that one. Did I hear “Yankee Doodle Dandy” playing in the background? You never actually got around to addressing the issue raised, did you?
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The people involved were the most experienced in the entire prison. They had been guards in PA. They were improperly screen and supervised.
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Jeez, talk about “d*mning with faint praise”… “most qualified present” doesn’t equate to “actually qualified”, does it, rdw? More like “best available”…
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The point stands… they were “weekend warriors”, NOT prepared for dealing with those prisoners.
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I’m curious… exactly what part of their guard “experience” in PA gave them the idea that torture, rape, sodomy, and use of dog leashes on prisoners was such a grand idea?
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I’m just waiting for you to try to defend that… and maybe work in a paeon to Dave Petraeus at the same time.

I’ll be happy to cut Muslims some slack the moment they start making an effort to divorce themselves from the radicals in their midst.
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That’s how we feel about the TPers.
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You REALLY can’t see the parallel, can you?

rdw@4.10 – well done!
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Managed to work in a Petraeus “knob job” anyway.
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Don’t forget to clean up…

I’m curious… exactly what part of their guard “experience” in PA gave them the idea that torture, rape, sodomy, and use of dog leashes on prisoners was such a grand idea

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You don’t know much about Prisons do you? Rape and sodomy are common all over the world. The guards convicted of the worst behavior were actually prisons guards in PA. That was their full time job. One doesn’t have to be trained not to torture or rape. One has be screened so the rest of society can be protected from these predators.

You still don’t get the mistake. Among the many reasons the MSM is so despised is they went so overboard in trying to smear the ENTIRE military for the actions of less then 10 people. This was one shift on one wing of one prison and the MSM gave it wall-to-wall coverage for months. They gave more coverage to the prison on any one of the next 30 days than the did throughout the entire war on the heroes of the war.

But we find out despite the MSM. Polls consistently show the military as by far the most respected institution in America. Near 70% they are the only goup over 50%. Congress, the MSM and academia are all under 20%. Average Americans don’t like it when MSM elitists go so far overboard to smear the troops. I would bet you that in your lifetime the MSM will not get above 20% for just this reason.

I would much rather see Bush, Rumsfeld, Feith, Cheney, et al in jail than any of the soldiers who participated in the torture.

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Another example of braindead overreach. Yes, heads needed to roll for Abu Grahib. Rummy offered his resignation. Bush correctly rejected it. There is no way Bush or Cheney or Rummy had a shred of culpability. They could not possibly have known what was going on. It was merely and obviously partisan hackery

If Bush was responsible for what happened in a prison in Iraq who is responsible for what happens in prisons here? It’s common knowledge rapes and assaults are a near daily event in most prisons. By your standard every governor and Obama should resign.

That’s just dumb. That’s why Abu Grahib didn’t hurt Bush politically and only backfired on the MSM. If it did anything it hurt our int’l standing especially with Europe in a way that should bother liberals the most. Did you really think Americans were going to take any crap off Europe over it? Have you noticed how distant we’ve become. It’s not Conservatives talking about working with Europe on Libya. They pissed on us over Iraq. I don’t trust them and have no interest in working with them.

You REALLY can’t see the parallel, can you?

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You are a gift from God. It’s so liberal to talk about civility and in the next breathe compare the TP to terrorists. You mock yourself. EJ Dionne wrote a hilarious column last week finally realizing after two years the TP is calling the shots and it’s about spending. The civil MSM spent two years trying to piss on them as racists and Nazi’s and only made them stronger.

In 2012 there are 23 democrat senate seats up for grabs and several have already dropped out knowing the TP was going to beat them. The Conrad and Allen seats are already lost. Ben Nelson has no shot and McCaskill is also toast. That get’s the GOP to 51 and there are another 6 seats the GOP could get including Casey in PA.

You keep on pissing on the TP.

maybe work in a paeon to Dave Petraeus at the same time.

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No need. The good Dr hardly needs my help. We even have Time speculating if he’ll get a 5th Star. David is already immortal in terms of military history. What he did regarding the surge was one of the most brilliant shifts in tactics in the history of warfare. Moreover he’s a brilliant leader of men and administrator. As head of the promotions board since 2006 he’s been selecting all of the senior officers and remaking the Army from the Powell model to the far more lethal Petraeus model. Joe Kleins coverage of Iraq was simply brutal. He was probably the most vicious opponent of the surge AND Petraeus actually questioning him on tactical grounds. Joe’s never served anything. Obviously his knowledge of military tactics was fed to him by Powell or one of his ‘student’s.

I think we can agree Colin Powell will be famous for only one thing and that’s his rise as a black man to the top ranks of the military and at the State Dept. But not for anything he actually did. The military has been remade.

You are a gift from God. It’s so liberal to talk about civility and in the next breathe compare the TP to terrorists. You mock yourself.
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My, my. More than a little thin-skinned and paranoid, aren’t we, rdw? And back to calling ALL Muslims terrorists again… guess it beats making an attempt to evaluate each situation.
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Let me repeat what I said so that your little RW, reactionary brain can understand it.
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When YOU start to call out the radicals among your ranks, rather than ignoring, excusing or rationalizing their behavior, THEN you can find the moral authority to lecture other groups about cleaning up their act. Anything there you don’t understand?
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Before you start another ecstatic seizure over the TP electoral successes in the future, better make sure that your current “successes” in FL, WI and other places don’t soil the brand in the meantime.
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Seems to be some rather strong indications that they are wearing out their welcomes in rather short order.
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We also get that thinking about Petraeus gives you a “five-star” boner. Over and over and over… You probably need to dial it back a little, as I’m sure he’s married, and there’s no way you can bear his children.
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I’m pretty sure his wife would object to your being there in the bed with him anyway.
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And clean yourself up, ferchrissakes… or at least change your shorts.

Attention K-Mart Shoppers…
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Cleanup needed in “Boy’s Undergarments”…

You don’t know much about Prisons do you? Rape and sodomy are common all over the world. The guards convicted of the worst behavior were actually prisons guards in PA. That was their full time job.
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Strange. Earlier, you were defending them as the “best available”.
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You still don’t get the mistake. Among the many reasons the MSM is so despised is they went so overboard in trying to smear the ENTIRE military for the actions of less then 10 people.
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No, I GET that is WHAT you WANT to be the issue. So you think only the good news should be covered and we should be “flag-waving” 24×7?
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Polls consistently show the military as by far the most respected institution in America. Near 70% they are the only goup over 50%. Congress, the MSM and academia are all under 20%.
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So? First step in improving an institution is to admit they screw up. Doesn’t look like you want to take that first step.
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Have you ever actually served, rdw? The ones that have don’t seem to be afraid to admit that the military has warts, because they’ve seen them and had to live with them.
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It’s the “keyboard commandos” that seem to worship the power of the military leaders in their uniforms and ribbons and hang on their every utterance and political action.
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Maybe that’s why you are such an unwavering worshipper of all things military and killing-related… Mortal Kombat™ is as close to the real action as you’re ever gonna get.
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I can’t see you close to the action… because the possibility of watching your friend get his legs blown off or put a pistol in his own mouth after the 4th deployment would take away ALL of the romance of war.

Afgirl,
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Attention K-Mart Shoppers…
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Cleanup needed in “Boy’s Undergarments”…
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An example of Liberal debating skills. No intelligence there.

When YOU start to call out the radicals among your ranks, rather than ignoring, excusing or rationalizing their behavior, THEN you can find the moral authority to lecture other groups about cleaning up their act. Anything there you don’t understand?

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Not even close to think-skinned nor paranoid. I love liberal stupidity. Here’s what I understand. Tea Party radicals don’t kill. Islamic radicals are butchers. They kill babies. Your comparing the two groups is D U M B. Anything there you don’t understand?

We also get that thinking about Petraeus gives you a “five-star” boner

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Not at all but the talk of a 5th Star is very, very cool. The good Dr went into Iraq and wiped out Al Qaeda. Just wiped them right out. He’s changed US military policy from the Powell view of large and docile to small, quick and lethal. More interesting, and few Generals have been this sharp, he got early control of the promotions process. He decides who the future military leaders will be. They won’t be docile. This is a total change from the last several decades.