conference in london yesterday, president obama speaking yesterday about the possibility of arming rebels. he s trying to take advantage of the situation now and continue to push the rebels while they re still weak despite the fact that the coalition air force is still targeting his troops on the ground. nic robertson in tripoli for us. the latest on a fluid front line situation with ras lanuf. as we talk about these different cities, ras lanuf is this key port in which all of these oil pipelines lead. so much of libya s oil goes through ras lanuf. who controls controls the money. exactly right. new developments this morning out of syria. the president is expected to address the nation very soon. accepted the resignation of his entire cabinet yesterday. a move that other nations recently made in an attempt to cool things down. people gathered in support of the president yesterday. state-run media claims the crowd was in the millions.
watch what you watch. your interest and the types of shows you watch the most. is this the case of technology being too intrusive or more targeted so you ll stick around? but we begin this hour with breaking news from libya and a brutal new offensive by gadhafi forces against the rebels. right now, there s a fierce battle raging for control of the key oil town of ras lanuf, that s in eastern libya. there are new pictures just into cnn showing rebels retreating about 40 miles outside that city. rebel reports from the front line say they were bombarded by huge rockets. one fighter telling reuters gadhafi has entered ras lanuf. rebel fighters being pushed out of towns they once controlled. president obama said arming the rebels is on the table, but no decision has been made yet. i m not ruling it out, but i m also not ruling it in. we re making an assessment,
partly about what gadhafi s forces are going to be doing. let s go to nic robertson for more about the fighting in ras lanuf. trying to find out just how fluid this front line is, nic is in tripoli watching these developments and also watching the gadhafi reaction from the initial offensive and now gadhafi s latest pushback. we will check in with nic robertson in a moment. nic robertson in tripoli, and we re watching a very fluid front line situation in ras lanuf. some of the territory that the rebels have managed to get control of, now they re being pushed back. nic, let me ask, what is the situation in ras lanuf? what is the situation with the front-line rebels being pounded back by serious ammunition from the gadhafi forces? reporter: well, from what we can hear at the moment, the situation is very fluid, that the government forces have been pushing from bin jawad through
ras lanuf. the rebels have been pushed back, made this advance forward over the past few days, then they ve been pushed back again. this was their problem before that they rushed forward, weren t able to sort of maintain and hold a front line when they came under sustained attack. and what we re seeing from moammar gadhafi s forces now is really sustained attacks in the face of the coalition bombing, sustained attacks, not just in bin jawad and ras lanuf, also in misrata, and reports from southwestern tripoli here not far from tripoli, but there have been an increase in gadhafi s forces around that town where there s been a small opposition element holding out against the government here. so it seems that despite what moammar gadhafi has heard at the
intervening militarily in libya was in the u.s. moral and strategic interest. what he didn t explain, which is what people of both sides, both parties in congress have been clamoring for him to do number one, exactly what we re willing to do to get rid of gaddafi, because that is one of his goals. number two, what exactly the end state in libya looks like. today, an air force one as the president went up to new york for some event including some rundraisers, jay carney said the end state is when the libyan people can choose their own leader. okay. but there is a long way to go between now and then. and what exactly are we willing to do to get rid of gaddafi? the president ruled out ground troops and they have not ruled out arming rebels, as steve explained. today, hillary clinton said the u.n. resolution doesn t ban that. in other words, it s legal to do it if the allies decided to do it. bret: you mentioned the ruling out of ground troops. there was testimony today op that very sunt