at the time, so be it. we have talked to very senior nato officials in recent days, and they are well aware that they could have wound up striking gadhafi, even though technically they say that s not their goal. their goal in these airstrikes has been to bring down gadhafi s commanding control, but those are the very facilities that he and his family often frequent. don? barbara, more on that in a moment, but since you re there at the white house correspondents dinner, obviously we can hear the noise around you, this was unexpected. the president is there. and i m sure this is going to change, at least a bit of what he is going to say tonight. he has to address this. reporter: well, we will see. shortly. you are correct, don, the president will be here tonight addressing the white house press corps. this event, you know, is one of the biggest events of the year in washington.
turned into the lions of nato, but it s an inadequate, anemic effort to support the rebellion and bring down gadhafi. presumably there s a lot of intelligence operations going on, qatar is sending them weapons. we re sending armored vests. these are half-hearted measures and not co-heernt and the situation is disgraceful in many ways. if we look at what s happening outside libya as well, the catalyst go in is he was going to go after residents in his own country and kill them, quite frankly. do you think that our presence and our actions is now acting as a deterrent to other leaders that are in nations that are seeing these tremendous uprisings? is it having that effect to say, don t do that, or we re coming after you? i think it s almost the opposite effect. we went into libya and assured gadhafi we wouldn t use ground troops or target him personally
yesterday where he said the u.s. needs to help the rebels more. have we determined who exactly these rebels are? well, probably not. you know, i think what is apparent is that there is a widespread uprising. it is not just tribal, that the gadhafi forces rely on coercion to maintain their position, not legitimacy among the broad range of people. it is a difficult question to assess how this comes out, taking down gadhafi would be child s play if we really put our minds to it for 90 days. the question would be how do you build a governmental institution that would follow? would it turn into an extremist regime? will there be endless civil war? so we really need to engage diplomatically, economically to have some influence on the eventual outcome. some kind of a blueprint that sounds strangely familiar. general, i want to ask you about administration officials.
seen for days now, the indiscriminate shelling of many cities and n libya. especially misrata, benghazi, other major population centers continues by gadhafi forces. nato is trying to do everything it can to attack and basically take down gadhafi s military capabilities. take down any of his ability to move his forces around and communicate with his forces in the field. and his ability to launch coordinated attacks against street people of libya. that s the goal here. have a listen to what the pentagon had to say about why the predator drone was picked. that they will bring that issue unique to the conflict, their ability to get down lower. therefore, get better visibility on particularly targets now that have started to dig themselves in and defensive positions. they are uniquely suited for areas, urban areas, where you
that were educated in london and they can see the handwriting on the wall. they don t want to be like hussein s two son who is ended up dead in the palace. go ahead, pat. let me say that churchill said that in war, truth is so precious it has to be guarded by a body guard of lies. the u.s. is leading the battle whether it s a nato cover or the air strikes and the cruise missiles are americans. all of these things and so you have gotten down to a situation where the world knows this is now a war between barack obama who initiated it without the authorization of congress and colonel gadhafi. i agree with peter. i think the president could succeed in this sense that the tribes in libya are enormously powerful. a couple of them are being punished horribly and gadhafi s