and the u.s. can sort of take from peter to pay paul using money from later in the pentagon s budget, later in the year to cover the costs now. but there are some costs. the combat pay for some of the troops, the cost of all that fuel that s being used on these planes, that s got to be paid now. some people have estimated the cost of this could come up to $1 billion. and that s why senators like richard lugar said there needed to be an accounting of some of these costs before the mission was launched. he said $33 billion in frozen libyan assets in the united states, in his words, this money does not belong to gadhafi or to us, it belongs to the libyan people, we will make sure they receive it. this notion that perhaps some of the costs of this war would come from using some of that $33 billion, the president here seems to suggest no way, it s
to fight against the opposition forces. not clear, the president will do fine as long as gadhafi looks like he s leaving, if he hangs in there for six months, things are going to get rough politically for the president. anderson, you could have a lot more in one hour on anderson cooper 360. we ll be watching that, john king is here, when all is said and done, though, if gadhafi remains in power, even if he s in tripoli and just around that capital, the president of the united states is not going to be able to declare victory in libya. he won t be able to declare victory in libya, he won t be able to declare that his goal of gadhafi must leave has been met. but if tripoli is largely in opposition control, then the president can at least claim a stalemate that did not lead to continued humanitarian crisis. what happens here? what happens here? can the united states in its private consultations with the
stalemate, a no fly zone and lasted for two years and didn t bring saddam hussein out of power. the reason why we wage war is to achieve a policy that we state. the present policy is that gadhafi must go. and i think there s every chance if we keep the pressure on, that gadhafi will be thrown under the bus. the libyan people themselves will successfully get rid of gadhafi. he suggested that, yes, the military mission that the u.n. and the nato, the arab leg have authorized is limited to protecting civilians and the no fly done and all of that, but he said that the u.s. goal still is that gadhafi must go, in nonmilitary means, political means will be used to try to achieve that goal. first of all, he didn t say by by, when he said gadhafi must go, he said it s clear that
after the tanks that gadhafi is using. with respect to something like serta, they re going to have to talk to the people in serte want. it doesn t have to be resolved by guns. if think cannot reach that dialogue, what does the coalition then do? it s mandate is to stop the violence. does it shoot on the opposition? if the opposition has picked up tanks and rifles and they are using them against civilians which are pro gadhafi, does the coalition have a resolution to stop them? i don t think they re going to do that. they have already pulled back and they don t want to cross that line. i think the opposition is going
ahead fairly easily up until the last 48 hours, now the dynamics of this battlefield have completely changed, john. and arwa, one of the reasons they were confident they could start to head back to the west was that coalition air strikes had taken out some of gadhafi s ground forces. any evidence at all as the battle played out today and as the opposition had toe retreat that the coalition was in any way trying to help them and willing to help them by taking on the gadhafi forces, or are they on their own? reporter: we did not hear any reports of air strikes taking place today. the other big factor to consider is not just the air strikes, but the fact that as the oppositions were pushing westward, bearing in mind that yesterday they did reach a small town that s around 60 miles to the east of gadhafi s hometown of sirte, they re entering these pro-gadhafi loyalist tribal lands. so up until that point, they were moving through areas where the civilian population supported the opposi