of energy to this whole debate about paying for things. and looking at the government as being out of control. now i m with the tea party on spending, but there s elements of the tea party that feel it s okay to cut a trillion dollars out of defense budget over the next decade. i will not be with them there. they re right on spending. i m not going to agree with anybody tea party included to decimate our defense needs at time of great threat. you brought up syria, i know you follow these things as closely as anybody. what can the u.s. government do that it hasn t done with syria right now considering this is not libya in this case? this is a pretty you can t do what we ve been doing with nato. ? you don t have the nato world behind you and the u.n. here s the key to syria is turkey. the turkish government came in with the transitional national council in libya and that gave a lot of momentum to gadhafi being
the occasional attack. these are still countries that are digging themselves out of a lot of war, a lot of conflict. they re dangerous places so they re not going to be perfectly safe even if we were there but we can improve the chances for the afghan people to defend themselves. jim? thank you, mr. president. you re away senators kerry and mccain have a proposal on the senate floor to you the leeway to continue operations in libya for a year. you just said from the beginning it s been an operation limited to time and scope. initially you said days, not weeks. are the american people prepared for this operation with american support continue for a further year? is there any other definition of success that gadhafi being removed from power? first of all, jim, a slight correction. what i told the american people
for quite some time. there may be units out there that do actually have proper communications, but looking around, there s no indication, at least from what we ve seen that they have anything at all. anderson? nic, i ve been hearing a lot of talk about possible political solutions, maybe gadhafi stepping down, turning power over to his son, saif. we just heard from a man in tripoli who is opposed to any gadhafi being in power. how realistic is that scenario? do you hear that a lot around tripoli? reporter: i think it s something that s been out there for while. and this is what saif was sort of saying several weeks ago. it s sort of based on this concept that once upon a time, saif was trying to bring changes and reforms here. somehow they didn t get the opposition agreement and then the opposition came out and
of talk about possible political solutions, maybe gadhafi stepping down, turning power over to his son, saif. we just heard from a man in tripoli who is opposed to any gadhafi being in power. how realistic is that scenario? do you hear that a lot around tripoli? reporter: i think it s something that s been out there for while. and this is what saif was sort of saying several weeks ago. it s sort of based on this concept that once upon a time, saif was trying to bring changes and reforms here. somehow they didn t get the opposition agreement and then the opposition came out and demonstrated against them, took weapons, et cetera, et cetera. so it sort of has its basis in that, and part of that was moammar gadhafi would move to one side and would become a figure, whatever you want. i ve heard that s still in
carrying. we have cia agents, the close-in aircraft, that s ours. i think the nato forces could technically be in control. i think the british fired off 12 cruise missiles and had to go home and get more because that was 20% of their total supply. the americans are doing, if you re talking about the bombing and the rest of it on the ground, targeting, we re doing the heavy lifting. and quite frankly, the only way the rebels are going to win this war is if the united states fundamentally wins it for them from the air and ey advance the last 100 miles and they retreated. some say that s the only way to go. we have to have troops on the grounded. if al s right and we cannot leave without gadhafi being removed from power or stepping down voluntarily, our investment is far greater than imagined. i brought up the number earlier. $373 million over six days, we re going to see that spike big-time, big-time. that s not going to sit well given what s happened in