beginning was basically the u.s. would be in the lead role for days, not weeks. as this mission has now gone into the start of its second week, there was great pressure on this white house to show it was turning it over. now that nato is assuming command and control, it s a perfect opportunity for the president to kind of show that pivot point. but there s also some paper for him here. it s not just opportunity. the fact of the matter is presidents typically explain a lot of this before a military mission. he s now doing it after the mission has started, and there are a lot of unanswered questions yopd just nato taking over command and control. look, we know a number of people are asking questions we have neb meshes of congress, last week speaker boehner sent that letter to the president with several questions for him. but you also have the americans. i think it was a cnn poll done just last week that only a third of americans want to see gadhafi go. so how is the administration resp
about, the arab league asked us to do. that s what the coalition was doing. and that s the military objective and the limited military objective. but the larger political objective, which he s already stated is the desire to see gadhafi go to make some sort of peaceful possibilities in the state of libya. and that will take economic sanctions, that will take the hope that the regime cracks. that will take a series. and that may take time. and i think he has to warn us. one thing fdr was so good at there s going to be setbacks before we finally get through, but we will get through. and i think he has to warn us this may take months even while this first no-fly zone was achieved in an incredibly short period of time. and nick, you ve studied the speeches the presidents have made. at least in modern times. they weren t covered by everybody. what is it that you think the president has to say? what do we have to hear? is there a tone he should be setting tonight? should it be authoritat
the rebel army hasn t done this. the u.s. air force is doing the job. who goes in as an occupation army and occupation forces in libya? we re not going to do it ourselves. the germans can t. then you re down to the british and french. he said a matter of days, not weeks. has he lived up to that? the way it s rolling right now, it looks like it will be a matter of days. it alls on what happens in tripoli. john heilemann? i think that s right. i have sympathy for what secretary clinton said on meet the press over the weekend in terms of the broader debate here. it s hard for them to say what they really believe, which is this is largely a humanitarian effort, not military. that s the distinction they want to make. that s where you got into the problem of vital interest versus nonvital interest. pat does raise a relevant question. what then happens? you can achieve military success very quickly but then the longer term questions about does gadhafi go, does he stay? if he stays,
resonating with the american people, and essentially i think what s going on is that they probably are not going to support it. so for president obama, he needs to see gadhafi go soon because if he doesn t he s got a policy that is going to be very difficult for him to explain. the president will address the nation tomorrow 7:00 p.m. eastern. we ll carry it here on cnn. what is he going to say? what do you expect? i expect he ll be saying what he s been saying since march 19th when the bombings began. that is that the united states has limited goals, it s humanitarian, what the security council wants and there will be no ground troops. that s what he s been saying all along. the problem is that this really is about gadhafi. if we aren t there to try to take him out, people are going to say, why are we there? defense secretary gates says the united states doesn t have a vital interest in libya. that s going to be that s going to be hard for the president to explain, why we re usin
the verge of being perhaps overthrown. that s a critical counterterrorism partner with us against al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. their pressure is in bahrain where our fifth fleet is stationed. the very reason we took something of a lead initially is because we have such sophisticated military xa capabilities. do we risk making it less successful if we re not in the lead? reporter: we have vital interests elsewhere, but you re right to pose the question if the united states now withdraws from the lead role, if others take over, is that going to be sufficient in terms of experience and capability and in terms of will to put the kind of pressure on moammar gadhafi that needs to be applied? i think that s the basic question that we have to look at in this transition to nato as well as the basic contradiction between the express goals of the united states to see gadhafi go