president did he say anything about his desire to see gadhafi leave the country or otherwise out of power? did he talkat at all about that yes. yes, absolutely. and that s something that i think should be more clear to people. clearly, the president sd several weeks ago now, i think, that gadhafi could lea power. but there s a good deal of difference from saying we re militaly going to remove someone from power. i think it s a perfectly consistent position to say gadhafi should step down, but then recognize that enforcing that militarily has higher costs than benefits. that s why the focus of this military campaign was so limited to protecting the civilian population. so i think he did make that clear. and going forward, we re going to keep putting up internatial pressure on gadhafi to try to force him out, hopefully in as peaceful a way as ngpossible. but that s going to be difficult and i think we all recognize that. the presint has been criticized by some republicansd and, in
so here s aikely scenario. let s say we have greater separation between gadhafi s forces to the west a nd the rebels. what happens when the rebelsnt continue to press the offensive and tuck themselves up to gadhafi s forces? we now have we don t havepa separation anymore. are the nato forces going to achieve that separation? in other words, it appears to me that we veeally chosen sides and that the outcome is going to be decided by this application of air power. yet, it is critical but notffie sufficient to achieve the end state. too we really know who these rebels are and what they want? that s one question. and there are also reports gadhafi wants to arm volunteers, even as we re hearing members of his regime are looking to mediators. do you think gadhafi cand be defiant and desperate at the same time, or is this all just disinformation? no, i think he can joe, i think you ve hit on it. he certainly can be defiant and
for al qaeda terrorists. we ll get to all of that in a minute. first, mubarak is gon in egypt. gadhafi is under siege in libya. is bashar assad next? that s the question today rumbling across the middle east because the spark of rolution s reached the arab powerhouse syria. this is damascus today.ot antigovernment protests spread to the syrian capital and beyond. here s where it started, daraa, south of damascus. believe it or not, we are told with all the arrests about a month ago, a dozenz teen sz ho it started. they were arrested for spraying antigovernment graffiti. then on wednesday, this government forces opened fire in daraa. accounts remain sketchy, but the tape we re about to watch does give us some idea.
i ve seen him over the years. this is the guy who s responsible, but he s geot a tough mission, because the president of the united states says the u.s. policy is that gadhafi must go. but that s not the strategy, that s not the policy that general ham and the u.s. military have been given. they have a much more restricted policy, namely to protecst civilians and create this no-fly zone. so there seems to be a contradictioand we re going to go in depth with general ham on what he can do, what he can t do, can herm the rebels, can he not arm the rebels. can he even talk to the rebels? can he have a military liaison officer in benghazi dealing with the rebels? and what aut gadhafi, if they have actionable intelligence, if they know where he is, can they capture him, can they kill him? these are tough questions. how will he define when he can declare mission accomplished in libya? no simple answers. we haveon lots of qutions. general ham will be joining us in the situation room. he s th
they had fled anywhere from two weeks toesterday and all of them were telling us horrific storth we spoke with one man who spoke of battles in the streets between opposition fighters and gadhafi s military. he spoke of tanks firing indiscriminate indiscrinately. his 12-year-old son was standing next to him. we asked him how he was feeling. he said he s scared. he he sounded normal, but he tryg to hide the fact that he was crying. his father said that obviously what he had witnessed had a severe psychological impact on him. another young man we spoke to, a number of families, actually, telling us how gadhafi s military was going throughnd ars and rounding up the young men, taking them away, never to be heard of again. no one knows where they are,d they re even dead or alive. we al heard stories of how gadhafi s military would call on civilians to come out, prising them to be safe and then