night from here in washington. the national defense university. the president will be splang to the explaining to the american people what the goals are of this mission. as you mentioned, msnbc will offer live coverage tomorrow evening 7:30 p.m. eastern time. let s go now to the situation on the ground in libya where rebel forces are breezing through cities held by gadhafi s forces as recently as yesterday. the rebels now hold the strategic oil towns of brega and ras lanuf. they are pushing westward getting a bit closer to tripoli. let s go live to tripoli and jim maceda who joins me on the phone from there. jim, let s talk about how much the rebels now control versus gadhafi s forces. can you give us an overall view of that? reporter: sure. hi, alex, i can. and just as you re speaking, it s become clear that the rebels have not only taken ras lanuf brega and ras lanuf, two very important oil and
commission. welcome back, jeff. thanks, alex. it seems like with each passing day we get more troubling news from the fukushima plant and all of the radiation leaking there. how do the japanese get this situation under control? can you see any solutions here or things they might employ that they re not trying yet? well, i think one of the issues that we re having right now is there s conflicting information coming in about the radiation. i think what they need to have is more individuals who are trained on radiation identification. we call them health physicists, who can really track more accurately where the radiation is and where that may involve workers. one of the things that the japanese have reached out to is to try to get more radiation detection equipment, and that s going to be of assistance in trying to characterize this. keeping the spent fuel pools full, that s important. they are doing that. keeping the water in the reactor buildings in the turbine building, they re
missions. secretary clinton said that moammar gadhafi should leave. the reason we re flying, the coalition is flying all of these missions is not to oust gadhafi but to protect civilians on libyan soil from gadhafi s forces. so the united states has said, look, we have kicked the door down with the use of our military assets. we re going to turn it over to nato at this point. here s what robert gates set on meet the press along with the secretary of state on that point. i think we have to a very large extent completed the military mission in terms of getting it set up. now, the no-fly zone and even the humanitarian side will have to be sustained for some period of time. reporter: now, the president has said they had no choice but to act very quickly beginning last saturday, flying those missions. he said we risk a humanitarian crisis, this in his weekly address yesterday, that could have destabilized the entire middle east. yesterday just a prelude to that big speech, 7:30 p.m. m
to explain our mission in libya. what does he need to say? and does he have a more convincing case as long as the rebels stay in the stronger position for the next 24-plus hours? reporter: well, obviously he does have a better case if the rebels stay in this position for the next 24 hours and certainly if it looks like they ll be able to hold those positions, and i think they probably will. the problem is, that the president cannot really say what he wants to say. which is this war is not going to end until moammar gadhafi and his close associates are out of power. he has to send a message to gadhafi and to the people around gadhafi that gadhafi s days are over. anybody who tries to defend him will be finished united nations resolution, because that isn t exactly what the american people think we got into this for. and so he s in a bind. but that has to be the message and he has to be as honest with the american people as he possibly can, because the united states is not in a positio
that the whole military aspect of this will become political in the days ahead. yeah. jim, can i ask you, do the rebels have the manpower and capability to maintain the control of all those cities in the east that they have captured? reporter: well, that s a great question. and they probably they would only have the ability to maintain the control if they have the air power to do that. so there has to be if there is a no-fly zone and it is one that is enforced by nato or coalition airplanes for the next number of months while the political situation is negotiated, then i d say, yes. but otherwise, they don t. they really they could not handle it on their own. that s why they need all the help they can get. they need more weapons, they need more they need more training as well. they re pushing right now because there s no resistance. once there s if there is resistance, which there would be in sirte and certainly would be