let s listen to what jane had to say right here on msnbc. the boehner questions are valid. he s asking what s the duration, mission, cost, what s our exit strategy and i think the president needs to answer these questions not just for the congress but for the american people. and that is andrea mitchell reports, peter. if this mission is completed in a matter of weeks, does all this go away? look, if this thing succeeds and gadhafi even in weeks or a few months is gone, as john kennedy said, success has a thousand fathers. the trouble is if it doesn t work, defeat is an orphan and that orphan happens to be barack obama. i think jane is right about this. those questions i think he will answer on monday. but pat s point is a crucial one. it isn t just about a no-fly zone here. if we have the drones and the nato forces taking over, they
sean: if he doesn t say we gotta remove gadhafi which they flipped and flopped on. if they never talk about victory or define victory or successor talk about an exit strategy or telegraph no boots on the ground, he s not committed to it. i think it is unfair for our military. there s all these other countries that a lot of slaughters are going on as well. right now there are air attacks on gadhafi s forces on the ground. if those can continue, maybe we can save those people. i ll tell you what, if you bail-out right now, i heard the criticism, we bail-out right now we will see massacres of enormous proportions. we can still win in thing. [ talking over each other ] sean: if you were president i would be behind you. but you are not president. i can still urge the president to use our airpower and our other assets to help these people survive. thousands of lives are at stake.
nic robertson, thank you so much for your reporter: whether they support gadhafi ornot, the tribes in the country nk nic, thank you for your perspective. we want to dig a little bit deeper on this, we ll bring in two guests, ambassador nicholas burns and retired army eleutenant general russel hore, i want to start off with you, ambassadort burns, first all, the le will chge, nato will take over the no-fly zones, what does that mean in terms of a u.s. exit strategy? is itasier to determine how the united states gets out os f this mission and if there s an end game? well, on the one hand, you know, the nato alliance is really dominated by the united states politically and militarily, and the military leadership of the nato alliance is run by americans including the supreme allied commander, admiral jim stravini, the americans will remain involved if nato takes over from the united states. i don t think the united states can just wasis its hands of thi,
intervention in libya? well, he already has addrsed the nation. he s said in a number of different interviews, even when he was doing his latin america trip, he did interviews with cnn amongst others well, what i m asking though, is typically when the president says he s going to use military action, he addresses the nation oftenva from the oval office orn some formel or fashion to tell them his reasons why his aims, his goals, and his exit strategy. did he say he was going to do that? no, that did not come up in this context. but again, he has made it clear, and i think in talking to us, he was attempting to further spread that message what the goals were. and the goals were very, very limited. we are not trying to go and get involved in a war with libya and forcef militarily a change of leadership. we were simply trying to stop humanitarian crisis. excuse me, sir, right there is another question. did you get a sensid from the
choices a and b and chose a plus b plus two. that is what you are hearing from others. they haven t resolved the tensions in the policy. hopefully the speech on monday, which frankly we would have liked to see earlier, he will take a crack at resolving it. shep: the truth is the people that run wars will tell you to a man and a woman, if you don t have a direct focused goal and an established exit strategy you are in trouble. that is exactly right. the men and women of our armed forces who are actually engaged in the fight right now should be commended for preventing them from taking benghazi. what is the political strategy, what are the guidance that coming down from the white house as what they are trying to accomplish. when you don t have that it s