but what they are doing is attacking gadhafi s military on the ground, attacking tanks and missile launchers, attacking military ground forces. our priorities are mechanized forces, artillery, those mobile integrated those mobile surface to air missile sites, interrupting lines of communication that supply their beans and their bullets, their command and control and any opportunities for sustainment of that activity. to be clear, what is happening in libya includes enforcing that no-fly zone, but it also is more than that. it also includes essentially a u.s.-led war on gadhafi s military. and the u.s. leadership part of it the american government keeps saying, the leadership part will end soon. that s what president obama said when asked last night about his exit strategy.
can begin to defend this opportunist who attacks the president and when the president takes his advice, if you will, he then attacks them for doing that, being humanitarian. what do you make of this argument in principle between his two principles that contradict each other? i don t think there s so much of a principle contradiction or contradiction in principle you re trying to make out, chris. oh, okay. i think exactly what newt is saying in the first instance was, let s go forward with the no-fly plan, everybody come together, the no-fly zone, have the plan, and let s do it. here we are now some weeks later without a real plan. you know the washington talk as well as the national talk what s the plan? where s the strategy? so we re going into this country, we ve got this process underway, we don t know what the exit strategy is, we don t know what the ground game is. and so, yeah, in light of that, this is not the best way and best approach without the structure in place to do
the president is once again pledging that there will be no ground invasion of libya. he also shared his exit strategy with spanish language station univision. land invasion is out of the question, what s the exit strategy? land invasion is out of the question, completely, absolutely. the exit strategy will be executed this week in the sense that we will be pulling back from our much more active efforts to shape the environment. we ll still be in a support role. we ll still be providing jamming and intelligence and other assets that are unique to us. just as the president says we re pulling back, more american forces are joining the fight. in my hometown in norfolk, virginia, today there were emotional good-byes as the baton amphibious group deployed ahead of schedule to relieve forces already in the fight.
the exit strategy is coming within days. it s not going to be our jets enforcing the no-fly zone, it s probably not going to be our ships enforcing this arms embargo after the coast of libya. is he shooting straight with the american people? is that really an exit strategy? because won t the u.s. continue to be involved in some way with this coalition? i think what the president is referring to is exiting from the leadership role, and i think that s clearly what they intend. to hand off the current the leading edge with american forces, with the tomahawks, american forces commander leading the no-fly zone coordination. so what he s referring to is when this moves to either nato or some jury-rigged coalition that the french want, the united states won t have that leadership role and will exit that leadership role. i think that s a fair point. the problem here is that in the absence of america accepting what in the clinton administration we used to call
end soon. that s what president obama said when asked last night about his exit strategy. the exit strategy will be executed this week in the sense we will be pulling back from our much more active efforts to shape the environment. this week says president obama. mr. obama s secretary of state, hillary clinton, reading from the same page. it will be one week on saturd. ll it happen by sury? wl,t ll b y whether by saturday or not depends upon the evaluation made by our military commanders, along with our allies and partners. this repeated insistence that the u.s. is not going to lead this thing, it doesn t just have an international audience, it is not just about telling the muslim world, for example, that america isn t leading this charge, it is not just about telling american allies in this intervention they better step up, that u.s. forces aren t going to lead it forever. this repeated assertion that the u.s. is going to pull back also has a domestic audience, and frankly a l