square think about but apparently the matters. but, what they are worried about what the administration cares about to get all these authorizations the african union, arab league, security council. once in the war obama is equally obsessed with the idea of relinquishing american command. he said on television last night that our exit strategy begins this week. what he means is i m getting america into war but i m getting it out within a week. what he means is we are getting out by relinquishing command. that s the worst possible way to do it. you want unity of command and it ought to come from the leading power, that s us. up until now that s how the on has run. on the ground it has been effective. now the idea is to shift it to nato, 28 christmas to go by consensus. which means any member can
worked with our international partners to mobilize a broad coalition, secure an international mandate to protect civilians. stop an advancing army. prevent a massacre. and establish a no-fly zone with our allies and partners. to lend perspective on how rapidly this military and diplomatic response came together. when people were being brutalized in bosnia in the 90s, it took the international community more than a year to intervene with airpower to protect civilians. sean: what we didn t hear was anything about an exit strategy. nor did he say what america s role will be, if and when gadhafi is removed from power. here to help us break down the presidential address dick morris is with us. i want to put up on the screen the words of president obama. he can read a teleprompter, he
one, it takes real tall then to give a speech half hour about libya and not mention the word oil. what distinguishes libya from all these other oppressive regimes, oil, two million barrels a day. secondly, i feel in this whole thing, his whole approach is one in which he s essentially denying that he needs an exit strategy. in which he doesn t talk about how we are going to get out of it. how we are going to get from here to there. sean: didn t define success either. if your definition of success is preventing civilian deaths, welcome on! sean: i would call the obama doctrine, he said this many times, people in need, et cetera. it is in our vital interests. he s brutalizing his people. in many ways he sounded like president bush. wait a minute, do we go to syria, bahrain, saudi arabia. should we have gone into
timing, why didn t the president come out and speak last week? what was he waiting for? and is it too late now? well, listen. one senior administration official told me that the transition whereby nato is now going to be assuming command and control over libya, that because of this timing it presented a good opportunity for the president to sort of lay out the case to the u.s. involvement in libya and what happens going forward. so that s exactly why the president decided to make that speech tonight. as to whether or not he should have made the speech a lot sooner, well, we heard the criticism coming from not only the pundits but also from up on capitol hill that the president should have done this a long time ago. that perhaps before even committing u.s. forces to libya that he should have laid out in a very clear fashion what this mission was about and what the exit strategy would be. dan lothian, live at the white house. be sure to tune in to cnn for the president s speech and i
we begin this morning with exit strategy. as japan s nuclear crisis deepens, and reports about the status of one of its crippled nuclear plants differ, the united states has authorized the first evacuations of americans out of japan. nbc s tracie potts joins us from washington with the very latest on this. good morning to you. reporter: lynn, good morning. good morning, everyone. we learned overnight these will be voluntary evacuations even though the airports have opened, commercial flights are available. the u.s. state department will now be organizing charter flights out of tokyo and other locations in japan to get americans out. the u.s. believes that the radiation levels, especially around the fukushima daiichi nuclear plant, are extremely high. in addition, they have told americans to stay 50 miles away, much further than the japanese recommend. this is conflicting advice, but the white house says the u.s. is using a different standard of