the downed american pilot. all that remains to be done is to get gadhafi out, and i think that s going to happen, i think that has almost become inevitab inevitable. i think his own armed forces are eventually going to pulg the plugs. if he makes the four points the governor outlined, do you think it makes people care? there s a new york times article that says people frankly find it difficult to keep up with what s going on in libya. a pew poll said just 5% of respondents were following events very closely. and the gallup poll shows a kind of mixed response on military action, less of half approving, 37% december approving. you re a speech writer, what does he say? what the governor laid out are operational successes at this moment. as we know, tides can turn in war. what the public needs to hear tonight is, why are we in this? what is our goal? how will we accomplish this? how is this in the united states interest and what s at stake. those things have not been
mediocre outcome. i m one of the people who have written we could imagine a cease-fire that pushed gadhafi out over time, diplomatically and economically but that idea is now that we re in, most people expect by overthrowing gadhafi or making sure the operation does no in one way or another. in other words you don t get yourself a lot of maneuver room by saying an interest is something less than vital. once we re involved the standards for success become pretty high, regardless. what do you believe the standards for success are? primarily, protecting the population, which we re in the process of doing but we have to keep it up, helping rebels hold on to the parts of couldn t tri where they already control things. again, we re on the rigtrack bu it s not a done deal. third part, make sure gadhafi is marginalized and ultimately ousted. i don t think he has to be gone tomorrow or next week. i think we can even live with a
armed services committee. congressman, thanks for joining us today. thank you. i want to start with this. you were on the call with president obama regarding libya. did he discuss at all on that call his communication strategy, when he would speak to voters, to americans? no, he did not. obviously that s going to happen this evening, but the main purpose of that call was to get all members of congress up-to-date on what the plan was, what the initial goal, which has been stated, to protect the civilian population from gadhafi s forces and answer any questions that members of congress had to hopefully get them more clear on the mission and where it s going. he didn t talk about when he would speak, but obviously that s this evening. congressman you ve been clear saying the mission is not about getting gadhafi out. why is it you think some americans and lawmakers are ngwe cfud, d t kn t jeivre tnkerestin thdierceen miry mission and the broader diplomatic mission. i think both sec
opposition forces when they go on offense, then we re not going to get gadhafi out. we re not going to be a critical part of this. does the u.n. resolution give us cover to use our air power to help the opposition forces when they play offense, not defense? you know, i think this is a good question. i suspect that we ll find a way of fudging that. but i want to add one thing, which is we keep using this word stalemate. i think it s too early to use the word stalemate. that s tv time. we re paying rapt attention. kosovo took 76 days. of course people said it was a stalemate. this has taken six or seven days so far. the war changes every day. we don t know what s going to happen. yes, it s going to be protracted. that s clear. is it a stalemate? not yet. i can see the point, you re right. in their is this is way, way, way from a stalemate. sit tight. we ll bring in david scheffer, part of the team that created international criminal court, same body that is going to try to bring
political goal of getting gadhafi out. look, you just said the critical point, our military is there to get our political purposes accomplished. if the political objective was to get gadhafi out and yet we re handcuffed by a u.n. resolution that says only civilian humanitarian purposes, that tension, that disjunction has to be squared. we re not really handcuffed by it. that is, if the u.n. security council resolution did not include the expression all necessary means, which u.s. ambassador to the u.n. s susan ricin existed that it have, it would be true. that we would only be able to engage in explicitly humanitarian no-fly zone kind of activities, but the fact is a lot of the other things you re seeing, which have nothing to do with the no-fly zone, are directed toward degrading gadhafi s military capacity. two points. the tape we showed at the top of the show of that tank being destroyed clearly that is a military function, is going to help us get rid of gadhafi, destroying