welcome back. if you re just joining us, breaking news out of libya tonight. a diplomatic proposal from colonel gadhafi s sons, saying colonel gadhafi would eventually leave power, one of the sons, saif could take power. the opposition says it is unacceptable, they do not want a gadhafi, any gadhafi running libya at the moment. but is it the start of a diplomatic conversation? david gergen and wesley clark. peter, you re just joining the conversation. let me let you weigh in here, again it is a diplomatic initiative that on the surface is unacceptable. then do you engage in
clark says, he fortifies himself in various ways and then breaks his pledge. that i would think would be totally unacceptable. general clark, take a walk with me over here. i want to show the state of play as this happens, we have a political initiative from the gadhafi family, we don t know whether we can trust it or not. here s what libya looked like last week. you see the stripes here, this is the opposition. the opposition is doing pretty good. here s the state of play now, you can see the regime has taken back here. so militarily the last 72 hours, 100 hours have gone in gadhafi s favor, yet we do sense some cracks in the regime. when you see this from a militant standpoint, why does this matter? i think it does matter, because i think the gadhafi family does understand the end is inevitable in this. the coalition is powerful enough, got enough people, got enough support, they re not going to get stronger over time,
we re going to do a lot of this. now that we have the official curtain raising campaign in 2012. in libya, including heavy fight on the frontlines, rebel forces say they have brega surrounded. are air strikes finally taking effect? top safety pick. even better. but they re going fast. so, i guess this is where you tell me i got to hurry or it s gone right? yep. going going gone. get it? it s funny. [ male announcer ] the volkswagen going going gone event. right now, lease the all-new jetta s for just $179 a month. visit vwdealer.com today. and here s what we did today: we put almost three million americans to work. .adding nearly 400 billion dollars to the economy. generated over two and a half million kilowatts of electricity. .enough energy to power a quarter of america.
with that. but this might be a time to really be to investigate if gadhafi is going to step down, how long before he steps down, how long will his son saif stay in power, how many seats in the coalition government would the other side have? it s a lot about whether you can trust saif here. he s spoke on the a lot of people in the west over the last two or three years, trying to convince people that he would change the face of libya. i was one of those, he spent three hours with me. but when he became the butcher long side his father, you had to believe, what was that all about about wanting to westernize it? the guy seems to be like his father. some of the elements here are i think wes is right, gadhafi is going to go, the question is who s going to succeed and could you live with a brief transition in the hands of the son and how many guarantees do you have on that? we ll take a quick break on that point. if you re just joining us, a political offer, a diplomatic offer from one of g
defeat him. he also believes that by transferring power to his son, libya will not descend into chaos. but the opposition says no deal, they want the whole gadhafi family to go. officials at the fukushima nuclear power plant have started dumping radioactive water into the ocean. the federal government faces a partial shut down friday if a short-term agreement is not reached. and southwest airlines cancelled 70 flight s today as it contins to inspect it s airplanes for fatigue. today the faa ordered additional testing of certain older 737s which are still being used by a number of u.s. carriers. southwest airlines flight was leaving here from phoenix, it s destination was sacramento, california. but it made an emergency landing here in yuma, arizona after it