the bombing of the discotheque in berlin. what s important in all of this, and we have heard many people talking about the reagan attack and comparing it to this one and whether he was targeted for assassination. states definitively on behalf of reagan and everyone who worked on the terrorist mission there was never an attempt to assassinate any one of those military leaders orator or leaders who headed a government in any way. particularly moammar qaddafi. there was no one who would rather see him dead than me because he sent his goons to my house in great falls, virginia trying to kill my wife and children. i would love to see the man dead. executive order 12333 signed president ronald reagan on the 4th of december 1981 specifically bans and i quote no person employed by or acting on behalf of the united states government shall engage in or
consensuses around the isolation of mr. qaddhafi and we will continue to pursue those. when it comes to our military action we are doing so in support of u.n. security resolution 1973, that specifically talks about humanitarian efforts, and we are going to make sure that we stick to that mandate. i think it s also important, since we are on the topic, that i ve consistently emphasized that because we are working with international partners, after the initial thrust that has disabled qaddhafi s air defenses, limits his ability to threaten large population centers like bengazi that there is going to be a transition taking place in which we have a range of coalition partners, the europeans, members of the arab league, who will then be
that s exactly what s happening. the means to achieve that in the near term is the destruction of qaddafi s decisive ground forces which have changed the nature of the conflict when they rolled back the rebels. we have to clear the airspace to facilitate that and that is what is taking place now. some of those decisive ground forces essentially two brigades are being engaged and will continue to be engaged until those forces are no longer relevant. and that s what we see unfolding in front of us. shannon: general, you know by jennifer griffin s last account from the pentagon. we are talking 124 tomahawk missiles we dropped. we had the b-2 bombers that went in and dropped roughly 64 bombs there. yet, there seems to be this representation or at least imaging and messaging that the u.s. is not leading this fight. that we are part of an international coalition. we are one small sliver of it with that fire power we have already engaged, is it fair to characterize the u.s. military involve
qaddafi has gotten stronger and that a lot of the libyan rebels got killed, and he s particularly upat th upset by t, and this was stated by the admiral, the chairman of the joint chiefs, that our mission at this point is only to protect civilians, it s not to overthrow moammar qaddafi. graham said there can be no doubt about it, we have struck this guy, we have to take him out. he can create a lot of trouble even in a very weakened state just as the king of tripoli in western libya and that we can t back down, and as he put it, this president has put way too many caveats on this whole operation all along. we ve got to finish the job. shannon: in addition to those, a special guest and a fantastic panel as well. thanks for the preview. keep it here on fox. you can catch chris full interview with admiral mullen plus an update on the crisis in japan. fox news sunday airs at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. eastern right here on fox. up next, we ll explore america s diplomatic strategy in
decisive forces. that s going to put huge pressure on qaddafi regime and particularly those who were supporting him that are close to him. and i would imagine that will woo erode some of that support. whether that forces him out remains to be seen, based on the people around him and the level of risk that they believe they are now facing without a capable military. secondly, if that doesn t happen, i m convinced the rebels will move on tripoli as we have cleaned out those decisive forces, ground forces that is, there will be no air force to interdict them. they will be able to move relatively unimpeded. we will see another offensive in tripoli much and in other cities much as we have seen earlier n conflict. whether that topples qaddafi or not also remains to be seen. we don t know that. they will certainly make that attempt. and up to that point, i don t believe we need any ground forces. but i also know for a fact that