Offshore Libya News Today

If i were sitting in tehran in the government right now i would be shaking in my boots. with syria now under tremendous political pressure, i dont think theres any government in the region thats immune. one of the truly positive outcomes of this entire arab spring may be finally a real pressure for political change in iran and i think we should be supporting that. i dont think by the way, whats happening in libya has prevented the administration from taking egypt seriously. egypt is the most imp...

Anti-corruption objectives in these countries. political space in participation. if local populations achieve those things they will decide who should lead them. were in a transformation in the greater middle east, all of the countries will change their governments and we cant view libya as a one-off that will turn out in some good way in the next few days. this could be a very long intervention run by nato now, not by us. we have a lot of expenses involved in being in nato. this not as zero -- ...

Unilaterally that even when that kind of approach has come under criticism, sometimes it is hard for us to put ourselves in the other frame of mind which is to look at a multilateral way of doing things. i think it is a very interesting experiment, if you will, after the iraq and afghanistan adventures and were working with others. i think we have to look also at the possibility of some kind of a united nations role here. its not inconceivable to me, for example, that at some point the u.n. secu...

That said im hoping the administration does focus on all it can do encourage change in syria and iran and perhaps more than anything to focus on two countries, saudi arabia and egypt, those are the twin pillars of middle eastern stability. i worry about the political process taking place in egypt, speed, economic problems the country continues to face. i worry about what the saudis are doing in bahrain because i do think it is narrowed the possibility of political compromise there. ultimately wh...

International whether under blue helmets at the u.n. or otherwise it is a very hard for me to see a scenario where ultimately do you not need some sort of international presence to provide order throughout this country. neither the regime nor the opposition i would argue is going to be any time soon in a position to essentially establish and police the sovereignty of the area. libya with ungoverned spaces and terrorists can put down roots. as bad as the situation has been, you dont need a big im...

And again, im very uncomfortable with launching a military intervention given the fact that were setting in motion a chain of events. its not simply that we dont know. we have no reason to be confident that the people we are trying to help prevail will institute a form of governance that will necessarily be in our or libyas interest. >> that raises the question obviously about the rebels. who are they and let me go to the ambassador and jane harman, are we sure as richard haass asked the questio...

Lets get straight to our panel, richard haass is the president on the council on foreign relations. and also the former u.s. ambassador to iraq and former director of national intelligence. robert kagan is a senior fellow with the brookings institution and jane harman from california who chaired the subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence and is now the new president and ceo of the woodrow wilson center. ambassador, im going to start with you because you have been generally supportive ...

Of a more robust nato presence. we dont know what the nato objectives will be although we know nato is taking over command from the united states. my final point is and i made this over and over again about limited brain cells. yes, youre right, bob, that we mostly have our navy in place, although imagine if the straits of hormuz were blocked we might need our navy there. or if something happens in another part of the world, we might need it there. weve got a lot of assets offshore libya. but my...

Modernity and democracy. women are part of that yearning for change and modernity. they have played a key role in the changes taking place from egypt to tunisia. they continue to play a role in bahrain and even in libya. if al qaeda is tried to reach that particular market, arab women and its best effort is this, advice on how to get hitched to a terrorist, it makes one wonder -- the world must be a safer place. well be right back. homeowners -- rates have been going up, but you can still refina...

Put on your director of national intelligence hat and talk about what jane harman is talking about, the fact that yemen is a haven for al qaeda and this could be distracting us from paying enough attention to that. >> first of all, i think we do have the bandwidth to deal with libya and these other situations in the middle east. i think yemen definitely is a a concern boat its inherent political stability and the fact there might be a political vacuum there if the president falls or the situatio...