Over libya, but they will be jamming gadhafi s military frequencies, collecting intelligence and also refuelling other fighter jets but not engaging in the strike missions themselves. on the ground there is something of a stalemate emerging between the rebels and gadhafi s troops. the rebels, because they have the ongoing nato air support are protected. they can t lose. they are not going to be able to be driven back in benghazi, but without significant ground force, rebel troops they haven t been able to advance and are locked in a stalemate. alex? thank you very much, richard engel from benghazi. in japan, another day of gloomy developments. officials released a picture of a crack in the retaining wall. the water you see there is highly radio active and is spewing right into the pacific ocean. also today, two workers at the plant were killed when the
That gadhafi s forces can t push them back too far. so, from a rebel perspective, they have this support from nato, which allows them to stay in the fight. it prevents them from losing, but they don t have enough force and they certainly don t have ground force to win. so, there is a stalemate on the ground. this also comes as the u.s. role, as you mentioned earlier, is at a transition point. as of today, the u.s. is ending what the pentagon calls strike missions. these are bombing runs. there will still be aircraft, there are still american aircraft in the skies over libya, jamming gadhafi s radio frequencies, collecting intelligence, refueling fighter jets, but not doing the actual bombing themselves. and this comes after the u.s., since this conflict began, has flown about 600 of these strike missions. and richard, what is the fallout from the friendly fire incident? reporter: not very much.
Some kind. we don t know. if you were still cia director, what would you be telling your agents to do right now? well, collect intelligence is the key thing, and find out who s running the rebellion. there are rumors that there are some people connected with al qaeda involved, muslim brother hood. on the other hand, a number of them appear to be sincere opponents of gadhafi, who is a terrible dictator. we need to know a lot more. the cia made a mistake 20, 30 years ago in iran by just listening to the shah and not getting out and learning about people like khamenei and otherwise. they were not in the country at the time, but we should have known a lot more about the people who might take over if there is a rebellion, and the same thing s true now. okay. the president has said he s not ruling in, neither is he ruling
And i don t mean to say that lightly. what happened was there was on the front line, again in very close to brega, there is a chaotic highway front line where you have rebels in their pickup trucks firing antiaircraft guns and rockets and mortars at gadhafi s forces, and gadhafi s forces are in tanks, but also in very similar looking pickup trucks. and as nato jets were in the sky, it appears, according to witnesses, that someone on the rebel side was firing an antiaircraft gun up at the nato jet, and the nato jet then fired back, killing a dozen people who, from the rebels side, certainly not their intended target, but they were being shot at from that side. it s somewhat understandable, and the rebel leadership has said that they understand it. it s regrettable, but they want the air support to continue. the rebels themselves are claiming that someone from
Up doing in libya now that this resolution is passed? well, if the rebels in benghazi can hold out another day or two days, i expect you re going to be seeing immediate action. the french have been straining at the bit to come in. but fundamentally, you ve got to coordinate the actions of others. hopefully, there will be arab participants that come into this that are also part of the action. i think it s very potentially nasty if it s only western nato force that s are coming in to libya that we can talk about that in a moment perhaps. but i suspect that what hillary clinton just said is that you re going to see the targeting of various forms of defensive capacity. the beginning of doing things we should have done i think a week ago, which was scrambling and jamming gadhafi s ability to communicate with his forced. and hopefully some rearming and reequipping of the opposition forces with their own ammunition and capacity to fight this war. i think it s very important we try to keep this their war and