Baxxter, you’re becoming flippant. Shooting from the hip is dramatic only if you hit your intended target . The SA-7 missile you took a fancy to is a ground to air area defence shoulder-mounted weapon. The Egyptians as per your analysis are sure as hell about to piss off the coalition high command.

Military strategy is the planning, conduct and movement whilst employing deception of military forces to reach a military objective. The father of modern military strategy Carl Von Clauswitz puts the matter rather more eloquently,’ the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy ‘.

Currently the rebels do not have the necessary cohesion or military strength to effectively force a knifing of Gaddafi.

So if you have to use military terminology use it correctly otherwise it is just a load of rubbish.

The A 10 is shyte. It defeats the strategic aim, which is to have Gaddafi killed by his own people, with rifles and knives.

But someone is supplying the rebels. This morning I was driving around in Misurata on my beat-up technical and noticed piles of SA-7 missiles being uncrated by the rebels. I looked closer and the date of manufacture was April 2010. I’d say Egypt has a finger in the pie.

@ gaddafi

Those are media too.

Actually, Silvio, it is quite shabby. It’s not as ‘nice’ as it looks. If you don’t know who or what to believe, then trust those who have been there.

Dear Jien Naf
The situation is REALLY dramatic. However you did make an interesting observation. Nowadays objective truth does not exist. Truth is constructed or deconstructed by the media.

A big weakness of the contemporary era is that many times the only evidence comes from what we see from TV & what journalists report. Thank God we have blogs (Daphne’s etc) , Facebook & the rest.

Nato is made up of a dedicated professional military constrained to follow the orders of politicians. They are not one and the same.

Nato commanders are also constrained to make do with the hardware supplied with by its civilian masters. Tonnes of money have been spent on the Euro fighter when the machinery in demand now is the slow but heavy-hitting A 10 1970s technology ground attack plane.

Incidentally, the Americans have decided to keep it till 2028. The military would go in with boots on the ground next week if ordered to, but the order must first come from the politicians – like it or hate it this is how democracy works .

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/world/africa/16libya.html?_r=1&hp

By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: April 15, 2011

MISURATA, Libya — Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who have surrounded this city and vowed to crush its anti-Qaddafi rebellion, have been firing into residential neighborhoods with heavy weapons, including cluster bombs that have been banned by much of the world and ground-to-ground rockets, according to the accounts of witnesses and survivors and physical evidence on the ground.

Take a tour of Libya’s prisons and find out for yourself – if you’re allowed to do so, that is.

A bird living safely in a golden cage still wishes to fly free.