We're going into libya!

[Mitsuru]

The UN has passed resolution 10 to 0 in favour of the resolution
Russia, china, Germany and 2 others abstained from the vote
For No fly zone for Libya

Italy has offered the use of it's air fields

[Mitsuru]

I sent the previous post as text message to some friends on their mobile phones, one just sent back the following;

Problem is brit plains cant use italy runways, italian planes take off in reverse

[MG Mal]

Problem is,
The airborn observation platforms we would use to scan Libyan airspace are currently being scrapped!
The extra Aircraft we would need to help enforce the no fly zone are not available due to cuts.
If we had the aircraft , we dont have the pilots as there all being made redundant.
And we dont have the cash to pay for it anyway.

So it's not exactly a good plan for the UK govt is it?

[rich.]

and another reason for the fundamentalists to attack the west...

[Martin Evans]

Politics is a dirty business and Gadafi has been in the naughty corner for years, though at times he seems to have been considered less unacceptable.

I wonder whether, if there was some sort of separatist uprising, in part of the UK, the UN would take a similar view, were the government to send in troops to contain the trouble? Some will say that the Libyan regime is not democratic and here lies the distinction.

However I would say that Gaddafi is alleged to have been behind other more serious (So far as the outside world is concerned) matters over the years, not least Lockerbie and it seems odd that only now he is being held to account. I have to wonder whether the real reason is oil?

It will be interesting to see what happens in other places, such as Bahrain, where there is also unrest against a so called undemocratic regime.

As Rich says, it'll be

another reason for the fundamentalists to attack the West

. I suppose the question is whether it's another "Reason" or another "Excuse" (I don't really believe Bin Laden is (Was ) a kind of Robin Hood figure).

[mr rusty]

Yet more meddling in another country's internal politics, do our politicians never learn? They haven't even bothered with the bogus WMD excuse this time....Cameron was grinning all over his face on TV, it's as if he couldn't wait to get 'his' war started to show that he can do better than Labour did with their idiotic adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nothing good will come of Afghanistan, history tells us that nobody can ever win there, you'd have thought they'd have learned that from the 1842 British retreat from Kabul, or the Soviet disaster which played a part in the collapse of the former Soviet union, but no...and they'll make the same mistakes in Libya. Before you know it there'll be troops on the ground, accusations from the arab world of regime change, and they'll be worrying about who's next on the western hit list.

The problem is that there are now no old school politicians left who have seen a war at first hand....Denis Healey, he of the bushy eyebrows, was beach controller during the Anzio landings,and Ted heath, who landed with his artillery battalion on D day, both sernior politicians (for younger readers, Labour Chancellor and Tory PM respectively) both said that anyone who had ever actually been in the situation would do their utmost to prevent it happening again and did all they could to keep us out of the Iraq mess. Cameron could learn a big lesson in politics by boning up on how Harold Wilson deftly kept British troops out of the Vietnam war.

[JPB]

Yet more meddling in another country's internal politics, do our politicians never learn? They haven't even bothered with the bogus WMD excuse this time....Cameron was grinning all over his face on TV, it's as if he couldn't wait to get 'his' war started to show that he can do better than Labour did with their idiotic adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nothing good will come of Afghanistan, history tells us that nobody can ever win there, you'd have thought they'd have learned that from the 1842 British retreat from Kabul, or the Soviet disaster which played a part in the collapse of the former Soviet union, but no...and they'll make the same mistakes in Libya. Before you know it there'll be troops on the ground, accusations from the Arab world of regime change, and they'll be worrying about who's next on the western hit list.

The problem is that there are now no old school politicians left who have seen a war at first hand....Denis Healey, he of the bushy eyebrows, was beach controller during the Anzio landings,and Ted heath, who landed with his artillery battalion on D day, both senior politicians (for younger readers, Labour Chancellor and Tory PM respectively) both said that anyone who had ever actually been in the situation would do their utmost to prevent it happening again and did all they could to keep us out of the Iraq mess. Cameron could learn a big lesson in politics by boning up on how Harold Wilson deftly kept British troops out of the Vietnam war.

Well said, every single word of it.

I assume that the inevitable impact on the cost of fuel is why this thread's here in the first place?

[TriumphDriver]

I have a great computer game called Medieval Total War where the object is to conquer all the other nations by invading their countries, destroying their infrastructure and getting rich by sacking their cities. You can stay at home but you'll soon run out of money and probably get invaded. The object is to own at least 45 other provinces including Jerusalem.
Let me see now.... Tony has Iraq, Afghanistan, he gave away Northern Ireland and retreated from Germany, and his successors want Libya.. maybe Tunisia, Algeria and Bahrain... bit of dispute over Pakistan... it's anybody's game so far.

[spiderbloke]

Resident Cynic here....

Interfering in Lybian affairs is a no-brainer for Captain Cameron and President Smiley for 3 reasons

1/ The Libyans have oil

2/ Gadaffi is a seial purchaser of weopons, munitions, tanks and armoured vehicles from the UK. If an extended conflict takes place, many of these military commestables will need to be replaced.... and we do have a Royal Wedding to finance. (If we were the French we would be selling arms to both sides. Jets to Gadaffi, Ground to Air Missiles specifically targetting those type of jets to the Rebels, Air to Ground missiles specifically targetting those Ground to Air missile sites... and so on)

3/ If Tony B Liar can get a lucrative career off the back of a Middle East conflict our current encumbants want a slice of that action.

Simples

[mr rusty]

Gaddafi has been our boy for some time now, despite his history with the PIRA and the Lockerbie thing, it just goes to show how dirty international politics is. One message this latest situation sends out to the Middle east is don't trust the Western powers, as they will pick you up and drop you like a stone as neccesary. This isn't good for long term stability.

He's a curious figure, painted in the West as some sort of comedy monster with his over the top uniforms and no doubt he is a monster, but although he's getting a pretty bad press at the moment he does still have a lot of support. Anyone who goes to Malta on their hols a lot will come across Libyans quite a bit as they regularly to and fro between Libya and Malta and a lot of them do like him just because he stands up to the Americans.

Libya is an Arab problem and we should let it stay that way- one would have thought that almost a century of British interference in the Middle East would have taught us that Arabs like to sort their own problems out their own way and without interference from us!

And for those people who think Britain is doing the right thing by helping to topple a nasty dictator, read up on Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov, he's another of those nasty people who we keep in power. Craig Murray, our ambassador in Uzbekistan, was spuriously sacked for breaking ranks and asking why. Talk about double standars- Sting ,supposedly a political activist and defender of minority rights, played a phenomenally well paid private gig for his daughter, somethin beyonce probably regrets doing for Gadaffi now
.