Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
What do we do if Libya continues internal civilian air flights? Shoot them down? Qaddafi is certainly capable of putting up civilian aircraft for the purpose of luring NATO into an embarrassing incident.
Rex, this is not a showstopper tactically. Iraq had airliners flying fairly routinely, and as I pointed out we've been enforcing NFZs over the US for 10 years with lots of civilian traffic. Yes we could use the NFZ as cover for other bombing, but as Entropy points out, why - the strategy for the NFZ is the biggest issue.

Crowbat-

I agree, Libya is a pretty big country. Still, only slightly larger than Iraq, it's do-able. All the significant infrastructure and the entire IADS is on the coast as has been pointed out, so that helps. You don't really need to patrol to the southern border even if you're trying to interdict the flow of folks/supplies from the south - open desert most of the way so you could hit them downstream.

Entropy-

I agree, the why is the big question... what would our strategy be? The objective would mostly seem to be to try and help in some way or another... But what is our desired outcome?

Finally a point for all-

I disagree strongly that the NFZs in Iraq were a failure. The NFZs not only prevented Saddam's air force from gassing more civilians, but it also let us monitor his army and deterred ground action. The northern NFZ in particular basically kept Saddam from attacking the Kurds, and the result is that Kurdistan is the most stable and functional part of Iraq. The objective was to contain Saddam- and it worked. I may be partial due to having played a part, but I think the results were positive.

V/R,

Cliff