Fact Checking?
CBS has an AP piece, Fact checking Obama’s Libya speech, that is supposedly going to lay out the “facts”.
I won’t quote because it is an AP piece and they are weird about quoting, but head down to the paragraph that contains “unique capabilities” [the quotes are in the piece] about two-thirds of the way down. Among these “unique capabilities” are tanker aircraft and AWACs.
I didn’t go any further. If AP doesn’t know that the only country in this coalition that doesn’t have tankers is Qatar, they don’t have the facts to check. The US KC-135s can’t actually refuel most of the coalition aircraft [or US Navy and Marine Corp aircraft], because the system used by US Air Force aircraft is different that the system used by everyone else.
Further, NATO alone has 17 E-3 Sentry AWACs to use in the operation, and doesn’t need the US labeled aircraft. Many of the individual nations have their own AWACs as well.
The US has finished the mission that was faster and more accurate because of specialized US-only equipment. When SEAD ended, so did the need for the US to lead. The Europeans could have done it without the US, but the US equipment made the job faster, easier, and safer. Besides, the US already had the GPS targeting coordinates for everything in Libya, so why re-invent the wheel?
March 29, 2011 6 Comments
