The withdrawal of the tanks from Misrata was a rare success story for the rebels, who hold much of the east but have struggled to take advantage of the gains from the international air campaign, which appears to have hobbled Gadhafi's air defenses and artillery and rescued the rebels from impending defeat.
As our naval forces take up positions off the Libyan coast, we should probably escort supplies into Misrata.
And the loyalists drove back rebel forces outside Ajdabiya in the east:
Pro-Gadhafi troops who have besieged Ajdabiya — a city of 140,000 that is the gateway to the east — attacked a few hundred rebels gathered on the outskirts Wednesday. The rebels fired back with Katyusha rockets but have found themselves outgunned by the Libyan government's force.
Until Western special forces (or intelligence agents or even hired ex-special forces contractors) can call in the air strikes, the rebels won't be able to really exploit Western-led air power to overcome Khaddafi's ground firepower advantage. And my guess is we'll need to do this, because the Libyan loyalists will learn to adapt to operating under our aerial umbrella. They'll still suffer losses from Western air power, but they'll learn to fight despite the disadvantage.
The BBC has a useful map which indicates southeastern rebel holds (which I suspected was true from early sketchy reports) and also--to my surprise--in the west, inland, at Gharyan:
The Libya War goes on. The shock and awe of the initial Western aerial intervention has not collapsed loyalist morale to spare us the hard work of winning on the ground, city by city. This could take a while.
