The government's top intelligence official fumbled the Obama administration's message Thursday about embattled Moammar Gadhafi's fate, telling Congress that the Libyan leader will prevail in his fight with rebel forces there. It was the latest in a series of public gaffes for James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.
Honestly, I think Clapper is most probably right. Unless the West intervenes effectively to help the rebels, Khaddafi can probably defeat the rebels. It might take weeks or months, but the rebels are starting to lose this war, notwithstanding the Obama administration's assertion that Khaddafi must go.
The Obama administration can distance itself from Clapper's remarks, but it doesn't distance itself from the reality on the ground in Libya.
UPDATE: Taheri thinks the rebels still have the edge:
According to the two Libyan envoys, Khadafy controls little land outside the capital, Tripoli, and its immediate suburbs. Elsewhere, he is engaged in aerial bombardments and heavy artillery attacks to dislodge the rebels from some positions, without being able to impose his own control.
The council now controls more than 500 miles of Libya's 1,100-mile Mediterranean coastline, along with such cities as Benghazi and Tobruk. The Libyan hinterland, slightly larger than Alaska, resembles Swiss cheese, with "pockets of loyalty to the colonel" alongside "liberated zones."
I still think the loyalists have the edge as of now. And I think Clapper is likely right that Khaddafi will win. Events I'll be watching will be whether the loyalists seem able to garrison captured cities with paramilitaries drawn from the locals while the more organized units continue to attack the rebels. I'll also look to see if the loyalists can drive on to Ajdabiya and capture and hold it.
It is possible that both sides will be able to trade punches in the no man's land between Sirte and Ajdabiya without being able to penetrate and hold population centers of the other side. In that case, if each side can ramp up oil exports from their own area, this could be a long, drawn-out civil war.
Unless they get some serious Western military assistance (and no, a no-fly zone is not serious Western miltiary assistance), I don't see the rebels marching on Tripoli. It may be that without covert Western military assistance, the rebels won't be able to hold what they grabbed in their initial uprising.
