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Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Run for the Border

Hopefully, Khaddafi isn't seeking Yellowcake Uranium there:

Scores of Libyan army vehicles have crossed the desert frontier into Niger in what may be a dramatic, secretly negotiated bid by Muammar Gaddafi to seek refuge in a friendly African state, military sources from France and Niger told Reuters on Tuesday.

A convoy of between 200 and 250 vehicles was given an escort by the army of Niger, a poor and landlocked former French colony to the south of Libya. It might, according to a French military source, be joined by Gaddafi en route for neighboring Burkina Faso, which has offered him asylum.

Well, if Khaddafi shows up somewhere south of the border, that should end any resolve of the guys up north close to NATO firepower to fight to the death. It always made sense to me that Khaddafi would head south. He might well have done so.

UPDATE: Or is he trapped in Libya?

Anis Sharif would not say where Gadhafi had been found, but said he was still in Libya and had been tracked using high technology and human intelligence. Gadhafi is trapped within a 40-mile- (60 kilometer-) radius area surrounded by rebels, he said.

"He can't get out," said Sharif, who added the former rebels are preparing to either detain him or kill him.

I know that few of the alliance (former rebel) troops want to be the last to die in a revolution already won, but if they don't get those last bastions of loyalist forces under control, they risk giving the loyalists a chance to regroup and continue the war. I sure didn't think that the loyalists would be given this much time after the fall of Tripoli. Never give an enemy time. It is the most valuable commodity in war.