Warthogs! Warthogs! Warthogs!

Long War: There is very good news to report. Last Saturday and Sunday the Pentagon deployed A-10 Warthog ground attack aircraft and AC-130 gunships into Libya. The Warthog is designed to tear apart tanks and other ground based heavy weapons. The AC-130 gunship is the Warthog's big brother; it performs a similar role but is better suited to destroying infantry units because it has the ability to lay down withering fire from the air, literally tons of hot lead sheeting down upon the bad guys in a matter of minutes. The AC-130 can go into urban areas and lay waste to ground armies. Both the Warthog and the AC-130 are ground support aircraft. They are being used to support the Libyan rebels ground forces. This means that the Pentagon is going in whole hog to support the rebels. Operation Odyssey Dawn is not a humanitarian mission. OOD is not a mealymouthed halfway measure. OOD is a full-throated battle cry against Al-Qaeda and the jihadist forces that threaten our bull market. Military reporters quizzed Air Force officials about the obvious effort to directly support the Libyan rebels. The Air Force officials stoutly denied that they were doing anything of the sort. President Obama in his speech Monday said the same thing: America is not taking sides, only humanitarian assistance is being provided, blah, blah, blah. Watch what they do, not what they say. On Monday the Egyptian Army moved back the date of the elections by three months and introduced a new law that hurts the Muslim Brotherhood's chances in these elections. Very bad news for the bad guys. Why do you suppose they did that? How about this for a possible reason: The Egyptian Army sees a chance that if it hands Egypt over to the jihadists there is a chance that AC-130 gunships and A-10 Warthogs will someday be tearing them apart. It's called moral authority. The US can reacquire its authority in the Mideast if it continues along this path. It can tell Saleh of Yemen to step down and allow elections. It can tell the King of Bahrain to move toward a constitutional monarchy. What we need to do now is look for CIA fingerprints in Libya and closely monitor the progress of the Libyan rebels to make sure that today's good news is not a flash in the pan.