The Fourth War

So, while we're still at war with in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (shh!), the President has "secretly" expanded the scope of our support in Libya to include a covert force to assist rebel forces: "President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday. Obama signed the order, known as a presidential 'finding', within the last two or three weeks, according to government sources familiar with the matter."

According to anonymous officials speaking to the New York Times, that order has already been put into action and clandestine CIA agents have been inserted "to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and to contact and vet the beleaguered rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's forces."

In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency's station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.

American officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers — including the location of Colonel Qaddafi's munitions depots and the clusters of government troops inside towns — might help weaken Libya's military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.

In addition, the American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi, said United States government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the activities. American officials cautioned, though, that the Western operatives were not directing the actions of rebel forces.

Meanwhile, Secretary Clinton reportedly informed Congress that "the White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission." As profoundly infuriating as that is, there should be no surprise that this is the Obama administration's position, given that Obama himself did not consider his predecessor's expansion of executive power a breach of the president's authority. (Something I was assured didn't matter during the election.)

David Dayen wonders if the order "has anything to do with the Libyan expat resident of Northern Virginia, 10 miles from Langley, showing up in Benghazi to command the rebel army" and says, quite rightly, the debate, such as it is, about this action "looks like a clown show."

And Emptywheel, noting that we're technically providing materially support to terrorists, "no matter how we try to spin arming rebels as an act of peace," asks where Obama will try himself for material support for terrorism.

I guess since Gitmo's still open, he can just send himself there. Indefinitely.