The U.S. military has continued to fly strike missions against Muammar Qaddafi's air defense systems in Libya since the handover of operations to NATO on April 4th, Pentagon Spokesman Col. Dave Lapan told reporters Wednesday.
This stands in contrast to messages heard in press briefings and testimony on Capitol Hill from defense leaders, who have given the impression that when the mission was handed over to NATO U.S. strike sorties stopped and were only available upon request.
On April 1, Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified to the House Armed Services committee that U.S. participation in the strike mission was coming to a close.
"We will not be taking an active part in the strike activities, and we believe that our allies can sustain this for some period of time," Gates said.
And later that same day, neither Secretary Gates nor Admiral Mike Mullen took exception to Senator McCain's characterization of the U.S. role in Libya during a Senate hearing: "As the secretary's prepared statement makes clear, following the transfer of authority to NATO, the United States will only be playing a supporting role, namely intelligence, aerial refueling, search-and- rescue, and other enabling functions but not precision strike or other offensive operations," McCain said.
In fact, an undisclosed number of U.S. fighter jets have been "chopped" to NATO since the handover on April 4th, and they can be used for strike missions without U.S. approval. Col. Lapan stressed these strike missions only involve hitting air defenses and do not include the mission to protect civilians (i.e. bombing Qaddafi tanks, troops etc).
Read more: http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/04/13/us-still-flying-strike-missions-libya?test=latestnews#ixzz1JQjdyE86
