Tripoli was shaken early Tuesday, May 10, by five huge blasts which flattened another set of mostly empty government buildings in Muammar Qaddafi's capital, but aroused little interest, even among Western journalists.It is common knowledge that the ruler, his family and top lieutenants abandoned the city after May 1 when NATO missiles struck a Qaddafi family residence, missing him but killing his son and grandchildren.
It is now suspected in Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels that advanced electronic counter-measures imported recently to one of the foreign embassies in Tripoli tipped him off to the incoming missile attack and gave him just enough time to get away.
debkafile's intelligence sources report that since those devices were activated two weeks ago, NATO finds itself increasingly targeting empty government buildings and abandoned military installations.
Hence the comment by NATO Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen Sunday, May 8: After repeating, "The game is over for Qaddafi" and denying the war had reached a stalemate, he added there was "no military solution for the civil war in Libya."
Our military sources sum up the balance of the two-month NATO operation backing the Libyan rebellion:
The combined coalition campaign has failed to loosen Qaddafi's grip on power, dent his army's fighting spirit and combat ability, divide Libya's main tribes against him or shake the loyalty of his high commanders and government heads.
The fundamental fact that without substantial American military intervention, NATO powers lack the air, sea and missile resources for overcoming Qaddafi has remained unchanged ever since the US handed the campaign's command role over the NATO on April 4.
