[DomnNC]

The fact of the matter is that the military never releases all the pertinent facts for going into another country. There are things that we do not know, that are not put out to the general public, as in Iraq, I know a couple officers who have served over there, one I think is going back. He very plainly stated to us one day NOT to believe what we hear on the news or in the papers, that we'd never know the truth, it's a freaking classified mission for petes sake, however he did state the reason that we went in was indeed the truth, that WOMD were indeed found, that was all he would say about it. Heck, Hussein was gassing his own people with chemical warfare (chemical warfare is WOMD). Do you know what a freaking painful death that is? As far as Iraqi's claiming they felt safe with Hussein, I ain't buying it, I never heard that, matter of fact the people I know that served in the military state just the opposite, they would run up to the US guys and tell them they were glad to see the US come in there and rid the country of him. Heck their own people couldn't wait to execute his lousy ass and they did, that wasn't the US doing it. His own people tried, convicted and executed him.
Just like Gaddafi, shooting on his own people, dropping bombs on civilians, killing kids. The US just doesn't decide to go roaring into a country on it's own, it's UN sanctioned whether you like it or not, again, they really don't give all the reasons and the details of the mission because that stuff is classified, it's not for public consumption, else it's passed onto the "enemy" so to speak. Gaddafi was given numerous chances to stop firing on innocent civilians, he refused, he lied and said he did but he didn't, he wasn't just fighting and shooting/bombing the rebels. He was given days to comply. Clinton did the same thing in Bosnia, sent a few bombers over and the genocide stopped. We didn't go in with ground forces, there was no need to do so. I'm sure this was the intended reason for bombing Libya's air bases, to stop them from dropping bombs on cities and killing tons of civilians, and as far as has been reported that's all that has been hit, air bases and army bases. We haven't gone in with ground forces and as far as they've said there is no intent to do so. Then again, we the general public, are never privy to the full scope of the mission, ever. So people can hypothesize and speculate all they wish.
We have no idea or not if there are people ready to step in and lead the country if Gaddafi chooses to leave, that'd be a little silly saying well so and so is going to temporarily take over when he does leave, who do you think Gaddafi or some other extremist group will go after upon hearing that news? There was no one planned to step in for Hussein either, they held elections and elected their officials after the fact.
I was in the military, you go on missions blind, they sometimes don't even tell you what the mission is til you get there. They just tell you to pack up and be ready to deploy, a lot of times you don't even know where you're going til you get there. It's just the nature of the beast.