Tripping over Tripoli

John Burns and Thom Shanker have an article in The New York Times about the air campaign in Libya:

Nearly twelve weeks into the air campaign against Colonel Muammer el-Qaddafi’s government, the growing strains of the operation on the participating nations dominated a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels. But with the United States, Britain, and France prodding behind closed doors for other NATO nations to join more aggressively in the air campaign, there were few signs that the five countries that were the main targets of the appeals— Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Turkey— were willing to forsake their political reservations and commit themselves more deeply.
Since NATO took control of the bombing and missile strikes from the United States at the end of March, the alliance has conducted more than ten thousand air sorties. In the heaviest strikes yet, concentrating on attacks in Tripoli, NATO launched over one hundred and fifty strike missions, more than three times the previous daily average.
NATO pounded targets throughout the day and into the night, substantially obliterating much of Colonel Qaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya command compound in the capital, as well as a luxurious tented encampment in the desert southeast of Tripoli where the Libyan leader, keen to show his Bedouin origins, has greeted foreign leaders.
The desert strike appeared to show the alliance’s readiness to kill Colonel Qaddafi. A NATO statement described the target as a “command and control facility” but, apart from small groups of soldiers lurking under trees nearby with pickups carrying mounted machine guns, reporters taken to the scene saw nothing to suggest that the camp was a conventional military target.
Beside the burned-out cinders of two tents, with their singed carpets and stacked food trays, there were several quad bikes and the skeleton of a golf cart. Ali Mohammed, an official who said he oversaw the site, batted away questions about Mr. Qaddafi’s connection to the camp before finally acknowledging: “Yes, yes, he meets his guests here.”
In Brussels, an American official accompanying Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to the NATO meeting said the recent step-up in the air campaign had both a military and a psychological component. “We are steadily but surely eroding his capacity,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under diplomatic protocols.
In a nine-minute audio message on state television about the time that NATO attacked the desert camp, Colonel Qaddafi combined defiance with repeated references to his willingness to die rather than submit to NATO demands to step down. “Martyrdom,” he said, “is a million times better.”
But the pressures are not on the Libyan leader alone. Concerns about the mounting costs of the campaign and air crew exhaustion have led to a push to get some NATO members more involved in the effort. The United States’ role has centered on tasks including midair refuelling, aerial surveillance, and pilotless drones, while most of the actual strikes have been by Britain and France, backed by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Italy, and Norway.
Mr. Gates said at the meeting that nations that had been tepid about the air campaign should do more to help carry out the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to protect Libyan civilians. An official familiar with Mr. Gates’s remarks, made in a closed session of the defense ministers’ talks, said that he had urged the Netherlands, Spain, and Turkey— which are participating in the air campaign, but which have forbidden their aircraft to strike at ground targets— to do more.
Mr. Gates also called on Germany and Poland to commit military forces, the official said. But the resistance to wider involvement was strong. “Germany sticks to its position: No military engagement,” said Deputy Defense Minister Christian Schmidt. His Spanish counterpart, Carme Chacon Piqueras, said her country would continue to help enforce the no-fly zone over Libya, but not attack. “It will be the same contribution, the same format,” she said.
Meanwhile, in the ground war, new fighting at Misurata, the contested city 130 miles east of Tripoli, killed at least ten rebels and wounded about thirty others, according to accounts by Western reporters in the city. It appeared to have been the most intense fighting since rebel forces drove Qaddafi fighters from the city and captured its airport nearly a month ago. It was unclear which side initiated the fighting.

Rico says if Qaddafi insists that martyrdom is a million times better, we should provide it to him, and soon...