The latest on Qaddafi

Kareem Fahim and Rick Gladstone have an article in The New York Times about Qaddafi:

With armed loyalists of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the fallen Libyan leader, still ensconced in his hometown and a few other redoubts as the seven-month-old Libyan conflict winds down, NATO announced a three-month extension of its bombing campaign: “We are determined to continue our mission for as long as necessary, but ready to terminate the operation as soon as possible,” the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in a statement from the alliance’s Brussels headquarters. It is the second ninety-day extension, and it was approved less than a week before the campaign was set to end.
NATO’s aerial campaign in Libya, authorized under a United Nations Security Council mandate to protect civilians from Colonel Qaddafi’s military reprisals, effectively became a major weapon of the rebels who toppled him last month. The Transitional National Council, the interim government of anti-Qaddafi forces that have taken control in much of Libya, has expressed its gratitude to NATO for its role.
Colonel Qaddafi, who remains at large, has expressed outrage over the growing international acceptance of the Transitional National Council as the legitimate authority in the country he ruled for more than four decades. In a radio message, Colonel Qaddafi taunted his opponents by predicting that their new government would collapse once NATO ended its attacks on loyalist forces that have yet to surrender.
As if to answer him, Britain’s Defense Ministry announced that its warplane contingent in the NATO Libya operation had attacked loyalists’ military deployments in three areas. RAF Tornado GR4s hit targets in Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown, Surt; in the loyalist desert enclave of Bani Walid; and in the north-central town of Hun, the ministry said in a statement.
There was conflicting information about the efforts by anti-Qaddafi forces themselves to eliminate the vestiges of his armed support. Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani, a council military spokesman, said that anti-Qaddafi forces had captured Waddan, Hun, and Sukna, towns in the Jufrah oasis area about 120 miles south of Surt. Council fighters also captured Awbari, a Tuareg town deep in Libya’s south, Colonel Bani said. Those assertions could not be confirmed, though refugees in Tripoli who fled the Jufrah area in recent days said that the oasis towns had come under heavy shelling from anti-Qaddafi forces.
Colonel Bani also said the council had “completely liberated” Sabha, a Qaddafi stronghold deep in the Sahara, though he added that loyalist snipers were still active in the city.
Other news accounts said that Qaddafi loyalists had resisted advances on Surt and that anti-Qaddafi fighters trying to attack Bani Walid were poorly trained, with at least two killing themselves with misfired weapons.

Rico says it'll be good for all concerned, except Qaddafi, when this is over...