Prelude to Dawn

In replies to the post below this one, I linked to a John Cole - yes, surprisingly, that John Cole - entry wherein he presented a far more defensible position than any number of other alleged liberals, leftists, anarchists, libertarians and civil libertarians.

I wanted to highlight it, here, as a preface to something he writes further down in his own comments thread - a  subject about which I was myself speculating, but for which I could (for obvious reasons) find no evidence.

From his original post:

"I’ve learned something very interesting the past few days, which is that after mindlessly warmongering and supporting a debacle in Iraq and intractable mess in Afghanistan, it is somehow a personal failure on my part that I need to be persuaded to engage in another military adventure. You would think that setting your default position for supporting military action to “Show me why we should do it and until then no” would be what we might bluntly call LEARNING FROM YOUR PAST FUCKING MISTAKES, but apparently that is just not the case. Turns out that is, according to many of you, just being block-headed in a different way. Interesting, that.

What makes it even funnier is that I don’t really have a say in things- nor do any of you. Not sure if you are paying attention, but they went ahead and got involved in Libya regardless what any of us thought, for or against, and right now we’re just holding post hoc pissing matches. Nothing we say or do is going to get us out of Libya a day before the powers that be decide it is time to go. See also, Afghanistan and Iraq, where no one in positions of power gives two hoots in hell what the public thinks."

And in reply, in his comments section:

"Worst case, boots on the ground (although even that is a relative term, because if we are using cruise missiles and the like, we probably already have Special Forces all over the place anyway, and did so before the official UN action) for a long time."

(emphasis mine)

And that's the thing, isn't it?

If the US Navy and Air Force are launching Tomahawks and other cruise missiles at targets in Libya, as well as hitting them with Missouri based stealth bombers, it is already very likely that wetworkers are in country and in place, illuminating targets and doing recon. And I'm being generous, as to their workload.

I find it entirely plausible that "boots are on the ground" in Libya, right now. And have been for days, if not weeks.

Which puts Barry Pendragon's recent statement in a cold light:

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi may try to wait out a no-fly zone and military assault that has damaged his armed forces, President Barack Obama said Tuesday in an interview with CNN.

'Gaddafi may try to hunker down and wait it out even in the face of the no-fly zone, even though his forces have been degraded,' Obama said."

Seems like he's doing advance propaganda wetwork, in a manner reminiscent of that which is done by special forces operators before and during bombing campaigns. Establishing his arguments and justifications in preparation for an assault on the American public and media environment, like black ops mechanics establish the targets and strike zones for aerial bombardment, in preparation for the advent of death from the sky.

To what, I wonder, is this a prelude?