He signed Khadafy’s pink slip!
President Obama has secretly given the CIA the go-ahead to provide rebels with the military hardware to oust the Libyan madman — and put its operatives on the ground to collect information on them, it was reported yesterday.
The spy agency already has operatives in Libya gathering intelligence on who exactly the rebels are, and assessing their capabilities, The Washington Post said.
The president authorized the clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the rebels two or three weeks ago, Reuters reported.
The developments came as NATO publicly weighs the plans to arm outgunned Libyan rebels — who again yesterday were forced into a mad-scramble retreat from Moammar Khadafy’s troops.
Khadafy’s regime said a French suggestion to give the rebels firepower was tantamount to aiding “terrorists” and would violate UN resolutions.
But British Prime Minister David Cameron said his country believes there’s a legal loophole in the Security Council authorization of Operation Odyssey Dawn that would permit the action.
In Washington, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said he’s opposed to arming the rebels.
“We don’t have to look very far back in history to find examples of the unintended consequences of passing out advanced weapons to a group of fighters we didn’t know as well as we should have,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), alluding to the United States arming Afghanistan’s Taliban against Soviet invaders in the 1980s.
“Even if you think you know them . . . you can’t guarantee that those weapons won’t later fall into the hands of bad actors.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton emerged from a briefing of congressional leaders and insisted “no decision” had been made.
The rebels have few weapons more powerful than machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades — and they fell back in the face of Khadafy’s missiles and tanks.
Also yesterday:
* Khadafy loyalists retook Ras Lanouf and were closing in on another key oil town, Brega. The rebels abandoned the area and retreated farther eastward toward their unofficial capital, Benghazi.
“There’s something strange about the way he attacked us today,” said Abdullah Abdel-Jalil, a 31-year-old ambulance driver serving with the rebels. “The Grad rockets, the tanks, the quantity of it all, he’s stronger than we thought. It’s way too intense.”
* Obama’s Libyan policy helped drop his approval rating to 42 percent, his lowest so far, a new Quinnipiac University poll found. Forty-eight percent said they disapproved of his job performance.
The survey showed Americans opposed US involvement in Libya by 47 to 41 percent.
* Libya’s foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, flew to London from Tunisia and said he was resigning his post.
His apparent defection came hours after French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told his Parliament of “a sign of positive development — the first defections around Khadafy in Tripoli are reported.”
* Uganda became the first country to publicly offer Khadafy refuge if he abandons Tripoli.
* Britain expelled five Libyan diplomats from London.
Western officials are increasingly concerned about the plight of the poorly organized anti-Khadafy forces.
The rebels were energized by coalition airstrikes over the weekend and had advanced as far west as the town of Nawfaliya, near Khadafy’s hometown of Sirte. But heavy shelling sent them reeling about 100 miles eastward in the last two days.
Rebel leaders said they were headed to Ajdabiya, a town that has switched hands repeatedly, to regroup and set up a defensive shield that would protect Benghazi, farther east.
Coalition airstrikes, which have been hampered by sandstorms and overcast skies, continued yesterday near Ajdabiya, bringing jubilant cries by rebels.
But Western analysts said that since the coalition now rules Libya’s skies, Khadafy’s forces have adopted elusive new tactics. Some of them are advancing in civilian cars or even on foot rather than in easily identifiable tanks.
Also, Khadafy’s troops left land mines in the eastern outskirts of Ajdabiya before they retreated last Saturday, according to Human Rights Watch.
Rebel military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani said sources told him that 3,200 to 3,600 heavily armed members of the Chadian presidential guard were marching from Sirte to Ajdabiya to attack the rebels.
The anti-Khadafy coalition gained new support yesterday when Bulgaria said it would send a frigate to help enforce NATO’s arms embargo.
Expanding NATO’s role to include arming the rebels would be problematic, because all 28 members of the alliance would have to approve. With