Well, what can one say....

First, as someone who does business in the region and has had the distinct displeasure of doing business with the Qadhdhafi regime, I find the hand-wringing about 'who would be better' surreal. The Guide is a living disaster for Libya, much more so than Sadaam was for Iraq. His permanent revolution is constant chaos, removing one of the few advantages of dictatorship, the modicum of stability. As I also dealt with the Iraqi situation pre American fiasco, I have a benchmark for comparison.

Second, this hand wringing rather presumes there is was a CHOICE between say restoration of status quo and all things fine under a charming Qadhdhafi dictatorship (with nothing more than a wee massacre in Benghazi) OR intervention. That is not the case. Libya was already by the time the decision point came, awash in arms. A Qadhdhafi restoration, besides being marked by massacres on an impressive scale, is also almost certain to be marked by the emergence of an ongoing insurgency against him (but sans W. intervention, veering entirely into the hands of Al Qaeda fil Maghreb), and by The Guide pursuing what was already seen pre-Rebellion: support to Agents Provocateurs in Tunisia (and likely Egypt). Looking at Libya in isolation of its two neighbours is myopic and betrays a lack of familiarity with their connections (much more than say Yemen with its neighbours, or Bahrain with even the KSA situation).

Saying there is no strategic rational betrays profound ignorance of the Maghreb, and of North Africa, and the huge potential spill-over into the very strategic neighbours (there is no doubt of the Guide's inclination and capacity to fund and promote bad actors in either Tunisia or Egypt to destabilise revolutions or democratisations that are at once demonstrably threatening to his own rule and detested ideologically). This is not even to count the profound economic dislocations to Tunisia and Egypt from Libya driven by not only substantial lost business (although the civil war will continue) but by the hundreds of thousands (yes, high six digits) of dislocated Egyptian and Tunisian guest-workers / expatriates.

As for the numbers of fighters, I doubt anyone actually knows. It is not particularly surprising, given this situation did not arise from an organised armed movement or rebellion, but organically from spontaneous demonstrations (and reaction to bloody repression it must be recalled). That without any semblance of organisation several thousand young men are even trying to fight against an organised army without any compunction to slaughter both fighters and suspected fighters is impressive.

A bit of bloody realism is required, not romanticism nor hand-wringing gloom and doom. Contra the comment supra, the rebellion and stubborn resistance in the Western cities (Zawiya, Misrata, etc) and even Tripoli amply shows that despite enormous personal risk, there is a seething dislike of the barely organised chaos that Qadhdhafi has inflicted on Libya these past 40 years.

To advance the idea that leaving the Guide in place is in any way comparable to even the unknown of the inchoate Rebellion is to indicate one has no sense of how awful the Guide is in fact, operationally.

I do not see, I would add, that the choice presented is Br & Fr (and then American) boots on the ground or non-intervention. There are a number of intermediary actions before this gloomy act (and futile act I would say). The pre-emptive "Oh we Americans are going to have to ride in" combines the worst aspects of pessimism and American parochialism.

Not everything is Iraq.