Dueling analyses over Libya’s future?
The Director of National Intelligence dropped a bomb – metaphorically — in the Senate on Thursday when he testified that Libyan rebels are not likely to oust Muammar Gaddafi and predicted that eventually “the regime will prevail.”
James Clapper’s jaw-dropping prediction, as Washington, NATO and the United Nations search for a way forward and Libya lurches toward civil war, prompted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to call for his dismissal.
And it prompted some flame-throwing from the White House.
Tom Donilon, Obama’s National Security Advisor, said Obama is happy with Clapper’s performance, but he had tough words for Clapper’s analysis.
“If you did a static and one-dimensional assessment of just looking at order of battle and mercenaries, you can come to various conclusions about the various advantages that the Gaddafi regime and the opposition have,” Donilon told reporters on a conference call.
“But our view is, my view is — as the person who looks at this quite closely every day and advises the president — is that things in the Middle East right now and things in Libya in particular right now need to be looked at not through a static, but a dynamic, and not through a unidimensional, but a multidimensional, lens.”
Donilon said a “static, unidimensional analysis” does not take into account factors such as steps that can be taken in cooperation with the Libyan oppostion, the mood in the region and Gaddafi’s isolation.
Obama moves to bolster national security staff
On the same day he unveiled a review of his Afghanistan war strategy, President Barack Obama moved to bolster the White House national security team, which has been short-staffed after a series of changes.
Obama tapped Brooke Anderson, currently part of the U.S. mission to the United Nations, as chief of staff and counselor for the National Security Council.
An expert on nuclear nonproliferation, Anderson is ambassador and alternate representative for special political affairs at the UN.
She advised Obama’s campaign, helping to set up his July 2008 trip to Europe and the Middle East, and then was a spokeswoman on national security matters during Obama’s presidential transition.
At the NSC, she replaces Denis McDonough, who was promoted to deputy national security adviser. McDonough assumed his new role after Tom Donilon succeeded Gen. James Jones in the top job at NSC.
Anderson’s appointment is one in a series of staff changes planned. As Politico’s Carol Lee and Glenn Thrush reported, Obama will spend part of his Christmas break in Hawaii considering how to reshuffle the West Wing staff as he looks ahead to his 2012 re-election campaign.
PHOTO CREDIT: REUTERS/Jim Young (President Barack Obama walks back to the White House after meeting with business leaders at Blair House)
Pretty sure NATO’s immediate Intervention could define world economy stability later on.