DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
The New York Times
Juy 30, 2011
BENGHAZI — NATO said Saturday that airstrikes it launched had disabled three Libyan state television transmission dishes in Tripoli overnight, as the alliance took steps to remove from the airwaves the main instrument of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s propaganda.
Although the broadcast remained on the air Saturday, silencing state television would be an enormous psychological blow to the Qaddafi forces as well as a boost to his opponents. The rebels challenging his rule have urged NATO for months to take out the channel, and both NATO and the rebels now face a looming deadline in September, when the United Nations resolution authorizing the airstrikes expires.
But the strike is also the latest reminder of how far NATO has stretched its United Nations mandate to protect civilians, removing a purely political tool that only directly threatened civilians perhaps by boring them. A campaign initially billed as the imposition of a “no fly zone” now consists mainly of providing air support for the rebels, who with NATO’s help have expanded from their base in the east to control the coastal city Misrata and the Western mountains while operating an underground resistance within Tripoli.
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