With President Barack Obama scheduled to speak to the nation tonight about the role the U.S. military is playing and will play in the military action in Libya, the White House national security and communications teams continue to scramble to get their stories straight.
For example, early last week it appeared that in the days running up to the announced NATO air strikes, White House national security briefers had initially informed ranking Republicans on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees that U.S. military personnel would have no active role in enforcing a "no fly zone" unless Congress was given advanced word, even though at that time U.S. military personnel were already engaged in the "no fly zone" effort.
"It was pretty fluid from hour to hour what role we'd be playing," says a White House communications staff source. "It may be that some Republicans and some Democrats up on the Hill weren't getting the proper information out of those briefings."
Further, and perhaps more troubling for the Obama Administration, White House sources confirm that in the run up to the decision to involve U.S. military personnel, President Obama was fully briefed that a large portion of the Libyan rebel forces most active in areas around such critical cities as Benghazi had ties to al Qaeda, particularly Al Qaeda in Iraq, the wing of the terrorist group that killed hundreds of U.S. troops in Iraq.
