With the bombs still going off, and no sign yet of Gaddafi winding up dead, in the hands of the West, or in the hands of the rebels, rumours are abounding that Nato believes the bombing campaign in Libya is near to the end.
According to the Express, diplomatic sources have insisted that the bombing campaign continues until Libya's "new authorities are able to assume responsibility for security nationwide".
That's going to be a long, long time. Anyone labouring under the illusion that we're not going to see another Afghanistan or Iraq, with a regime only staying in place because of Western involvement, is in need of a reality check.
We're going to be propping up Libya in one shape or another for a long time to come.
The Department for International Development (DFID) updates page on Libya will - if they continue to tell us of course - make for interesing reading over the next few years.
DFID Libya News Updates
We'll be sending humanitarian aid, whether it be to remove landmines and unexploded military ordnance, or food and medical supplies, for a long time. The money will keep on flowing.
The bombs, delivered at huge financial cost to Britain and at catastrophic humanitarian cost to many in Libya, may stop falling at some point, but the burden which Western politicians have imposed upon us by toppling Gaddafi will continue.
We played our part in getting rid of Gaddafi, tyrant he might have been, not that this fact worried us much when a sycophantic Blair and other Western politicians grinned and did business with him, but we've not a lot of idea what we're getting after him.
As for the rebels, well, Googling turns up many videos which suggest that they are not the peace loving, humane paragons of virtue we are led to believe.
A prediction, Nato and the others who insisted Libya will be quick, clean, in and out with a few laser guided bombs just to help the rebels, can quote me on this.
We'll prop up Libya for years. We'll have some kind of military involvement under some guise or other for years. We'll try and keep a semi sympathetic to Western interests regime in place for years, turning a blind eye to their excesses, and with our taxpayers picking up the mounting cost.
This whole Arab Spring, so enthusiastically backed by Western politicians, ends only in the above - or in an ever more determined Islam gaining dominance in countries where we've cleared the way for them and left a power vacuum for them to inherit.
The West is fast digging itself in to a situation of undesirable choices, none of which are in Western interests.
'Extreme' Islam, or eternal Western support, that's the situation we have played a major part in making for ourselves due to our wars in at least 3 countries on Earth so far.
How many more will we manage to get ourselves embroiled in before we wake up to the insanity of Labour and ConDems misplaced military escapades?
