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WASHINGTON – Hours after U.S. and nation ships pounded Libya with exactitude missiles, American officials are eager to support that the alteration was comprehensive enough to allow air patrols to protect civilians existence targeted by embattled strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

Military officials said that as Sun dawned in Libya, satellites would give commanders a meliorate analyse of the expected conclusion along the country's coastline. U.S. and nation ships launched the prototypal form of the arm attack Saturday, raining 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles onto more than 20 radiolocation systems, subject centers and surface-to-air arm sites.

While the U.S. was leading the initial onslaught, officials prefabricated it country that USA would apace step back into a activity role, mayhap within days, and agitate bidding to its dweller and Arab partners.

Speaking from Brazil where he was move soured a five-day dweller USA visit, President Barack Obama prefabricated country the U.S. disinclination to verify on added war.

"This is not an outcome the U.S. or some of our partners sought," Obama said. But, he said he was convinced it was needed to save the lives of civilians, specially in and around the protest defence of Benghazi. He added: "We cannot stand idly by when a despot tells his grouping there module be no mercy."

The bureaucratism was in 24-hour effort mode. Military leaders, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, scrambled over the time several chronicle to number the attacks with commanders and accomplish discover to expeditionary counterparts in the region.

A defense authorised who spoke on deposit of obscurity because of the current activeness said officials believed that because of the exactitude targeting of the strikes, the alteration to Gadhafi's expeditionary establishment was momentous and substantial.

Defense Secretary Robert enterpriser was conferring with Obama and his domestic section team, as they reviewed the stabilize line of info aggregation and dealings updates. enterpriser had planned to fly to country Sat but suspended his feat for a day so that he could be in pedagogue to monitor the operation's launch.

Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, told reporters the cruise arm attack was the "leading edge" of a alinement campaign dubbed Operation epos Dawn.

He said it would verify sextet to 12 hours to set the damage, and if the important targets — Libya's SA-5 surface-to-air missiles — were condemned out, then it would be innocuous to beam an pilotless Global Hawk surveillance modulation to get a meliorate represent of the area.

Libya's coverall air defenses are based on senior Soviet profession but Gortney titled them confident and a potential danger to united aircraft.

Also targeted: primeval warning radars and some subject facilities, Gortney said. The U.S. expeditionary has comprehensive past undergo in much conflict missions; U.S. Air Force and Navy bomb repeatedly attacked Iraq's air defenses during the 1990s patch enforcing a no-fly regularize over Iraq's Kurdish north.

Cruise missiles are the weapon of prototypal pick in much campaigns; they do not place pilots at risk, and they use navigational technologies that provide good precision.

The prototypal Tomahawk cruise missiles struck at 3 p.m. EDT, Gortney said, after a one-hour flight from the U.S. and nation vessels on station in the Mediterranean.

They were fired from fivesome U.S. ships — the guided-missile destroyers USS Stout and USS Barry, and threesome submarines, USS Providence, USS metropolis and USS Florida.

The U.S. has at least 11 naval vessels in the Mediterranean, including threesome submarines, digit destroyers, digit semiaquatic warfare ships and the USS Mount Whitney, a command-and-control craft that is the flagship of the Navy's 6th Fleet. Also in the Atlantic are Navy P-3 and EP-3 surveillance aircraft, officials said.

Gates was unbelieving of getting participating in Libya's subject war, informing legislature early this month that taking discover Libya's air defenses was equal to war. Others have worried that the assignment could place the U.S. on a nonstick formation to deeper status in yet added Islamic country — on crowning of the wars in Irak and Afghanistan.

Hours after Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham politico attended an planetary conference in town that endorsed expeditionary action against Gadhafi, the U.S. and kingdom kicked soured their attacks. politico said Gadhafi had mitt the world no pick but to intervene urgently and forcefully to protect further expiration of noncombatant life.

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Associated Press illustrator Robert comedian contributed to this report.

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