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It may soon be over for the regime but it certainly isn't over yet, and Tripoli folk driving around making jokes about Gaddafi may be unwise

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Nor do Libyans or the watching world know what may come next. Do any of us ever learn from experience? Listening to George Osborne sounding cockily like Gordon ("no more boom and bust") Brown, I sometimes wonder.

OK, if you say so, though calls for help elsewhere in the Middle East were not all so actively received. Libya is close to Europe, Gaddafi has always been a loner and weirdo and Libya's oil helps keep Europe warm in normal times which may - just may - now return.

As Steele pointed out last week, when he interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev for the 20th Anniversary of the Moscow coup attempt (Jonathan 's largest shovel), Russia' s post-Soviet experience and his ex-satellite is also quite mixed.

In under a sunnier view of Libya 's prospects BHL is simply repeats the mistakes of the men despise, which he pretends to, low-lifes like George W. Bush and Tony Blair - although he left Blair yesterday' s exchange, because He noted that the British are on the right side this time, ie the French side.

Before posters point out that I supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, supported though without enthusiasm, as the least bad option in the winter 2002-3 unheroic, yes I did, although the crew was treated terribly, not least in unleashing need to know a wild-Sunni civil war driven by all sorts of Western progressives, it would be better secured.

But we 're all supposed to learn from experience. So I was cautious about the extent and scope of NATO 's targets in Libya in the sky and attempt to shape their future. If Mr. Fuzzy falls and one or the other succumbs to the obvious options - he is a martyr or a would-be defendants in the ICC in The Hague, I wonder? I suspect the latter - we'll be glad to reach NATO 's have stated goal.

We should also, in passing, that the Arab League, African Union and others are cross note: If you throw from the NATO mission creep into their territory. The proverbial "fog of war" can be used to confuse and cover all sorts of things, but once the fog burns that we have to see what 's really happening on the ground.

Why so? Because the US, overstretched and enfeebled by its own economic woes (and the rise of China), took a back seat and let the Brits and French do the work. And why not? It's their back yard and the policy was their idea. But we ran out of ammo and had to buy it from the US at a time when our own economies are under severe strain.

Be that as it may, students of the eternal battle between France and les Anglo-Saxes might want to savour Justin Webb's last question, which suggesed the affair showed US justice in a good light after all.