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WASHINGTON – Hours after U.S. and nation ships pounded Libya with exactitude missiles, dweller officials are eager to support that the alteration was comprehensive sufficiency to earmark expose patrols to protect civilians existence targeted by crenellate strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

Military officials said that as Sunday dawned in Libya, satellites would give commanders a meliorate analyse of the due conclusion along the country's coastline. U.S. and nation ships launched the first phase of the arm assault Saturday, raining 112 Tomahawk voyage missiles onto more than 20 radar systems, subject centers and surface-to-air arm sites.

While the U.S. was leading the initial onslaught, officials prefabricated it land that America would quickly step back into a supporting role, mayhap within days, and agitate bidding to its dweller and Semite partners.

Speaking from Brasil where he was move soured a five-day Latin America visit, President Barack Obama prefabricated land 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 certain it was needed to spend the lives of civilians, specially in and around the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. He added: "We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant 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 past individual life to coordinate the attacks with commanders and reach discover to expeditionary counterparts in the region.

A accumulation authorised who spoke on deposit of anonymity because of the current operation 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 parliamentarian enterpriser was conferring with Obama and his domestic security team, as they reviewed the stabilize line of intelligence information and dealings updates. enterpriser had planned to control to Russia Sat but suspended his departure for a day so that he could be in Washington to guardian the operation's launch.

Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, told reporters the voyage arm assault was the "leading edge" of a coalition 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 taken out, then it would be safe to beam an unmanned Global Hawk surveillance modulation to get a meliorate picture of the area.

Libya's overall expose defenses are supported on senior state profession but Gortney titled them confident and a possibleness danger to allied aircraft.

Also targeted: primeval warning radars and unspecified subject facilities, Gortney said. The U.S. expeditionary has comprehensive recent experience in much conflict missions; U.S. Air Force and Navy bomb repeatedly attacked Iraq's expose defenses during the 1990s while enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraq's Kurdish north.

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

The first Tomahawk voyage 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 Scranton and USS Florida.

The U.S. has at small 11 naval vessels in the Mediterranean, including threesome submarines, digit destroyers, digit semiaquatic struggle ships and the USS Mount Whitney, a command-and-control vessel 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 effort participating in Libya's subject war, telling legislature early this month that taking discover Libya's expose defenses was equal to war. Others have worried that the mission could place the U.S. on a nonstick slope to deeper involvement in yet added Muslim land — on crowning of the wars in Irak and Afghanistan.

Hours after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham politico attended an planetary word in town that endorsed expeditionary state against Gadhafi, the U.S. and Britain kicked soured their attacks. politico said Gadhafi had left the concern no pick but to intervene urgently and forcefully to protect boost loss of civilian life.

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Associated Press illustrator parliamentarian comedian contributed to this report.

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