With fresh arms and a renewed vigor from an increasingly intense NATO bombing campaign, anti-government rebels in Libya have made tangible gains over the past few days. The rebels captured the airport in Misurata, and sent Gadhafi loyalists fleeing for cover. The airport served as a base and storage facility for Gadhafi’s forces and their heavy weapons. Rebels say they’ve seized weapons and ammunition from the airport. Rebels are now advancing west from Misurata to Ziltan, which is closer to Tripoli. Fighting has subsided on the eastern front around Ajdabiya as well. Gadhafi has gone underground, not even appearing at his son’s funeral, which has fed the rumor mill.

Three weeks ago many of us listened to this voice, a sudden cry from inside Benghazi, calling out to the world with the message that Libyan rebels were fighting for their freedom. That voice was of Mohammed Nabbous and his livestreams became Libya Alhurra (Libya Freedom).

At the same time Obama is publicly supporting the King of Bahrain, there’s word the White House is considering military actions in support of Libyan revolutionaries – but there’s a problem. The revolutionaries don’t want it.

Claiming he hasn’t even started to order the use of bullets yet, reading a list of acts from his “Green Book” that will result in a death sentence, and telling parents to get their children “away from these gangs,” Muammar Gaddafi, still Libya’s nominal leader, has spoken on Libyan State TV. Defiant – and irrational – he blames America and the UK for the current uprising and asks if Libyans want to be “like Somalia.” Saying that this is a war against the US – “do you want to be occupied like Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan … do you want to be like Fallujah?” — he added a very chilling comment: “The unity of China was more important than Tianamen Square.”

Washington’s response to the massacre and uprising in Libya is to add new twitter feeds. Activists in Libya have apparently taken over Benghazi and are not in the streets of Tripoli.