Stirring, no? Moving, right? Well, get prepared to be moved. . . all the way from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to 300 5th Avenue SW.

That’s right, in order to comunicate that the US role in the coalition strikes against Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan government forces is not in any way a war and he double-dog dares anyone who says it is, President Obama is taking his show on the road. . . or up the road. . . delivering this speech not from the Oval Office, not before a joint session of Congress, but to a room of “mid-career military officers at the National Defense University in Washington.”

So, we know that there will be military action to enforce the resolution. But while what Obama listed as demands appears to go mostly within the lines of the text of Resolution 1973 – humanitarian supplies are referenced, as well as attacks against civilians beyond Benghazi – I still don’t know what happens if all of that is fulfilled.

Speaking form the east room of the White House this hour, Barack Obama took the opportunity to articulate (or at least give a US government face to) the resolution passed yesterday by the UN Security Council authorizing intervention in the Libyan conflict.

Claiming his government “takes great interest in protecting civilians,” Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa has just declared an “an immediate stop to all military operations.”

The announcement was made within the last half-hour, and shortly after statements by both French and British leaders that airstrikes on Libya would begin “within hours.” The airstrikes were authorized by last night’s vote in the United Nations Security Council.

We watched as one man everyone knew to be brutally crazy stole his country’s riches and put them aside for the moment when he would need them. Having watched him do so, we are now limited in the means by which we can pressure him.

The US is very reluctant to engage in a military mission in Libya, which would add to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the covert operations in Pakistan and Yemen and probably half a dozen more I’m not counting.

Anytime someone in Washington puts the brakes on empire, it’s worth noting

Libyans who planned to protest in Tripoli after Friday prayers were met with gunfire as they left their mosques.

News from inside Libya remains chaotic. Gaddafi has phoned in a speech to Libyan television that repeated much of his earlier rant but added: “It is obvious now that this issue is run by al-Qaeda.”

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.”