I'd love the rebels to win, but any rebel group that can't "liberate" an airfield, tank depot, or armory (esprecialy the armory) in the first day deserves to lose. They don't have to hold the place, just take what you can and wreck the rest.

Well, the president said we're in this until Gaddafi is out. So if the rebels are getting their asses kicked, and president wants to follow through, you can see where this is going.

On the plus side, we already have lots of equipment in the region.

Chris Hondros' final pictures were published. It looks like they're mainly just using AKs for actually fighting, which makes sense. There's also an FAL in one of the photos.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...97.html#267573

He was a brave man and he will not be forgotten.

Ghadaffi is bad but the rebels may not be better, there is no one rebel movememnt though. One leader says "we want peace and democracy" another says "we need sharia law" then anopther says "society needs to be more tribal."

Remember when the rebels took british soldiers hostage? Bad move.

When was that?

Were those rebels? I thought that was government forces.

I was rebels took a diploamat and his sas guards hostage for about a day. Early march i think.

I cant believe he went in a burning building during a gunfight.

Interesting, but not particularly useful. I'm not sure how much those weapons are representative of the broader rebel inventory. Most pics I've seen show the rebels armed with the same types of small arms as Qaddafi's forces - AKs, RPGs, PKs, etc.

Either way, the quality of small arms used by either side is not going to be the decisive factor in this conflict. It never is.

Without sounding like I'm supporting the rebels (because I am skeptical of this intervention), almost all rebel groups aren't particularly competent at conventional warfare. Even groups that receive outside training from the U.S. still manage to suck balls due to lack of discipline in the rank-and-file, and (most importantly) lack of popular support in the areas that they're trying to control. In Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance was barely able to hold onto their territory (let alone take Kabul) before we bombed the Taliban to help put them in power. And the KLA was pretty much down for the count before we chased Serbian forces out of Kosovo for them in '99.

I think you are right. It looks like a Voltran Ekol select fire, full/semi auto replica. The switch for the select fire is bunched up next to the takedown lever, and it also has the little bit of scrollwork on the frame in front of the trigger guard. They are made in turkey, and in russia and the like they are self defense guns that fire rubber bullets.