There is now an authorised mandate to have a no fly zone over Libya ratified I believe by the United Nations, what is the significance of this? What is a no fly zone and should we be supporting it?

The significance of this is because the dictator running Libya, Gaddafi, is murdering his own people for protesting his regime, which has evolved into a full scale civil war. Those involved in this rebellion have control of the eastern area with their center of defense in the city of Benghazi, and the Libyan representatives of the UN as well as the citizens of Libya who are being bombarded by Gadaffi's forces have called for aid. The United Nations and individual leaders have decried Gaddafi's actions as barbaric. The No Fly Zone was proposed when Gadhafi started to bomb his own people and it was suspected that he was going to fly in mercenaries to help slaughter even more. The zone means that the Libyan air force is essentially grounded and that only planes on clear humanitarian missions will be allowed to fly in Libyan air space and should Gaddafi try to violate it in order to continue his attacks on his own people those planes will be shot down.

CNN Article explaining the NFZ

Wiki article on the UN resolution

Reuter's article on likelihood of military action by the UN

Personally, I think that what Gaddafi is doing is inexcusable and should NOT be allowed to continue. The Libyan people have called for the aid of the rest of the world to protect them from a mass murdering tyrant, how can we ignore those pleas for help and not violate everything that our countries stand for?

I will assume you supported the invasion of Iraq, too, because this is the exact same situation Saddam Hussein and Kurds and Sunnis were in.

I think the UN has a right to enforce a no fly zone. It's also inviting larger conflict in the area. I'm interested to see who get nuked first.

I did not support the invasion of Iraq because of the reason that we went in. The Gulf War in the 90s, yes, that was to help the Kuwaitis and the Iraqis and we should have finished it then. The recent war, we went in on a lie and I cannot support the government lying to the people like that.

France has led the invasion apparently. You know it has gotten bad when France is the first one to go in and try to stop it... French jokes aside though it honestly does not surprise me. I just hope it all goes smoothly and the UN can resolve this as fast as possible.

warmaker : it actually seems that the people who support the Iraq war do not support helping in Libya while those that are opposed to the Iraq war are in favor of helping in Libya.

I'm in support of getting this fighting stopped and in getting rid of another dictator. I see this as a general good. Who takes over and what they do with the power they gain is the next major battle.

geeogree : I agree completely.

I don't think this should be happening because I see it as selective action and hypocrisy based on the fact that Gaddafi has been propped up by Western governments all this time and Western governments have been happy to turn a blind eye to things like this in the past.