The 'pump' overrides all reservations about a 'third US war'....

"... The administration is also deeply concerned that the longer the upheaval persists, the greater the danger that al Qaida or other extremists could find a new safe haven in Libya .."One of our biggest concerns is Libya descending into chaos and becoming a giant Somalia," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified Wednesday before Kerry's panel...

The fighting in Brega, coupled with rising U.S. demand, drove oil prices to settle above $100 for the first time since September 2008.The price run-up is being felt at the pumps — a potential brake on the fragile U.S. economic recovery that could hurt Obama politically. "Here's the downside. Americans are spending 10 percent of disposable income (on gasoline) at $87 a barrel . . . . What this does is create an economic problem and a political problem," said Kevin Book, managing director of the research firm ClearView Energy Partners in Washington....

The Pentagon appears especially reluctant to take on a third conflict in the Muslim world as it strives to bring its budget under control and avoid further stressing U.S. forces badly strained by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.... A no-fly zone also risks dragging the U.S. deeper into what has become a civil war, "because that necessarily means . . . taking sides," said a senior U.S. official, who requested anonymity to speak more freely....

U.S. military intervention carries other serious consequences. They include major setbacks to Obama's efforts to repair the damage to relations with Russia, China and the Arab world dealt by the Iraq war and other policies under the former Bush administration....

The U.S. and its NATO allies have acted without U.N. authorization before. They imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect minority Kurds after the 1991 Gulf War, and staged a 1999 air campaign to halt Serbian onslaughts against minority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.U.S. officials worry that U.S. intervention could fuel anti-American anger and bolster Islamic extremists among Muslim populations seething over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, abuse of detainees, U.S. support for Israel and decades of U.S. backing of the region's autocrats...

Amr Moussa suggested that it (the League) could enforce a no-fly zone, raising the possibility that Arab militaries could take the lead in an operation in which the U.S. would provide critical, but quiet, support. "Even if an Egypt or Morocco send only a few planes, this would be hugely important in terms of the political legitimacy of the operation," said David Cortright, director of policy studies at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies."