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Commentators discuss the US and UK announcement that they do not rule out supplying weapons to Libyan rebels.

the arguments for providing arms to rebels:

"One reason is that weapons are probably going to pour in anyway, perhaps from Egyptian stockpiles or factories and perhaps paid for by Gulf Arab states (indeed, the Wall Street Journal has reported that this is already happening, though Egypt denies it). Another is that the West, or the United States, will have more influence with the rebels if it is arming them than if it doesn't - and thus may be better placed to shape events going forward. And, of course, the most straightforward reason for giving the rebels weapons is because they may not be able to protect themselves - let alone defeat Gaddafi's forces - without them. And given that Obama has said that Gaddafi must go, the United States has staked its prestige on the rebels' victory."

the West to finish what it started in the Arab world:

"Three months later the genie is not only out of the bottle, it has shattered the bottle. I said of Libya in an earlier column: Be ruthless or stay out. So now the West is in, be ruthless. Arm the resurgent rebels. Incapacitate Gaddafi. Do everything short of putting troops on the ground. Gaddafi, as President Obama has said, 'must leave'. So that Libya can be an Arab country that is imperfect but open. "

Also double standards involved in arming Libyan rebels:

"In Libya, we have to figure out whether to help rebels we do not know topple a terrible dictator we do not like, while at the same time we turn a blind eye to a monarch whom we do like in Bahrain, who has violently suppressed people we also like - Bahraini democrats - because these people we like have in their ranks people we don't like: pro-Iranian Shiite hard-liners. All the while in Saudi Arabia, leaders we like are telling us we never should have let go of the leader who was so disliked by his own people - Hosni Mubarak - and, while we would like to tell the Saudi leaders to take a hike on this subject, we can't because they have so much oil and money that we like. And this is a lot like our dilemma in Syria where a regime we don't like - and which probably killed the prime minister of Lebanon whom it disliked - could be toppled by people who say what we like, but we're not sure they all really believe what we like because among them could be Sunni fundamentalists, who, if they seize power, could suppress all those minorities in Syria whom they don't like."

about the unknown effects of arming rebels:

"I can't think of another uprising in the Arab world where the opposition asked the international community to arm them. Yes, in Libya Gaddafi threatened a massacre, we're all well aware of that. But arming rebels takes this to an entirely new level. And we simply do not have the kind of information about the rebels, as virtually everyone associated with this mission admits, to make informed decision about the consequences of that."

that rushing to back Libyan rebels is "foolhardy" at a time when more hints emerge of al-Qaeda links:

"Mrs Clinton has always shown she knows her history, and above all her movie history. Her unwritten text yesterday was that the follies of an enterprise like the infamous 'Charlie Wilson's War' - when the US backed the Taliban's Mujahideen predecessors in Afghanistan - were not for her or her boss President Obama. The same spirit of enlightened caution does not seem to have spread to Whitehall and the Elysee Place...
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"When fighting first erupted over a month ago, Gaddafi accused 'al-Qaeda and foreign elements' of being at play. Despite his bizarre speeches, and the psycho violence of his militias, his pronouncements may not have been as far off the dial as first appeared."