During a press conference on Tuesday in Brussels, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu assured that there will be “no NATO troops on the ground in the future.” Only Lungescu left herself some wiggle room. Should the United Nations or Libyan revolutionaries request it, NATO “is willing to help in a supporting role,” she said, without elaborating.

That’s consistent with NATO’s attitude from the start of the war. Adm. James Stavridis, NATO’s military chief, testified to Congress in March that the “possibility of a stabilization regime exists” after Moammar Gadhafi’s downfall.

Still, the rebels have offered their own far-fetched claims, like mass rapes by loyalist troops issued tablets of Viagra.  Although the rebels have not offered credible proof, that claim is nonetheless the basis of an investigation by the International Criminal Court.

And there is the mantra, with racist overtones, that the Gadhafi government is using African mercenaries, which rebels repeat as fact over and over.  There have been no confirmed cases of that; supposedly there are many African prisoners of war being held in Benghazi, but conveniently journalists are not allowed to see them.  There are, however, African guest workers, poorly paid migrant labor, many of whom, unarmed, have been labeled mercenaries.

So stories about African mercenaries are a racist mantra?  If that’s the case, then point a finger at media outlets like the New York Times.  While the warnings about mass rapes and mercenaries fueled the supporters of the NATO bombing, few reporters have detailed — mostly notably Patrick Cockburn in the Independent – that there was never solid evidence to support them.  They were nonetheless a regular part of the media coverage of the war, as I pointed out in a recent piece in Extra!…