How much time left?
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told us something we’d been waiting to hear Tuesday: “Gaddafi’s days are numbered,” he said of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi during a session with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at National Defense University.
But then we started flipping through the pages of our notebook, backwards through time until reeled the mind:
Gaddafi’s days are numbered.
— August 15, White House press secretary Jay Carney
He’s really running out of time.
— July 20, Carney
His days are numbered.
— July 13, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
The noose is tightening around him.
— June 29, President Obama
His days are numbered.
— June 20, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland
We do believe his days are numbered.
— June 20, Carney
His days are numbered.
— June 16, Nuland
We feel that Gaddafi’s days are numbered.
— June 14, State Department spokesman Mark Toner
His days are numbered.
— June 2, Carney
Time is up for the Gaddafi regime.
— May 12, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Muammar Gaddafi’s days are numbered.
— May 11, Carney
I actually do believe his days are numbered.
— April 28, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
His days are numbered.
— March 30, Carney
One of these days, they may be right.