The Hill News

Retired Gen. James Jones, who served as President Obama’s national security adviser until late 2010, said Sunday that more information is needed about the Libyan rebels battling ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

“The strategic question is, what do you do when Gadhafi goes? Because we don't know exactly who the opposition is yet,” said Jones, who is also former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, speaking on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I know that there is tremendous effort going on in many capitals around the world to make sure that we do understand what that is,” he said. 

Jones, asked whether the anti-Gadhafi forces should be armed and trained, said that better information is needed to inform decisions about supporting the insurgency.

“If you start from the proposition that our reason for committing our forces, as Americans or as part of NATO, was basically to avoid a massacre of innocent civilians, which probably would have happened, and now we're! there, and now we have to ... follow the rest of the trail to identify these people, then decide whether that's meritorious or not in terms of training, organizing, equipping,” he said.

Jones said the endgame with the Libyan strongman is uncertain. Asked about how to get him out, Jones said, “I don't know the answer to that.”

Jones â€" the former commandant of the Marine Corps â€" said that Libya is not in the “vital interest” of the United States.

“It is more in the vital interest of Europeans when you consider the effects of massive immigration, the effects of terror, the effects of the oil market,” Jones said.

But Jones nonetheless noted that U.S. involvement stems from the country’s leading role in the NATO. 

“It is not a vital interest in the sense that it affects the ...  vital security of the nation, but we are part of an alliance, we are one of the global leaders, if not the global leader,” said Jones, who stepped! down as national security adviser in November.