January 02, 2004

Cold Comfort

Am I supposed to be comforted by this thought?

ElBaradei indicated that his "gut feeling" was Libya was about three to seven years away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

Only three to seven years before a true lunatic acquired a nuclear device! And according to Mr. ElBaradei, Libya wasn't really trying all that hard:

"From the look of it, they were not close to a weapon, but we need to go and see it and discuss the details with them. We need to understand a lot of what was going on. We expect they will show us everything relevant to the [nuclear] programme. Whether they succeeded to a weapons programme, we will have to see, but as far as I was told they have only a rudimentary programme."

You just have to admire the tenacity of a nuclear arms inspector who forms his judgments on what he is told by those who only admit to cheating when they have been caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar:

Nearly three months after the successful operation, the Bush administration confirmed on Wednesday interception of an illegal shipment of thousands of parts of uranium-enrichment equipment bound for Libya. The seizure in early October sealed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's decision to dismantle his nuclear weapons program, a U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity.

Then again, it's not as though the UN had anything to do with Libya's decision to act moderately rational:

Britain's Defense Minister says Libya's pledge to give up its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs resulted at least partly from U.S. and British military action in Iraq. In an interview Sunday with Sky News, Geoffrey Hoon said Libya's decision shows that the "policy of engagement" and dialogue favored by British Prime Minister Tony Blair can work. But he said that policy has to be backed by the threat or use of force to be successful. Mr. Hoon said he does not think Libya's decision can be separated from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last March. He said the use of force in Iraq showed that the United States and Britain "mean business" when it comes to weapons issues. He said he hopes Libya and other countries have learned that lesson.

For those of you on the Angry Left that refuse to take the word of the Bushitler warmongers, perhaps you'll accept it from Muammar himself:

"I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid."

But you have to admire the Captain Renault-like faux innocence of the lead inspector:

ElBaradei said he already has gathered good information about where Libya bought supplies for its nuclear program. He said most countries from which materials came did not know about the black market sales, which he called "a big loophole" in export controls. "It's an eye opener to see how much material has been going from one country to the other, the extent of the black market network," he said.

Fortunately, there are still adults in charge here in the US, and in the UK and Australia (and in other places as well), that see the world for what it is without the pink-hued hinderance of illiberal utopian statist glasses. As Ronald Reagan said about the prouncements of good intentions by the enemy in his day, "Trust, but verify," and we shall have to do so now to keep the mongrels of the world on a very short leash as Ion Mihai Pacepa notes:

We need to keep a close eye on Khaddafi. I knew him as a liar and a master of deceit-as were all the dictators I dealt with. Soon after my defection, Khaddafi announced that he had destroyed Libya's facilities for producing chemical weapons that I had helped him build, and had just compromised to the U.S. In reality, Khaddafi staged a fire at the Rabta chemical complex, creating a cloud of black smoke by burning truckloads of tires and painting scorch marks on the buildings. He then built a second chemical-weapons facility hidden 100-feet underground in the hollowed-out Tarhunah Mountain, south of Tripoli. In 1992, the Central Intelligence Agency estimated that Libya had produced 100 tons of chemical-warfare agents, and that some of those materials were being used to fill aerial bombs....

After that, a "new" Khaddafi proclaimed that he was done with all terrorist operations against the United States. But two years later, Libya again masterminded the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 passengers on board and 11 people on the ground — the deadliest act of terrorism against the U.S. up to that time.

After Lockerbie yet a "new, new" Khaddafi proclaimed himself to the world. Calling the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. "horrible," he said the United States had every right to go after the perpetrators. "In the old days, they called us a rogue state," Khaddafi said in a speech on national television. "They were right in accusing us of that. In the old days, we had revolutionary behavior." He had put all this behind him, he said, and now opposed Islamic insurgents like al Qaeda.

Behind the scenes, however, Khaddafi seems still to be the same staunch anti-American sponsor of terror. According to the recent revelations, he has continued to the present day to quietly build one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons in the Middle East, has recently acquired centrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium, and has cooperated with North Korea to improve his missile arsenal. Preliminary U.S.-British visits to just ten of his production facilities show Libya's nuclear weapons program to have been far more advanced than Western intelligence suspected.

And so, we shall use the UN to offer the appearance of transnational progressive propriety and the patina of international multilateralism to the effort to disarm one dangerous lunatic. But the inability of the UN to even comprehend the extent of Libya's collection of WMD assets -- much less do anything about them -- stands as a stark warning for all those who would so readily yield our nation's security to the UN just so all the Kool-aid kids will like us.
But if anything is likely to drive the tranzi's wild about this positive development, it has to be that they weren't involved:

France congratulated Britain and America yesterday for persuading Libya to surrender its weapons of mass destruction and admitted it had been kept in the dark throughout the talks. Dominique de Villepin, the foreign minister, took his hat off to London and Washington's "exemplary" diplomatic efforts over the past few months that led to the Libyan leader Col Gaddafi's surprise announcement on Friday, calling it a victory for "the entire international community". But he was forced to admit in Le Figaro that France knew nothing of the nine months of secret negotiations. "We were not kept informed," M de Villepin said.

Perhaps when we are more certain of whether France is with us or against us in the War on Terrorism.

Posted by Charles Austin at January 2, 2004 07:04 PM
Comments

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Posted by: Anna at 09:46 AM