I didn't find this article very persuasive. There are some fairly obvious problems with Mr. Indyk's argument.
For instance, Indyk says that Libya's "nuclear programme barely existed" in 1999 when Libya supposedly offered to the Clinton Administration to shut down its WMD programs. But that statement does not accurately describe the three most striking and important aspects of this breakthrough: 1) that we had no idea that Libya had any nuclear weapons program at all when Gaddafi revealed it last December; and 2) that Libya's nuclear program was, in fact, very advanced; and 3) that Gaddafi revealed and offered to give up that secret and very advanced nuclear program only after our GIs killed Saddam's sons and dragged him from his hole.
Mr. Indyk was a Clinton Administration official. I don't think any unbiased observer believes that Gaddafi would have given up his nuclear weapons program if we had not gone to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Col. Gaddafi is a cold-blooded killer, and a certifiable nutcase. He is the guy who, when asked about the reports of cannibalism by his fellow Moslem, the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada, replied with unintended irony that he (Gaddafi) was not concerned with Amin's "internal affairs." The thought that Gaddafi could have soon been able to ship a nuclear device into New York or San Diego or Houston harbor in a cargo container should scare you to death.
Note, too, that along with his own nuclear program, Gaddafi gave up the whole Khan/Farooq nuclear smuggling network. That was a huge breakthrough, which certainly helped to make us (and the rest of the world) a lot safer.
During the Clinton Administration, Gaddafi was working hard to become a nuclear power, and was successfully keeping that effort a secret from the West. We know, for instance, that Libya's contacts with rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan go back at least to 1997.
But after what we did to Saddam, Gaddafi apparently (and correctly) calculated that as soon as his nuclear program became known, he would become target #1 for the U.S. military, and realized that would be a disaster. During the Clinton years, all the world knew that Saddam kept firing missiles at U.S. planes (among many other provocations) with very few repercussions. No wonder Gaddafi didn't fear us then. But when we took out Saddam all that changed.
There is a tendency, lately, to lump all WMDs together, as if they were all equivalent. But they are not. Chemical weapons are much less dangerous than biologicals, which, in turn, are much less dangerous than nuclear weapons.
In Iraq, chemical weapons were a significant concern because of Saddam's history of using them for genocide, and Iraq's geographic location, and the danger that Saddam would use them against his neighbors (again), or against us when we finally decided to cease putting up with his constant provocations. But chemical weapons in Libya are not nearly such a big deal, because those concerns do not apply. Consequently, Libya's offer to join the Chemical Weapons Convention was also not such a big deal.
Nukes are a much, much bigger deal, but Indyk treats them as if they were no different from chemical weapons. He says, "Libyan representatives offered to surrender WMD programmes more than four years ago," but when you read the rest of the article you find that the only WMD programs Gaddafi actually offered to give up back in 1999 were chemical weapons programs.
The Bush breakthrough wasn't that Gaddafi gave up nerve gas, it was that he gave up nukes. For Indyk to blur that distinction seems disingenuous.
-Dave
excelent rebuttal.
the fact is that the Clinton administration would have trumpeted this great agreement with libya, *just like the North Korea agreement* and would have been clueless that Libya was developing nukes.
Bush's war in Iraq convinced Gadhafi we were willing to topple Governments over this issue.
When the PSI interception caught him developing nukes,
he copped a plea.
He himself said he saw what happened to Saddam and didnt want to go down the same path.