Posted on 05/16/2006 10:15:26 AM PDT by Enchante
He also called Hosni Mubarak in a panic, convinced that Mr. Bush would attack Libya once the Taliban had been crushed in Afghanistan, according to a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo reported last month by Time.
.....
As U.S. and British troops began flooding into Kuwait, Col. Gadhafi grew agitated, diplomats said. Italian press accounts quote then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as saying that Col. Gadhafi had called him to say he feared he would be America's next target. "Tell them I will do whatever they want," said one diplomat, recounting the call. In early March 2003 just days before the start of the Iraq war, Saif and Musa Kusa, a top Libyan intelligence official, contacted the British to say that Col. Gadhafi wanted to "clear the air" about WMD programs in exchange for assurances that the U.S. would not try to topple his regime, according to several accounts.
Libyans close to the Gadhafi family told me that after Saddam Hussein's sons were killed in a shootout with U.S. soldiers in Mosul in July 2003, Safiya, Col. Gadhafi's wife, angrily demanded that he do more to ensure that Saif and her other sons would not share a similar fate. Then, in early October 2003, the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Italy interdicted the "BBC China," a German ship destined for Libya that the Americans had been tracking for nearly a year.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
(Do I have to add "sarc"? Yes, these days I have to add "sarc"... ;)
Although I wish Bush's second term had been more productive on the domestic front, I am confident that when the history books are written, Bush's handling of Terrorism will be seen as one of the great strategic successes of the modern world.
I still would like to see the Libya WMD story properly investigated and analyzed in relation to sources of uranium and the Joe Wilson Pflamegate nonsense. Libya had a lot of uranium from Niger, almost twice as much as could be accounted for by 'official' records as I recall. Yet, Joe Wilson has told the world that no smuggling of uranium could possibly have occurred from Niger.
The Bush administration has received virtually no credit for stopping the Libyan nuke program in its tracks - yet it is clear (to those who can see) that only the tough Bush admin. stance toward taking out Saddam made Qaddaffi realize it could be his turn next if he did not turn over a new leaf. Let's hope we are getting thorough verification that Libya truly had abandoned WMD programs and terrorism!!
All the Dem-bots and MSM clowns who have undermined the War on Terror should be forced to acknowlege that this crucial success would NEVER have occurred under a 'Rat administration.
This is one of the great successes in the War on Terror that the left wants us to forget about. It's too bad Iran's "leader" (I can't spell his name) doesn't have even that tiny little piece of common sense that Libya's leader had.
This may have been the method being used by Libya before it agreed last December to abandon its secret nuclear programme. According to the IAEA, there are 2,600 tonnes of refined uranium ore - "yellow cake" - in Libya.
However, less than 1,500 tonnes of it is accounted for in Niger records, even though Niger was Libya's main supplier.
Information gathered in 1999-2001 suggested that the uranium sold illicitly would be extracted from mines in Niger that had been abandoned as uneconomic by the two French-owned mining companies - Cominak and Somair, both of which are owned by the mining giant Cogema - operating in Niger.
"Mines can be abandoned by Cogema when they become unproductive. This doesn't mean that people near the mines can't keep on extracting," a senior European counter-proliferation official said.
My lib friend writes this:
"The national amnesia has us forgetting that Libya has been trying to
sue for peace since 1998, because it makes us feel better about the
horrific waste of life and treasure that is the Iraq disaster to say
that's why they're doing it."
What is your take on what he writes?
If Libya wanted peace -- was Bill Clinton foolish for ignoring them?
If Libya wanted peace -- was George Bush wise for taking them up on it?
I see no scenario in which this can be spun to make the Left seem superior to Republicans.
I'd say this is the typical lib idiocy. There is a vast world of difference between a terrorist state trying to "make peace" on its own terms (i.e., obtain exactly what it wants without having to give up much) and the abject surrender and WMD disarmament that Libya has undergone since Dec. 2003. Sure, Libya wanted to improve its economy and relations with the west, but would never have done anything more than give some verbal puffery in exchange. Only a moron will believe that Libya would have given up its nuke and other WMD programs without the factors cited in the WSJ article.
Nuts.
Shock and Awe.
addendum to post above.
He is typical of a new breed of western educated aand savy Arabs.
Wow, actual journalism.
Yes-- they live in a dreamland don't they?
I am currently having an email "chat" with lib friend regarding Iran's weapons program and how the administration is trying to con the people back into another war that we can ill afford at this time (friend's position, obviously).
My position is that under Clinton, NKorea was allowed to acquire the bomb. Post 9/11 and under Bush, there will be no bombs for Iran. Friend thinks war with Iran is imminent, but I believe it is possibly years away-- a mess for another administration to deal with. Which leaves me somewhat uneasy about the next POTUS election, to say the least.
Friend is less than forthcoming about exactly what threat a nuclear Iran poses to western civilization-- if any.
Notice the panic caused by the US attack on Saddam?
Ghadafi believed the game was up when we rolled into Iraq. That lends additional weight to my belief that Ghadafi's nuclear program was a pan-arab nuclear program involving Iraqi engineers and Saudi money. You will notice that information on Libya's nukes has been "zero" since his surrender. That in itself is peculiar.
Its also peculiar that no one wants to discuss the absolute failure of IAEA to find or stop Libya's program.
They also failed to account for Libya's yellowcake stockpiles either, for that matter.
But thats not surprising when you understand that IAEA depends entirely upon voluntary reporting for its information. It has no men on the ground monitoring yellowcake production; when you see articles talking about IAEA's "tight control" of Niger's uranium industry, that is just writer's hyperbole. IAEA has no men on the ground, and required no reporting from Niger at all. It depends upon voluntary reporting from yellowcake buyers.
So Libya was free to buy all it wanted, and unless it voluntarily reported it to the IAEA, they neither knew nor were particularly interested (according to IAEA, yellowcake is low-grade ore and they aren't interested in monitoring it until it has been upgraded).
That, of course, blows Wilson's story out of the water, when he claimed that uranium smuggling was impossible due to IAEA control. There was no control.
Of course, in a backward sense, Wilson is right. Since there isn't any IAEA control, there couldn't be any "smuggling", since it isn't smuggling if it isn't controlled in the first place.
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20031001-101113-2642r.htm
"Iran's "leader" (I can't spell his name)"
Just call him Amazing-Jihad!
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