Libyan WMDs

It seems I was right this morning to be worried about what the State Department was saying about the security of Libya's WMDs. And also typical of the Obama administration, they don't want to be the ones looking for those WMDs even though some are stored right outside Tripoli. They want NATO to find them. I wonder if this aversion has anything to do with the almost pathological aversion Obama has for anything related to being compared to George Bush?

"The State Department wants to wait for fighting to abate before moving throughout Libya to locate and secure fugitive leader Moammar Gadhafi's massive weapons stores, according to two U.S. officials. It's also stressing working through the nascent Libyan rebel government."

I do not understand this reasoning at all. The whole country is still in a state of upheaval and State Department wants to wait. Meanwhile these weapons are subject to being pilfered and sold on the black market. As the article states, the price on the black market for shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles has fallen and some think the Libyan arsenals have already been breached.

Would the American public object if several companies of US Marines were dispatched to secure the uranium yellowcake and the barrels of mustard gas? It would be nice for the Obama administration do something proactive and protective, but instead they are trying to pass the buck to NATO just like they did with the whole leadership thing for the overthrow of Gadhafi. Would the Libyan provisional government object? If the Libyans do object then we must call into question their reliability since Gadhafi had already turned over the United States much of its WMD capability.

"Libya doesn't have the means right now to turn this yellowcake into anything dangerous," State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said.

Obviously Ms. Nuland has never studied up on dirty bombs. Take the usual 155mm artillery shell IED, slap some yellowcake around it with duct tape, and detonate. You now have an explosion spreading enriched uranium particles where the wind blows. And people inhaling the stuff.

The mustard agent, she added, doesn't amount to "weapon-ready chemicals, (because) they can't be converted on the dot and they are in these massive drums inside heavy bunkers and we are able to monitor their security through our national technical means."

Technical means in this case means orbiting satellites, drones, and spy planes. Sorry Ms. Nuland, without boots on the ground to eyeball things how can you tell if those barrels of mustard gas are still in those bunkers. You can't. And I really don't want to think what an open barrel of mustard gas sloshing its contents out as it rolled through Tripoli either. But this is why Sec. of State Clinton and others are paid the big bucks. So what does Clinton have to say on this matter?

"We will look to them to ensure that Libya fulfills its treaty responsibilities, that it ensures that its weapons stockpiles do not threaten its neighbors or fall into the wrong hands, and that it takes a firm stand against violent extremism," Clinton said in a statement Thursday night.

But rest assured they are doing what they can. Why with the expenditure of $3million US teams have managed to destroy 30 SA-7s. The SA-7 is Vietnam vintage akin to the old US Redeye. And it would have been far cheaper to just set up a store, call it Crazy Barry's, and offer $5000 per SA-7 turned in. We would have gotten far more than a mere 30. To quote a certain movie, I have a bad feeling about this.