Qaddafi, Ahmadinejad and the Bomb

Imagine for a moment that Libya's Qaddafi had an atomic weapon at his disposal. Faced with his current predicament, would Qaddafi choose to launch the weapon at his domestic enemies, Israel or Europe? Under the present circumstances, I believe that there would be an excellent chance that he would let a nuclear tipped missile fly.

Fortunately for the world, Qaddafi was defanged. In an excellent article entitled "In U.S.-Libya Nuclear Deal, a Qaddafi Threat Faded Away" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/world/middleeast/02arms.html?hp), David Sanger of The New York Times recently wrote:

"Senior administration officials and Pentagon planners, as they discuss sanctions and a possible no-flight zone to neutralize the Libyan Air Force, say that the 2003 deal removed Colonel Qaddafi’s biggest trump card: the threat of using a nuclear weapon, or even just selling nuclear material or technology, if he believed it was the only way to save his 42-year rule. While Colonel Qaddafi retains a stockpile of mustard gas, it is not clear he has any effective way to deploy it.

'Imagine the possible nightmare if we had failed to remove the Libyan nuclear weapons program and their longer-range missile force,' said Robert Joseph, who played a central role in organizing the effort, in the months just after the invasion of Iraq.

'You can’t know for sure how far the Libyan program would have progressed in the last eight years,' said Mr. Joseph, who left the administration of President George W. Bush a few years after the Libya events, partly because he believed it had gone soft on nuclear rogue states. But given Colonel Qaddafi’s recent threats, he said on Monday, 'there is no question he would have used whatever he felt necessary to stay in power.'”

Query: Is Iran's Ahmadinejad any less crazy than Qaddafi? Although their symptoms might be different, both men are dangerously psychotic.

Now consider Roger Cohen's April 8, 2009 New York Times op-ed "Israel Cries Wolf" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/opinion/09iht-edcohen.html), in which Cohen wrote:

"What’s critical right now is that Obama view Netanyahu’s fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran, as he did Wednesday by saying America would join nuclear talks for the first time."

Cohen's prattle was consistent with the views of other left-leaning commentators: If Israel has nuclear weapons, why shouldn't Iran be given the same rights, which might force Israel to make peace?

As we watch Qaddafi in his death throes, the need to control Iranian nuclear ambitions has never been clearer.