Not a huge concern, perhaps, but a concern nonetheless."Even after Qadhafi is out of power we will have to step up and lead to ensure U.S. national security interests are safeguarded. In particular, we must ensure that Qadhafi's stockpiles of advanced weapons, chemical weapons and explosives don't fall into the wrong hands," U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said in a prepared statement.
Prior to the beginning of fighting in February, the Qadhafi regime had made headway toward destroying its arsenal mustard blister agent as mandated by the Chemical Weapons Convention. The nation is still thought to hold about 9.5 metric tons of the material in a guarded facility in the desert. The regime also had yet to destroy a larger stockpile of chemical-weapon precursor materials.
[...]
"The stockpiles at this point appear to be well-guarded," an unidentified U.S. official told Reuters. "It's worth keeping in mind that Qadhafi did in fact destroy many of his most dangerous weapons, and that much of what remains is outdated or difficult to make operational."
Best we can do is cross our fingers...
What are we suppose to do when we don't have troops on the ground??
Best we can do is cross our fingers...
This is truly a case of
"The devil you know verse the devil you don't know"
Wait, he has WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!
Someone must have forgotten to tell the Republicans, we would have invaded 3 times already.
LOL they will claim this was Iraq's stockpile the GW was talking about
What are we suppose to do when we don't have troops on the ground??
The newspaper quoted Algerian military sources as saying French unmanned aerial vehicles and warplanes had been searching for several days for a group of Special Forces soldiers lost in the desert. France reportedly requested Algeria to provide its air space for French planes to ease the search, but the request was not satisfied, the paper said.
The lost French soldiers were later found and evacuated, it said.
Gaddifi supposedly destroyed his chemical weapon stockpiles years ago-that was a precondition to GWB easing relations with Libya.
I've heard the greater concern is the vast number of easy to use shoulder fired ground to air missles that he stockpiled. That truely is a terrorist's weapon of choice.
Evidence , intuition or best guess?These stockpiles were secured a long time ago by American operators. There's nothing to worry about.
Evidence , intuition or best guess?
I guess that the vast amount of chemical stockpiles that must be absolutely
"secured" are oil fields and assorted pipe lines and terminals...
common sense, it's not a secret that intelligence operators and special forces have been operating in Libya.
I do not suspect that there are enough boots on the ground to protect all the facilities.
Much will be determined on the attitudes of the locals.
Libyan WMD Materials Not Locked Down
Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011
The vestiges of the Libyan government's abandoned WMD programs -- some mustard blister agent and yellowcake uranium -- have yet to be secured by the rebel forces that swept into Tripoli this week and sent longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi into hiding, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday (see GSN, Aug. 23).
A primary concern in Washington is that cornered Libyan regime forces could attempt to use unconventional materials in a last-ditch effort to avoid defeat.
Qadhafi soldiers are still mounting attacks from portions of Tripoli and other Libyan cities that have yet to come under rebel control. Qadhafi also continues to elude capture and has urged his loyalsists to continue fighting.
Counterterrorism officials are also concerned that chaos from the fighting and a potential subsequent leadership vacuum in the country could allow extremists or black marketeers to acquire the blister agent.
When fighting broke out in February, the Tripoli government still held a reported 9.5 metric tons of deteriorating blister agent that it had been destroying as required by the Chemical Weapons Convention. Tripoli also possesses a larger inventory of chemical-weapon precursor materials. The regime years earlier eliminated thousands of empty aerial munitions that could have been used to disperse the toxic chemical in an air attack.
Regime forces continue to maintain hold of the chemical and nuclear materials, according to sources from the U.S. government and its partners. The question is whether they will look to employ or relocate the materials as their situation becomes more dire.
British Embassy spokesman Hetty Crist said the blister agent at the present time was "under guard in secure and remote locations" and could not readily be used in an attack.
The blister agent and in excess of 1,300 tons of precursor materials are located inside a concrete bunker several hundred miles to the south of Tripoli, an unidentified U.S. official said. The material is held in casks that in 2006 displayed indications of degrading, the official said.
Libya's sole nuclear reactor at Tajoura holds approximately 500 to 900 metric tons of unrefined yellowcake uranium. The Libyan government surrendered all of its nuclear weapons technology and weapon-grade uranium in a process that ended in 2009. The raw uranium is considered a lower security risk by U.S. officials as it would need large-scale process and enrichment in order to be used to power a bomb. Still, the material could be an attractive target to individuals or rogue nations with the wherewithal to build a nuclear explosive, AP reported.
The U.S. State Department has dispatched specialists to Libya to meet with opposition officials and other North African governments on continuing to adhere to international nonproliferation pacts and increasing the security at border crossings to stem the feared flow of arms out of Libya.
The Obama administration is taking steps to make certain that "the governing forces in Libya have full command and control of any WMD or any security assets that the state might have had," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Tuesday.
A number of U.S. officials are worried NATO might not have adequate personnel in Libya to ensure the sensitive substances are not left vulnerable if regime troops abandon their stations. The western alliance made the decision early on in the conflict not to deploy troops on the ground.
Global Green USA chemical weapons expert Paul Walker said he had no knowledge of any attempts to steal or transfer the chemical weapons materials. "Any major action such as trucks pulling up, or major troop movements, that would be known pretty quickly and action such as a NATO air strike could be taken fairly quickly," he said (Dozier/Birch, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 23).
Discussing the potential for desperate Qadhafi troops to mount an unconventional attack, British Foreign Secretary William Hague in an interview with the BBC said, "You can't anticipate everything the Qadhafi regime will do. They are a vicious regime. They are in their death throes. There are people still out there. That's why we can't rule out any of those things," the London Telegraph reported (Harding/Kirkup, LondonTelegraph, Aug. 23).
Even though Qadhafi gave up his nuclear weapons material and technology years ago, "nuclear security concerns still linger," according to one-time International Atomic Energy safeguards chief Olli Heinonen (see GSN, March 1).
Heinonen wrote in an Internet post that the Tajoura nuclear reactor still holds large amounts of low-enriched uranium, radioisotopes and radioactive waste -- materials that could be used to build a radiological "dirty bomb" that would use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material across a wide area, Reuters reported.
"While we can be thankful that the highly enriched uranium stocks are no longer in Libya, the remaining material in Tajoura could, if it ended up in the wrong hands, be used as ingredients for dirty bombs," he said.
"The situation at Tajoura today is unclear," the ex-IAEA official added.
Libyan opposition leaders on the Transitional National Council must not neglect the defenses of the radioactive sources at the reactor, he said. When a new government is in place, "it should assure the world that it accepts its responsibility and will take the necessary steps to secure these potentially dangerous radioactive sources," Heinonen wrote (Fredrik Dahl, Reuters, Aug. 24).
Meanwhile, Qadhafi forces launched multiple Scud missiles at the opposition-held city of Misrata on Tuesday, the Misrata rebel council said in a statement carried by al-Jazeera. The statement said the short-range ballistic missiles were launched from Qadhafi's home village of Sirte, according to the Los Angeles Times (Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 23).
OMFG! Nukes! and WMD's! And be afraid! Be very, very afraid!
Vote for Me, and I'll keep all those tingly feelings of Fear! juiced up! Outrage! Outrage! Outrage!
C'mon, Righties- you know you love it, live for it, get a little chubby just thinking about it...
Senior GOP Lawmaker Urges Obama to Secure Libyan Chemical Arms
Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011
A senior Republican lawmaker on Tuesday called on the White House to promptly dispatch specialized U.S. units to Libya in order to lock down a small stockpile of chemical warfare materials and other deadly weaponry, Politico reported (see GSN, Aug. 26).
Prior to the outbreak of fighting in February, the now-deposed regime of Muammar Qadhafi was thought to possess some 9.5 metric tons of aging mustard blister agent and a larger quantity of chemical weapons precursor materials. Also of concern is an arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles and shoulder-launched rockets capable of downing aircraft. Though opposition forces have overtaken Tripoli, fighting with Qadhafi regime holdouts continues in other locations.
Libya's chemical agents are held inside containers in a concrete bunker several hundred miles to the south of the capital city, according to late August reports that said Qadhafi troops continued to guard the materials (see GSN, Aug. 24).
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said he was worried about the proliferation potential of the approximately 1,300 tons of precursor materials. He urged the United States to "get our hands on [the material] in a hurry."
Elite U.S. units trained in spotting and disarming chemical weapons should be dispatched to the North African nation, Rogers said. President Obama, though, has pledged that no U.S. troops would be deployed to the country.
"Does it qualify for boots on the ground if you send a very small specialized team in to handle a weapons system?," Rogers asked. "We're doing a real disservice to our national security interests by not taking a more aggressive posture and saying we'll have that debate later, let's go get our hands on that stuff, render it safe."
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said the White House was cognizant of the security danger posed by the Libyan weapons and had taken steps to reduce the proliferation threat.
"We have been monitoring known missile and chemical agent storage facilities since the start of this conflict and will continue to do so," Vietor said in a statement to Politico.
"The U.S. and other international actors have emphasized to the (Libyan Transitional National Council) that they must effectively secure these materials, and will support their efforts to do so as needed. The TNC has assured us it will meet all of its international commitments," he said (Josh Gerstein, Politico, Sept. 6).
Rogers argued that Qadhafi could have hidden away some chemical and biological weapons despite the dictator's 2003 public renunciation of weapons of mass destruction, Bloomberg reported. "We just don't know. There has been sarin gas and other things," the lawmaker said.
In addition to developing mustard gas, the Qadhafi regime also studied the production of sarin nerve agent and accumulated precursor materials for the endeavor. However, Qadhafi's 2003 decision to end all WMD work effectively ended that pursuit. While Tripoli did at one point seek a nuclear weapons capability, international inspectors in the years since 2003 have found no evidence of a previously assumed low-level biological weapons program (Lakshmanan/Capaccio, Bloomberg, Sept. 7).
Records indicating the delivery in recent months of WMD protection gear to areas loyal to deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi have renewed worries that loyalist soldiers could be still prepared to use toxic warfare materials against opposition forces, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday (see GSN, Sept. 7).
(Sep. 8) - A column of rebel fighters approach a battlefield last week in the desert near Umm Qandil, Libya. Indications that forces loyal to ousted dictator Muammar Qadhafi have received shipments of WMD protection equipment in recent months have raised fears that the troops could seek to employ chemical warfare agents in battle (Eric Feferberg/Getty Images).
In the town of al-Ajelat, some 50 miles west of Tripoli, retreating Qadhafi soldiers left behind boxes filled with thousands of protective suits intended to defend against the effects of biological, chemical or nuclear agents. Also discovered in the abandoned military depot were hundreds of sizable gas containers, small glass vials containing liquids and other boxes with hazardous material warning labels.
Documents collected from an office indicate 2,000 antichemical suits and 2,000 gas masks were transported in late July from the camp to al-Jufrah -- a Qadhafi stronghold that has yet to submit to rebel fighters.
Another loyalist stronghold, the town of Sirte, between April and June was to receive 7,500 gas masks, a large amount of decontamination materials, 12 pounds of napalm and 20 flamethrowers, according to shipping records.
The Qadhafi government was understood at the outbreak of fighting in February to still possess 9.5 metric tons of aging mustard blister agent as well as a larger quantity of chemical-weapon precursor material. The chemical warfare materials were reportedly stored in large containers in a military bunker south of the capital.
However, the regime has destroyed thousands of munitions that could have been used to deliver the mustard agent and years ago closed three chemical warfare material manufacturing plants.
The U.S. Defense Department in late August said its surveillance showed the chemicals were still being guarded by Qadhafi soldiers. The international organization that monitors Tripoli's compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention has also said the mustard stockpile appears to be secure (see GSN, Aug. 26).
Nonetheless, opposition officials say they are worried Qadhafi soldiers could have obtained mustard agent and might be considering using it in some fashion in a desperate attempt to resist rebel soldiers.
"It hasn't happened yet, but it's not beyond Qadhafi," Libyan civilian stabilization unit member Mohammed Benrasali said.
The chemical threat contributes to opposition fighters' wariness in attacking remaining Qadhafi strongholds at Sirte and al-Jufrah.
U.S. officials, though, on Wednesday played down the possibility that Qadhafi soldiers were readying for a chemical attack or that they actually had access to chemical weapons. One unidentified official said intelligence analyses indicate the old regime's chemical warfare agents are not in danger.
Elite U.S. units trained in spotting and disarming chemical weapons should be dispatched to the North African nation, Rogers said.