One, British special forces were active in the Libya War. This was pretty much assumed during the war, but it shows a couple things: one, the goal was regime change despite the UN limitation that said we were only protecting civilians; and two, NATO needed a ground army that it could coordinate with to make air power effective.
Few wanted boots on the ground. But reality intruded. Yet even Britain's effort was only a couple dozen special forces. And the total of all outside special forces was probably no more than a couple hundred according to the article. France and Qatar are mentioned. I assume Egypt had some involved, too. With our air power involved, I'd think we had someone but maybe not. Maybe it was CIA. Or maybe we used private contractors who were ex-special forces. Or maybe we really had nobody on the ground and relied on our allies.
I find it fascinating that we went around the UN ground rules. One can only imagine the press reaction had President George W. Bush done something like that.
Second, Khaddafi still had chemical weapons despite his voluntary abandonment of his nuclear and chemical programs:
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said inspectors who visited Libya this week found sulfur mustard and artillery shells "which they determined are chemical munitions," meaning the shells were not filled with chemicals, but were designed specifically to be loaded with chemical weapons.
The components were found at Ruwagha depot in southeastern Libya. Khaddafi had declared his chemical arsenal, which was scheduled to be completely destroyed by April 29, 2012. But civil war interrupted that. The new government will submit a new plan by that date to complete destruction.
So Khaddafi wanted to keep a core of capability. He'd need actual chemical weapons to put in the shells, of course. It probably wouldn't have been too difficult to hide some--or just make more with a decent chemist and some basic civilian equipment.
Whether you believe Khaddafi voluntarily gave up his chemical arsenal from fear or diplomacy, the retention of some capabilities shows that international agreements are flawed in trusting who you deal with. Already we found that North Korea hid one path to nuclear weapons despite the Clinton-era agreement to "end" their programs. We saw that Saddam hid raw materials, equipment, personnel, and the organizations to resume chemical weapons production. And now we see that Khaddafi didn't want to give up chemical weapons so much as he wanted to escape Western notice of his arsenal.
A secure regime, a defeated regime, and a scared (or enlightened) regime all reached different paths to retaining what they could despite the appearance of compliance.
But now, in both Iraq and Libya, we have hope that their governments will not have or use chemical weapons because they don't want or need them. Regime changes made that possible.
Meanwhile, North Korea's regime would like to resume talks over their nuke programs. Of course they would.
