This is good news on the WMD front:
Libya began dismantling its poison gas programme after signing the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2004 but the operation ground to a halt in 2011 when the NATO-backed uprising against Gaddafi broke out.
Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdelaziz told reporters that U.S., Canadian and German experts had helped destroy the chemical weapons stockpile in a region of southern Libya.
I recall concerns when the Libya War erupted that there were still loose chemical weapons in Libya.
And the Libyans made it clear that this completes the destruction of known chemical weapons. I'm sure we'll be keeping an eye on Libya in case some are stashed in the vast southern deserts.
I will say--with my protest on record that the deal buys time for Assad to defeat the rebels--that we at least made a good call on getting Syria to ship their chemicals out of Syria, which can be done more quickly than destroying them within Syria, as the Libya operation shows.
Now the question in Syria is whether the known chemicals are all the chemicals. I still wonder if Saddam sent chemical weapons and associated equipment to Syria before, during, and immediately after the invasion in 2003.
