The War in Libya
How the CIA Stripped Qaddafi of His Tripoli Divisions by the "Waqil Massiri" Maneuver
By Saturday, Aug. 20, when Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, NATO's Canadian commander in Libya, gave the signal for the advance on Tripoli, all the operation's working components had been in position for a week.
British, French, Jordanian and Qatari Special Operations units had been standing by in safe-houses around the city; weapons, ammunition, food and water had been cached at dozens of points close to the action, at the international airport at Ben Ghashir 34 kilometers south of the city center and around Tripoli port.
Electronic jamming blacked the entire capital shutting down the communications links between Qaddafi and his political, military and intelligence chiefs and supporters in the city, as well as the outside world.
Our military sources report the foreign contingents were made up of British SAS commandos, French 2REP (Groupe des commando parachutiste) - which is similar to the US Navy DELTA unit, as well as DINOP commandos; Jordan's Royal Special Forces - specialists in combat in built-up areas and capturing fortified installations like the Qaddafi compound in Tripoli, and the Qatari Special Forces, which were transferred from Benghazi where they had been guarding rebel leaders.
Rebel forces were carted in by sea and truck.
The hundreds ferried in by unmarked landing craft from Misrata and Benghazi, untrained in these maneuvers, were easy game for Qaddafi's forces which picked them off as they came ashore. But the two columns of rebels trucked in from Zawiya in the west and Garyan in the south encountered no resistance before or after they entered the city behind the vanguards of British and French special units.
All the roads to Tripoli and inside the city were clear. Two days later, Tuesday, Aug. 23, Muammar Qaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya fortress and residential compound was overrun amid scenes of jubilant celebratory gunfire.
Qaddafi missed a key trick
Col. Qaddafi had known what was afoot.
In the middle of last week, he and his aides got in touch with the US ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz and Gerry Feltman, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, who was standing by for developments, and proposed an immediate ceasefire.
But it was too late. The American diplomats turned him down.
Nevertheless, the Libyan ruler, in the last days of his 42 years in power, failed to defend his capital or even secure his last bastion in the city against the oncoming NATO-rebel assault.
Where were the 15,000 members of the six armored brigades tasked with defending Tripoli? Why did its defensive belt suddenly fold?
Intelligence sources reveal the answer to this enigma: The only Arab ruler who had for four decades prepared himself against the day that some Western or other foreign nation would turn around and try and topple him, Qaddafi nevertheless missed his most acute peril: a sellout by his generals to the Americans - or more precisely, the CIA. He made the same mistake as Iraq's Saddam Hussein in not taking into account that the Americans would bribe the officers commanding his army brigades in Tripoli to melt away in the face of the rebel forces led by a Western-Arab spearhead which entered his capital from the east and the south.
Elements of the 32nd tank brigade led by his son Khamis Qaddafi held out and tried to cut off the rebel advance but were outmaneuvered. Thursday night, Aug. 25, Qaddafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim claimed that the Khamis brigade had mounted a counter-attack on Tripoli. This is not confirmed. He spoke from the Syrian-based Al Orouba station.
Tripoli left unguarded by the same device as Baghdad in 2003
The operation was handled by the new CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus, architect of the Bush administration's 2006-2007 plan to lay out cold cash to buy the cooperation of Iraq's Sunni tribal chiefs for wiping out Al Qaida. The same tactic worked again this year for weaning Afghan Pashtun chiefs away from their support for the Taliban in 2010 and the first months of 2011.
Although our sources have not yet discovered which general close to Qaddafi US agents bought first from among the commanders in charge of defending Tripoli and his compound, they confirm that the method used replicated the tactic the CIA employed shortly before the US swooped down on Baghdad in April 2001.
Then, too, US-led troops encountered no resistance after the CIA bribed Gen. Waqil Massiri, a favorite of Saddam Hussein and his sons and popular among the commanders of the Republic Guards and other elite units.
Gen. Massiri moved freely in the highest Iraqi circles having married the daughter of Saddam's cousin Gen. Ali Majid ? better known as Chemical Ali, who was head of the southern front during the war.
Yet it was Waqil Massiri who betrayed Saddam and brokered the connection between the Americans and the heads of the Republican Guard's Al Medina, Hammurabi, Nida and Nebuchadnezzar divisions responsible for Baghdad's outer defenses. The US 3rd Marines Division and the 1st Marines Task Force were thus able to march into Baghdad without firing a shot.
Tripoli commanders scrambled for dollars
One of Qaddafi's top generals performed the same task in Tripoli as did Gen. Massiri in Baghdad.
"The result was stunning - to say the least," said a Western intelligence source close to the operation who demanded anonymity.
It also released a steady stream of data from Libyan field officers to the British and French Special Operations commanders from early August.
Each officer brought a friend, vying among themselves who would bring along the highest-ranking volunteers for deals with the Americans and win a larger reward for himself.
So eager were Tripoli-based officers to join the cash-for-surrender rush that the British and French commanders could hardly cope with the mountain of logistic detail necessitated by the deals.
In addition to money, the units deserting the defense of Tripoli were awarded US guarantees of immunity from NATO air and ground attacks; their commanders and troops were promised security and freedom from prosecution during and after the war and permission to return to their families after the conflict was over.
For their part, the Libyan commanders in Tripoli pledged to refrain from attacking NATO and rebel forces. They also undertook not to sabotage infrastructure such as bridges, road junctions, dams, and oil, gas, water and electricity facilities, and promised not to destroy, mine or booby-trap military camps, bases, defense lines or other military complexes.
Qaddafi vanishes but the fighting goes on
The Libyan officers and troops covered by the secret deal agreed to stand up at a pre-arranged signal from US agents, remove their uniforms, desert their posts, drop their weapons and go home.
Military and intelligence sources confirm that the military chiefs of Tripoli and their units kept to their side of the bargain so faithfully that some didn't bother to wait for the signal; they just got up and walked away when the advancing NATO and rebel forces came into view.
This CIA tactic would explain the mystery of Qaddafi's six vanishing brigades. It also accounts for the dearth of Libyan military casualties in hospitals. Not a single bridge or road leading to Tripoli was blown up. Although explosives had been planted at focal points on the orders of Qaddafi and his sons, no one detonated them. And Tripoli, capital of Libya and its ruler Muammar Qaddafi, were destined to fall with lightening speed due to internal betrayal.
The deposed ruler dropped out of sight, but pro-Qaddafi troops outside the capital quickly went into resistance mode, seizing pockets inside Tripoli and launching heavy bombardments in other parts of the country.
A Mutually Profitable NATO-GCC Trade
NATO May Fight Gulf Arab Wars, Starting with Syria
There is no disputing NATO's success led by London and Paris and helped by America - in wresting Libya from the hands of Muammar Qaddafi on behalf of the rebels fighting his regime.
But the Libyan war is far from over. To consolidate this success and bring stability to the war-torn country, the air strikes mandated by the UN albeit with unacknowledged ground support - will not suffice. Ground troops will have to be brought in.
This calls for a new Security Council resolution with a broader mandate, which is bound to be defeated by Russia and China. NATO can get around this. Since the Western allies, chiefly the UK and France, exceeded the UN mandate this week by putting boots on the ground for capturing Tripoli, they could make it kosher if the transitional Libyan government invited them to send in soldiers for upholding the peace and security of the capital.
That is why NATO is in such a hurry to get the National Transitional council's Mohammed Abdul Jalil transferred from Benghazi to Tripoli and established at the head of a provisional government.
Even after formal authorization for ground forces is in the bag, the UK and France don't have the financial or military resources for routing Qaddafi's army once and for all.
There is still a long way to go to reach this goal. Thursday, Aug. 25, two days after the rebels celebrated the capture of the Qaddafi stronghold of Bab al-Aziziya, his loyalists were fighting in parts of Tripoli and in control of substantial areas in Libya.
When the Libyan Donors Group got together in Doha, Qatar Wednesday, Aug. 24, their first priority was raising money. Libya's National Transitional Council NTC needs cash to rule.
They set a target of $2.5bn to cover the civil service payroll and the personnel, medication and equipment urgently needed by hospitals for treating the rising number of war casualties.
Britain and France are too broke for a drawn-out war effort
The US, the UK, Turkey, France, Italy and Qatar were listed formally as donors. But realistically, only Turkey and Qatar can afford to help. America can contribute little and Britain, France and Italy are all deep in economic crises with no funds to spare ? especially when the sum targeted will only cover the next ten days until September 1. After that, more bills will come due.
Britain, France and Italy are accordingly in no financial position to finish the job they started in Libya in the name of NATO. To bankroll the cost of the military strength required to sustain the Libyan project, the Western Alliance will have to turn to the oil-rich Gulf States, starting with Saudi Arabia.
Even in the unlikely eventuality that the US, France and Britain, can get their UN Security Council draft past the Russian and Chinese veto and unfreeze some of the Libyan assets in the West (estimated at about $130 billion), it will take time to lay hands on the money given the current state of international markets.
To make up the current payments shortfall in Tripoli, the Saudis and Gulf emirs will have to remit billions of dollars each month for an indeterminate period.
They will not be shy about sending the West a bill itemizing their military, strategic and diplomatic requirements as remuneration for financial services rendered.
Therefore, the change of power in Tripoli accomplished with remarkable speed this week has set the scene for expanded financial, military and intelligence cooperation between the Gulf Cooperation Council-GCC states and NATO.
The Saudis will expect NATO to fight their wars too
This outcome will please the Barack Obama administration.
In the six months of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad, Washington has been pushing hard for the Turks and Saudis to form an alliance for breaking the Iranian-Syrian bond.
Because Turkey is a member of NATO, its alliance with Saudi Arabia would also boost the Western defense organization. Cooperation between NATO and the Gulf emirates would also shift the weighty financial burdens from Washington to the oil-rich Arab governments.
On a personal level, President Barak Obama senses that his complex and fragile interaction with Saudi King Abdullah would be more tactfully managed in a broader strategic framework than on a one-on-one basis.
As Riyadh and Doha gear up for the Syrian crisis which us uppermost for them, the subject has not yet come up in the political discourse in Washington, Brussels, London or Paris but they won't be able to dodge the subject for much longer.
The Saudis are already throwing out broad hints, intelligence sources report, that they want to see the Turkish army moving into northern Syria under US and NATO protective air, missile and anti-missile cover, while a GCC expeditionary force including Saudi units would enter Syria from the south, through the Horan region and its capital Daraa, where the anti-Assad uprising began. They would also expect NATO to chip in should Jordan come under a retaliatory attack from Syria.
Harnessing NATO as a GCC military arm
A tradeoff is taking shape: Saudi Arabia will help NATO stabilize Libya and consolidate its influence in Tripoli with financial aid, in return for which the Western alliance is expected to align itself with the GCC in Syria and help out with any regional fallout from the anti-Assad operation
These developments pose tough questions:
1. London and Paris are already financially overstretched by the Libyan campaign. David Cameron's government went in mainly to gain control of Libyan oil; Nicolas Sarkozy had a score to settle with Qaddafi for refusing to come aboard French policy in Africa.
Are they financially up to more military activity in other parts of the Middle East and another expensive neo-imperialist expedition in Syria? It is hard to see them holding out even in Libya for another three months in the likely eventuality of the war continuing.
2. Are NATO members prepared to see their defense organization harnessed as the military operational arm of the Gulf Arabs in the Middle East? The first step was taken in Libya.
3. Will NATO, Britain and France agree to be drawn into serving the Saudi Arabia's Muslim Sunni lineup for challenging Iran-led Shiite domination of the Muslim world?
If NATO and its leading members can answer these questions in the affirmative, their organization will be ready for a key military role in the Arab Revolts of the year 2011.
Al Qaeda plays both sides of the Libyan divide
In their haste to get the rebel administration up and running in Tripoli, the West is also setting aside for now the question of the NTC leader's close association with the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood and the prominent Islamic scholar Sheikh Ali al-Salabi ? both of whom candidly advocate the institution of Shari law in Libya rather than a Western-style parliamentary constitution.
But NATO has at least defined the problem. The Western units leading the march on Tripoli Sunday, Aug. 21, chose a rebel force dominated by fighters from western Libya who dislike al Qaeda and kept the Benghazi increment small, calculating it would contain Al Qaeda elements from Damah east of the rebel capital, where they are concentrated.
But that is only a temporary remedy. NATO will not be able to keep Islamic extremists out of Tripoli because Abdul Jalil, its only realistic candidate for heading the post-Qaddafi regime, will insist on bringing along all the forces loyal to him.
Counterterrorism sources see al Qaeda playing both sides in the Libyan conflict for the highest gains: Abdul Jalil will be able to offer them a share in government so long as they maintain a low profile and don't provoke Western attention, while the deposed ruler Qaddafi can give them the chance of a shot in a terrorist campaign against his enemies in Libya and the European allies who encompassed his downfall.
Al Qaeda may decide to go with both, except that the decision rests not with its Libyan branch but with Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, head of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb - AQIM, who affirmed his group's solidarity with the Libyan rebels six months ago when NATO first launched its Libya campaign.
Al Qaeda sets its sights on Algeria too
AQIM leaders will be guided not just by internal Libyan considerations but the broader picture which would also include their chances of attaining power in next door Algeria.
Since Saturday, August 20, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been holding emergency consultations with his armed forces and intelligence chiefs on ways of preventing the spillover of the Libyan insurgency and of stopping Al Qaeda incursions into Algeria.
His forces have failed to stem the flow of weapons from the Libyan rebel center of Benghazi to AQIM which began five months ago. Western and Russian intelligence sources report AQIM is now the best-armed military power in the region, having accumulated an arsenal bigger than the regular armies of Chad, Niger and Mali.
Sunday 21.8, the day Western-backed rebel forces marched into Tripoli, Algeria's high command placed its ground units on the Libyan border on the highest alert and increased the number of flyovers and air reconnaissance operations.
This was in response to unusual movements of quasi-military 4 x 4 vehicles in the Bezai and Ouaker regions of southern Algerian in the vicinity of the Libyan border.
Qaddafi's downfall has in other words given AQIM a strong edge in the competition among rival Arab-Muslim groups and organizations vying for control of North Africa countries.
Qaddafi's ouster opens Tripoli's door to al Qaeda
Up until now, the contest in Tripoli was fought behind the scenes and Al Qaeda kept its head down. But its anti-Western doctrine and terrorist ways are unchanged.
Therefore, say intelligence and counterterrorism sources, by opening the door of Tripoli for an Al Qaeda-backed party to take power, London, Paris and NATO are repeating the mistake the US of the 1980s made in Afghanistan.
On December 27, 1979, 700 Soviet troops, including undercover KGB and GRU forces attired in Afghan uniforms, occupied key government, military and media buildings in Kabul before moving on to their primary target, the Tajbeg Presidential Palace. Once inside, Russian Special Forces killed the Afghan president Hafizullah Amin.
The US used this episode as a lever for mobilizing with the help of Saudi and Egyptian intelligence an army of thousands of jihad fighters to free Afghanistan from the Russian invaders. The CIA gave them funds and arms - and even developed special weapons systems for combating Red Army strike helicopters and tanks. And so Al Qaeda was born.
Fourteen years hence, in September, 2001, those same jihadi fighters attacked the Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
It is quite possible that when AQIM decides to hit London and Paris from handy launching pads in Libya - or possibly Algeria, David Cameron will no longer be prime minister or Nicolas Sarkozy President of France. But the fast-moving drama in Tripoli this week undoubtedly planted the seeds for Al Qaeda attacks on Britain and France.
The War in Libya Is Not over
Act One Ends, but Muammar Qaddafi Is Already Fighting Back
Not until Muammar Qaddafi is in custody or dead will the Libyan war be over.
Meanwhile, Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, prefer to insist that the deposed Libyan ruler is on the run and it is only a matter of time before he is captured.
Intelligence sources draw attention to the indications that the fall of Tripoli and the Qaddafi regime is only Act One of the still unfinished Libyan drama. Until the curtain comes down on Qaddafi in person, the Libyan war will not be finished.
1. Sources stand by their assessment that without a political accord promising the orderly transfer of power from Qaddafi to a power-sharing administration which includes his sons, the Libyan conflict will go on for months if not for years.
2. The rebel Transitional National Council therefore hesitates to move from Benghazi to Tripoli as long as it is not safe from the bombardment by pockets of Qaddafi's loyalists. Even after it does relocate to the capital, the odds on the flare-up of civil and tribal warfare are greater than the chances of the TNC being able to make good on its pledges to establish stable governing institutions and call Libya's first ever general election in eight months time.
Bab al-Aziziya ? Tripoli's Post-Qaddafi Green Zone
The NTC leader, Mohamed Abdul Jalil, will have to content himself for now with heading a mixed Western-Arab-Muslim administration propped up by foreigners ? the British, French, Jordanian and Qatari special forces who were the real conquerors of Tripoli and who caused Qaddafi to flee, as well as NATO and Turkey, whose special forces secured rebel headquarters in Benghazi while they were busy capturing Tripoli.
The new regime will start out with an army and police force at its disposal and most likely establish its seat in Qaddafi's old stronghold, the Bab al-Aziziya compound, which will assume the character of the US-Iraqi- controlled Green Zone of Baghdad.
To safeguard this area of some six square kilometers in the heart of Tripoli, NATO will need at least one armored division along with aerial surveillance units, special operations forces trained in urban combat, engineering forces and intelligence units ? including field intelligence and electronic surveillance.
Even then, the rest of Tripoli will not be safe from Qaddafi loyalists who know every nook and cranny of the city better than any NATO soldier.
Usually eager to go out into the streets and wave flags, the ordinary Libyan will soon discover that his country has reverted to a form of European colonial rule from which Libya was liberated just 59 years ago. In Qaddafi's hands the "War on Colonial Rule" will be an extremely potent tool for inciting popular counter-revolution.
Qaddafi still holds 40 percent of Libya's land area
He began wielding it in a broadcast Thursday night, Aug. 25, in which he called on the tribes across Libya to "fight foreign intervention."
3. If the deposed ruler is caught within a few days, which the British and French think is possible, his support system may founder with him. But not if the hunt drags out for long, say our military sources. In time, his success in vanishing with his family and some 300 top military and intelligence aides under the noses of the rebel, British and French forces controlling Tripoli, will become the stuff of popular folklore, affect Libya's stability and impress people in other Arab countries.
4. That success means that the ousted ruler has escaped with his entire ruling establishment. He therefore has the administrative machinery for continuing to rule large parts of Libya in the south and west. The forces stationed outside Tripoli during the city's fall remain in control of the region around his tribal hometown of Sirte east of Tripoli and the Fezzan area in southwest Libya, where most of the Libyan oilfields are located.
After his ouster, Qaddafi appears to control close to 40 percent of Libya's land area.
As for Tripoli, NATO and rebels will have to keep on fighting to maintain their grip there while his loyalists strike from the shadows. In other Tripolitanian towns, the rebels of the East will find they are not welcome. Qaddafi will meanwhile rally the tribal chiefs, first to secure their own territory and second to put up recruits to fight under his flag.
Qaddafi commands enough cash to fight on indefinitely
5. Several times in the past six months, sources referred to the vast sums of money Qaddafi has kept hoarded within his reach. The roughly $130 billion worth of assets frozen in Western countries are believed to be no more than 15 percent of his fortune of nearly a trillion dollars. Some of this money is buried in underground tunnels in the southern Libya desert, while the rest is invested in funds whose whereabouts are known only to Qaddafi?s son Saif al-Islam.
So the former Libyan ruler has enough money to keep the war going indefinitely without outside support. His circumstances are quite different from those of Al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden whose secret life in a Pakistan garrison city depending on the protection of Pakistani military intelligence-ISI - or Saddam Hussein who lived in an underground burrow. Unlike them, Qaddafi has the wherewithal for waging a bloody campaign from Libyan soil against NATO and whoever is in power in Tripoli.
WMD and the Arab Revolt
Qaddafi and Assad Both Have Chemical Weapons and Nerve Gas
The US Defense Department said Wednesday Aug. 24. that Libya's stockpile of chemical weapons is "secure" but that thousands of shoulder-launched missiles remain a cause for concern.
Asked if sites containing chemical weapons including over 10 tons of mustard gas were safe, Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said: "Yes."
He declined to offer more details, only saying that "clearly those are dangerous agents and weapons... we continue to monitor that.?
Those answers did not cover all the facts.
1. Official American and British reports of the past seven years determined that Muammar Qaddafi was left without a single gram of mustard gas or container of nerve gas after he surrendered his nuclear, chemical and biological weapon stocks in December 2003 and Libya joined the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2004.
But suddenly, in March, after the uprising to remove him from power began, OPCW reported that Libya had 11.25 tonnes of illicit mustard gas, although all 3,563 munitions ? such as bombs, shells and missiles ? able to deliver mustard gas had been destroyed. This apparent anomaly was not explained.
2. Military sources say that neither the Pentagon nor the OPCW appear to realize that while Qaddafi may indeed have destroyed all his illicit stocks in 2003, there was nothing to stop him going shopping for more on the black markets of the Middle East where these weapons are readily available, especially in Sudan and Sinai.
Libya's WMD arsenal on the loose?
American FOX News network reporters quoted Pentagon sources on Tuesday, Aug. 23 as telling a very different tale: No one, they said, can be sure who controls the Libyan government's weapons stockpiles, "a stew of deadly chemicals, raw nuclear material and some 30,000 shoulder-fired rockets that officials fear could fall into terrorists' hands in the chaos of Muammar al-Qaddafi's downfall or afterward."
One immediate worry, U.S. intelligence and military officials said, is that Qaddafi might use the weapons for a last stand.
3. That same day, Olli Heinonen, for 27 years International Atomic Energy Agency inspector and currently a senior Fellow at Harvard University?s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, gave this warning:
?Nuclear security concerns about Libya are still lingering. As a result of three decades of nuclear research and radioisotope production, Libya?s research center in Tajoura on the outskirts of Tripoli continues to stock large quantities of radioisotopes, radioactive wastes, and low-enriched uranium fuel.
"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. The situation at Tajoura today is unclear.?
Syria's Assad gives Qaddafi a broadcasting platform
The problem with Qaddafi?s WMD and his ability to make radioactive dirty bombs, sources point out, is not only that he could use them for terrorist attacks on NATO's Europe members or his enemies at home; he might transfer the materials and technology for building and detonating those bombs to Al Qaida in the Maghreb-AQIM as payment for carrying out terrorist attacks on Qaddafi's behalf.
His advanced anti-aircraft missiles could be another form of payment.
Gen. Carter Ham, head of the US Africa Command, estimated in April that Libya had some 20,000 shoulder-launched missiles. DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s military sources put the figure much higher, closer to 30,000. A thousand or two of these missiles handed over to AQIM would radically alter the strategic balance of the war on terror in Europe and the Middle East.
In Damascus, 2,190 kilometers east of Tripoli, Syrian President Bashar Assad is sure to be intently watching the events unfolding in Libya.
Wednesday, Aug. 24, he indicated for the first time where his sympathy was when he granted Qaddafi and his spokesman Moussa Ibrahim free use of the Al Orouba TV station as their platform for broadcasting messages and propaganda to the Libyan people. After Ibrahim warned the Libyan people that after overthrowing the regime, they now faced bloodshed and civil war, Qaddafi himself called on the tribes of Libya to fight against "foreign intervention."
Syria's Assad ? more even than Qaddafi ? will have no scruples about using WMD
The Syrian media followed up with an angry denunciation of the NATO assault on Libya, accusing the Western allies of being solely motivated by the urge to steal the Libyan people's oil and other natural resources.
Assad has clearly concluded that he is next in line for NATO's military intervention.Monday, Aug. 23, the day Qaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya fortress fell to Libyan Western-led rebels, Syria made sure to disclose that Damascus had "deployed along its border with Turkey more than 25 vehicles with very advanced anti-aircraft capabilities.?
Our military sources take this as a reference to 10 batteries of Pantsir-S1 (NATO-coded SA-22 Greyhound), a Russian-made combined short-to-medium range surface-to-air missile and artillery weapon system which is also capable of intercepting cruise missiles.
If Qaddafi may be presumed to be willing to wield chemical weapons to ensure his survival, this presumption would apply many times over to the far more brutal Syrian ruler should an invading NATO or Turkey force put him to flight from Damascus.
Syria is one of a handful of states in possession of large stocks of weaponized chemicals ready for delivery by artillery shells and bombs. Those stocks are estimated to amount to tons of chemical agents and thousands of weapons.
According to CIA reports to Congress, they range from the blister gases used in World War I - such as mustard gas - to advanced nerve agents such as sarin and possibly persistent nerve agents, such as VX gas.
And so the Middle East is approaching the real peril that Arab rulers beset by their own people and NATO may use weapons of mass destruction to defeat their foes.Qaddafi has no intention of ending his life on the gallows like Saddam Hussein and Assad will not scruple to use any means to avoid appearing on TV screens on a stretcher behind iron bars like Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.
