Libya Gives up WMDs: LA Times Version

Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for pointing out this LA Times story about Libya's desire to give up its WMDs. In summary, it was a victory for Bush for the same reason Reagan won the Cold War: he was simply lucky to be in office when it happened.

According to the Times, Libya wanted to give up its program for years and tried to offer a deal to the Clinton administration, but Clinton refused because of Lockerbie. The article even quoted a European diplomat who thought that Libya was primarily driven by economics. "From my conversations with the Libyans, it appeared that they had determined that it was too expensive to develop nuclear weapons, both in specific terms and in terms of sanctions," the diplomat stated.

The LA Times could have saved itself the trouble of coming up with a list of bogus reasons if it went directly to the source - Kadhafi himself. As Bill Sammon noted in the Washington Times,

"I will do whatever the Americans want because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid," Mr. Gadhafi told Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, according to a Berlusconi spokesman who was quoted in yesterday's Telegraph of London.