Judy, Judy, Judy! Undeterred by her 85 days in jail, the neo-crazy media sycophant is at it again, this time in the Wall Street Journal.
According to Judith Miller:
“When Libya dramatically declared on Dec. 19, 2003, that it was abandoning its rogue ways, President Bush and other senior officials praised Libya and Moammar al-Gadhafi, the surviving dean of Arab revolutionary leaders, as a model that other rogue states might follow.
“In fact, the still largely secret talks that helped prompt Libya’s decision, and the joint American-British dismantlement of its weapons programs in the first four months of 2004, remain the administration’s sole undeniable – if largely unheralded – intelligence and nonproliferation success.”
Unfortunately for Judy and Bush-Cheney success stories, Time has just revealed it’s been talking to Gaddafi, his son, Seif al Islam, and various Libyan officials since – perhaps even before – the Bush-Cheney inaugural.
“As early as February of 2001 [Muammar] Gaddafi told Time that he was dramatically shifting Libya’s strategic orientation, seeking normal relations with the West and an alignment with Africa rather than the Middle East.
“While Gaddafi indicates that geopolitical shifts like the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Palestinian decision to negotiate with Israel and the increasing spread of Islamic extremism forced him to change course, he believes that it was his atomic bomb program that enabled him to deal with the West from a position of strength.
“Despite President Bush’s avowed goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East, Gaddafi’s hold on power may be stronger than it was two decades ago, when President Reagan denounced him as a ‘mad dog’ who threatened global security with a ‘reign of terror.’ In 1986, in response to a terrorist bombing in Berlin that killed two American servicemen, U.S. aircraft bombed targets, including Gaddafi’s home, in what amounted to an aerial assassination attempt.”
About 100 civilians were reportedly killed in the assassination attempt, including Gadhafi’s daughter. Although warned of the attack the night before, Muammar insisted on sleeping in the Presidential palace against the opinion of his advisors. Gadhafi was apparently convinced that the Americans would never strike a civilian target.
According to TIME, actual negotiations began shortly after Libya formally accepted “responsibility” – but not guilt – for the downing of a PanAm flight over Lockerbie, Scotland.
“As those negotiations neared their conclusion with a partial lifting of sanctions, Seif al Islam secretly met with three MI6 officers in a hotel room in London’s posh Mayfair district late one Sunday afternoon in March 2003.
“Seif al Islam opened the discussion by saying that Libya proposed a strategic dialogue on mutual concerns starting with extremism. He recalls their surprise when he quickly agreed that Libya could begin by making a sincere effort to address WMD concerns.”
According to Time, in a face-to-face meeting in Tripoli with top MI6 and CIA officials in September 2003, Muammar Gaddafi agreed “in principle to throw its WMD projects wide open to an MI6-CIA team of technical experts.”
And how does neo-crazy sycophant Judith spin all this?
Well, she says Gadhafi’s decision to abandon his nuclear programs effectively came in September, 2002, and resulted from Bush’s increasingly obvious – except to most Americans – intention to invade Iraq.
In particular, Miller cites “stories sourced to senior Israeli officials [which] accused Iraq of having sent nuclear physicists to Libya to work on a joint weapons program.” She also “reports” that about that time, Muammar Gadhafi called Silvio Berlusconi – then Prime Minister of Italy – saying he feared he would be Bush’s next target after he finished with Iraq. According to Miller, according to one typically-unnamed “diplomat,” Gadhafi told Berlusconi to “tell them I will do whatever they want.”
Miller also reports that in early March, 2003, “Saif and Musa Jusa, a top Libyan intelligence official, contacted the British to say that Col. Gadhafi wanted to ‘clear the air’ about WMD programs in exchange for assurance that the US would not try to topple his regime.”
Miller claims that “Saif told me that the decision to abandon WMD ‘was my own initiative,’ an astonishing assertion that no diplomat believes.”
But even neo-crazy media sycophant Miller reports that:
“While he rejected the administration’s argument that his father had been frightened into abandoning WMD by the invasion of Iraq, the timing of Libya’s overture to the British and Americans was affected by the invasion.
“‘I saw WMD as a card in our hands,’ he [Seif] said. The invasion of Iraq was ‘the best time to play that card.'”
