Libya's WMD Inspections

Remember back earlier this year when we thought Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction"?

War supporters were all in a tizzy ridiculing the idea that the UN inspectors could give us any reliable assurance on the WMDs. Remember how they were all making fun of the idea of the inspectors driving around in the desert in a country the size of California?

Just for grins, I looked up the areas of Iraq, California and Libya in the Encyclopedia Britannica Online (okay, I could have used something cooler like the CIA area reports but, hey, I'm feeling lazy!) and here's what they had:

Iraq: 167,975 sq. mi.
California: 158,706 sq. mi.
Libya: 678,400 sq. mi.

Now by my calculation, that makes Libya more than four times as large as Iraq. But the Bush Administration seems to think that inspections will work fine there, in a country four times as large as Iraq and that admits to having WMD programs.

So, inspections work now. Maybe Bush and Rummy have come up with some revolutionary new technique for inspections that means we no longer have to take over a country completely and occupy it for years and fight a long, bloody guerrilla war if the country is denying that it has WMD programs and is allowing international inspectors unrestricted access, which was the case with Iraq when we invaded.

I'm not encouraging war with Libya. I'm very glad we've gotten what seems to be a resonable agreement with them. But it just emphasizes what a bunch of hokum the whole WMD scare over Iraq really was. A thoroughly dishonest undertaking to scare the American and British publics to supporting a war that was not necessary.