In comments today Derrin Smith, a top US adviser on the subject of portable shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, claimed that the vast majority of Libya’s missile stockpile, long reported looted, is actually still in the country and just waiting to be recovered.
“We’ll work with the government to recover those into centralized government inventory control,” Smith insisted. Previous reports had the missiles pouring out of the nation at an alarming rate, with Algeria actually closing the border explicitly to slow the flow of such weapons into the country.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the al-Qaeda affiliate in northwest Africa, also claimed last week to have been the “main beneficiaries” of the smuggling, and claimed to have acquired large quantities of such weapons.
Reports are also continuing about the exact same weapons showing up in the Gaza Strip. The US has been keen to use the idea of loose weapons to be recovered to justify funding the new regime in Libya, but it only makes sense if the weapons are still available to recover. Smith says there is “no indication” the weapons are showing up elsewhere, but there have been an awful lot of reports to the contrary over the past several months.
Now there's an Al-Qaeda affiliated group called "AQIM?" Really, who's making this stuff up?
What was it Rummy and Cheney said?…"we know EXACTLY where Saddam's weapons of mass destruction are hidden…"
What does "…just waiting to be recovered" mean?
Clowns.
This is a bad sign. Whenever the random "Derrin Smith's" of the government officially deny something, the opposite is usually the truth.
I think the Algerian government would have a better grasp of the situation, dontcha think?
So Gaddafi, our latest devil incarnate now deceased, was "intending" to use said weapons? Hmmm? I'd have shot off every one of them to defend myself if they ever existed.
derrin smiths rectum is sucking air.
Bad Lie is Bad.
WIth the new regime's ties to AQAP and such you just KNOW that a significant number of those weapons have been spirited away to be hidden in caches all over, just standing by for when they are needed. AQ and Co. knows where they are, as do plenty of others players in the region. And guess what? We're not a player, so WE don't know and we'll just have to find out the hard way by debriefing pilots when they get blown out of the sky, assuming they live through the experience.
The fact is those missiles and other weapons could be ANYWHERE.