Libya

FINNISH HEAD OF UN NUCLEAR SAFEGUARDS INSPECTIONS FEARS DIRTY BOMB MATERIAL…….

This is something that both NATO and Obama have some mighty big explaining to do.

The big rush to get rid of Gaddafi has come at the expense of what fills the void once his regime is defeated. The coalition of rebel forces that NATO has been supporting, includes a vast array of different groups, from the liberal Arab all the way to the many different shades of fundamentalist Muslim radicals, that the TT prefers to call ‘fundamustards’.

In the wake of the implosion of the Gaddafi regime, the motley coalition of rebels trying to form a government do not have the discipline to safeguard these nuclear materials, from their own members that it is, as well as from Gaddafi loyalists who most likely will take to the hills in order to wage a guerrilla war campaign on the rebel regime. Who’s to say that these materials have not already been taken by Gaddafi himself, and to be used sometime down the road in acts of revenge against the West?

Almost everyone wants Gaddafi gone, (except the likes of Hugo Chavez) but to support the removal of the entire regime without any assurances whatsoever that the nuclear material won’t fall into jihadi hands, especially al-Qaida’s, is pure foolishness. Gaddafi should have been the prime target all along, not the overthrow of the entire Libyan regime. KGS

Nuclear experts warn of Libya “dirty bomb” material

VIENNA | Wed Aug 24, 2011 6:37pm EDT

(al-Reuters) – A research center near Tripoli has stocks of nuclear material that could be used to make a “dirty bomb,” a former senior U.N. inspector said on Wednesday, warning of possible looting during turmoil in Libya.

Seeking to mend ties with the West, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi agreed in 2003 to abandon efforts to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons — a move that brought him in from the cold and helped end decades of Libyan isolation.

A six-month popular insurgency has now forced Gaddafi to abandon his stronghold in the Libyan capital but continued gunfire suggests the rebels have not completely triumphed yet.

Olli Heinonen, head of U.N. nuclear safeguards inspections worldwide until last year, pointed to substantial looting that took place at Iraq’s Tuwaitha atomic research facility near Baghdad after Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003.

In Iraq, “most likely due to pure luck, the story did not end in a radiological disaster,” Heinonen said.

In Libya, “nuclear security concerns still linger,” the former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in an online commentary.

Libya’s uranium enrichment program was dismantled after Gaddafi renounced weapons of mass destruction eight years ago. Sensitive material and documentation including nuclear weapons design information were confiscated.

But the country’s Tajoura research center continues to stock large quantities of radioisotopes, radioactive waste and low-enriched uranium fuel after three decades of nuclear research and radioisotope production, Heinonen said.

More here.

H/T: Weasel Zippers

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