How the Quadaffi Crumbles

Democrats have been claiming that George Bush deserves no credit for Libyan dictator Muammar Quadaffi's capitulation on the issue of WMD's.
Here's the real story.

Four events were critical to convincing Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi to get rid of his previously secret nuclear-weapons program, according to U.S. and British officials, Western diplomats in Tripoli and a key adviser to Col. Qaddafi.

It was not patient diplomacy, although that helped. Nor was it a U.S. or British desire to rehabilitate Qaddafi. Instead, it was a combination of implied threats and U.S. and British actions on the high seas and in Iraq that convinced Qaddafi he had not a moment to lose before his government became the next Axis of Evil regime in U.S. gun sights. The story of how the Bush administration achieved a bloodless victory in Libya demonstrates how force and the credible threat of force are needed for the tools of intelligence and diplomacy to work.

"Until Sept. 11, Qaddafi was hoping he could carry on with a clandestine nuclear-weapons program and get away with it," a Western diplomat in Tripoli tells Insight. But when he saw the response of the Bush administration in Afghanistan, "he realized he couldn't keep going as before."

After defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush stepped up his war of words against Saddam Hussein, warning that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of regimes known to sponsor terror presented an unacceptable threat to the United States. "Qaddafi heard those words and recognized himself," a U.S. official said. "He believed the president's words were aimed at him."