Obama administration supports the deal before Congress raises concerns
WASHINGTON: The U.S. government quietly green-lighted a $77 million deal to provide at least 50 refurbished armored troop carriers to Moammar Gadhafi's army, approving a license that signaled growing American business contacts with his regime in the months before Libya imploded in civil war.
Congress balked, concerned the deal would improve Libyan army mobility and questioning the Obama administration's support for the agreement, which would have benefited British defense company BAE. The congressional concerns effectively stalled the deal until the turmoil in the country scuttled the sale.
| Thank goodness for the unnamed members of Congress who balked. |
The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls informed Congress that the troop transport deal had been returned without action -- effectively off the table, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the deal's sensitive details.
State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner said the proposed license was suspended along with the rest of ''what limited defense trade we had with Libya.''
The Gadhafi regime's desire to upgrade its troop carriers was so intense that a Libyan official told U.S. diplomats in Tripoli in 2009 that the dictator's sons, Khamis and Saif, both were demanding swift action. Khamis, a commander whose army brigade reportedly attacked the opposition-held town of Zawiya with armored units and pickup trucks, expressed a ''personal interest'' in modernizing the armored transports, according to a December 2009 diplomatic message.
| Since when did the US government start kowtowing to Qadaffy's sons? |
The administration's own interest in the deal amounted to a first cautious step toward allowing a major arms purchase by Gadhafi's regime even as U.S. officials waved off other Libyan approaches for weapons systems and military aid.
| Did Obama think that the leopard had changed his spots? Libya doesn't have any external enemies (okay, Egypt but they weren't going to do anything about it). The only reason for Qadaffy to buy armored personnel carriers and other weapons is so that he and his evil spawn sons can keep their boots on the throats of their own people. |
Toner said senior diplomats had repeatedly warned the Gadhafi regime that ''we would not discuss the possibility of lethal U.S. arms sales until Libya made significant progress on human rights issues, visas and other areas of bilateral relationship.''
| Progress? Why, Libya was a card-carrying member of the UN Human Rights Commission! How much more progress could one possibly want? |
The old M113 troop transports are typically outfitted with a single machine gun. U.S. officials said the now-scuttled deal would not have added new cannons or other guns because of strict rules that all defense sales to Libya had to be ''non-lethal'' defense products. But despite the ''non-lethal'' restrictions, some defense industry experts said the proposal should have never gotten off the ground.
''This deal should have been a red flag,'' said William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. ''Anything that makes troop transports more usable allows them to be applied to offensive purposes, even if you don't add guns.''
| That does seem pretty basic, doesn't it... |
On the whole, U.S. defense shipments to Libya under the Obama and Bush administrations have been tightly screened in recent years. U.S. sales were dwarfed by a tide of arms sold by European allies. European Union nations approved sales of $470 million in weapons to Gadhafi's military in 2009 alone -- a rush of Italian military aircraft, Maltese small arms and British munitions, according to a January EU arms control report.
| Don't forget the French Mirage jets. Europe has been only too happy to sell arms in exchange for petroleum. Sort of like "blood for oil"... |
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