libya's missiles and unintended consequences

let the hand wringing begin:

Qaddafi's deserted missiles prompt looting fears - World Watch - CBS News: "The withdrawal of Muammar Qaddafi's troops from various weapons caches around Libya has reportedly left vulnerable the regime's supply of surface-to-air missiles, not just to the increasingly powerful rebels but also to looters looking to sell the weapons on the black market.

CNN recently explored an abandoned storage facility with Human Rights Watch in the capital city of Tripoli, finding emptied crates for shoulder-launched missiles. Peter Bouckaert, the organization's emergencies director, told the cable news network that the missiles can be worth thousands of dollars.

"We are talking about some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in all of Libya, and I've seen cars packed with them," Bouckaert told CNN. "They could turn all of North Africa into a no-fly zone.""

after the cows have escaped, now the geniuses who oversaw the disposal of the khadafi regime are wondering whose job it was supposed to be to close the barn doors.

just when the smell of victory was in the air, someone has had a terrible thought: what if the regime's weapons stockpiles get into the wrong hands? in particular, surface-to-air missiles could be a potentially very nasty little tool in the wrong hands, for example a terrorist who wants to down a commercial jetliner...

one wonders, however, why if the regime had all these awsome weapons in the first place, why they weren't more proactive about using them on the nato forces that were carrying out bombing raids on a routine basis. indeed, why is it that, with all these "terrorists" arrayed against us, allegedly, doesn't anyone use these weapons against their enemies here in the west?

shhhhh! don't tell anybody!

i suppose it's just one of those imponderables: something that's so obvious that you can't believe that nobody thought of it.

perhaps, then, there's something else afoot with these missing missiles... do you suppose?

perhaps there's something afoot -- we don't know what it is -- and the missiles instead of going missing mysteriously have simply been allocated by parties unknown, to parties unknown, and for reasons... well, you get the idea.

the talk is, they might be used in an iraq-style insurgency. what a chilling thought -- unless, of course, that's what someone in a position of power and influence intends.

have we heard any other plausible explanation?

let's keep our antennae up, okay?

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