Thread: 20000 Shoulder Launched Surface-to-Air Missiles Looted Libya

Nightmare in Libya: Thousands of Surface-to-Air Missiles Unaccounted For


After the fall of Gadhafi's Libya, U.S. officials are concerned about the possible proliferation of thousands of portable surface-to-air missiles stockpiled in the country. (Human Rights Watch)

By BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) and MATTHEW COLE
Sept. 27, 2011

The White House announced today it planned to expand a program to secure and destroy Libya's huge stockpile of dangerous surface-to-air missiles, following an ABC News report that large numbers of them continue to be stolen from unguarded military warehouses.

Currently the U.S. State Department has one official on the ground in Libya, as well as five contractors who specialize in "explosive ordinance disposal", all working with the rebel Transitional National Council to find the looted missiles, White House spokesperson Jay Carney told reporters.

"We expect to deploy additional personnel to assist the TNC as they expand efforts to secure conventional arms storage sites," Carney said. "We're obviously at a governmental level -- both State Department and at the U.N. and elsewhere -- working with the TNC on this."

ABC News reported today U.S. officials and security experts were concerned some of the thousands of heat-seeking missiles could easily end up in the hands of al Qaeda or other terrorists groups, creating a threat to commercial airliners.

"Matching up a terrorist with a shoulder-fired missile, that's our worst nightmare," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D.-California, a member of the Senate's Commerce, Energy and Transportation Committee.

Though Libya had an estimated 20,000 man-portable surface-to-air missiles before the popular uprising began in February, Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro told ABC News today the government does not have a clear picture of how many missiles they're trying to track down.

"We're making great progress and we expect in the coming days and weeks we will have a much greater picture of how many are missing," Shapiro said.

The missiles, four to six-feet long and Russian-made, can weigh just 55 pounds with launcher. They lock on to the heat generated by the engines of aircraft, can be fired from a vehicle or from a combatant's shoulder, and are accurate and deadly at a range of more than two miles.

Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch first warned about the problem after a trip to Libya six months ago. He took pictures of pickup truckloads of the missiles being carted off during another trip just a few weeks ago.

"I myself could have removed several hundred if I wanted to, and people can literally drive up with pickup trucks or even 18 wheelers and take away whatever they want," said Bouckaert, HRW's emergencies director. "Every time I arrive at one of these weapons facilities, the first thing we notice going missing is the surface-to-air missiles."

The ease with which rebels and other unknown parties have snatched thousands of the missiles has raised alarms that the weapons could end up in the hands of al Qaeda, which is active in Libya.

"There certainly are dangerous groups operating in the region, and we're very concerned that some of these weapons could end up in the wrong hands," said Bouckaert.

"I think the probability of al Qaeda being able to smuggle some of the stinger-like missiles out of Libya is probably pretty high," said Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism advisor and now a consultant to ABC News.

Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, told ABC News in a statement similar to Carney's remarks that, "Since the beginning of the crisis, we have been actively engaged with our allies and partners to support Libya's efforts to secure all conventional weapons stockpiles, including recover, control, and disposal of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles."

Boxer: U.S. Passenger Jets at Risk

Adding to the urgency is the fact that America's passenger jets, like those of most countries, are sitting ducks, despite years of warning about the missile threat. Since the 1970s, according to the U.S. State Department, more than 40 civilian planes around the world have been hit by surface-to-air missiles. In 2003, Iraqi insurgents hit a DHL cargo plane with a missile in Baghdad. Though on fire, the plane was able to land safely. Four years later, militants knocked a Russian-built cargo plane out of the sky over Somalia, killing all 11 crew members.

Now there are calls in Congress to give jets that fly overseas the same protection military aircraft have.

"I think we should ensure that the wide-bodied planes all have this protection," said Sen. Boxer, who first spoke to ABC News about the surface-to-air security threat in 2006. "And that's a little more than 500 of these planes."

Boxer sent a letter today to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano urging the two to establish a joint program "to protect commercial aircraft from the threat of shoulder-fired missiles."

According to Boxer, it would cost about a million dollars a plane for a system that has been installed and successfully tested over the last few years, directing a laser beam into the incoming missile.

"For us to sit idly by and not do anything when we could protect 2 billion passengers over the next 20 years [with] a relatively small amount of money [from] the Department of Defense, I think that's malfeasance," said Boxer. "I think that's wrong." And it could be more practical than trying to round up all the missing Libyan missiles.

"Once these missiles walk away from these facilities, they're very difficult to get back, as the CIA realized in Afghanistan," said Bouckaert.

When the Afghan mujahideen were fighting the Soviets more than two decades ago, the CIA supplied the Afghans with 1,000 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, which had a devastating effect on Soviet military aircraft. After the Soviets had retreated, however, the CIA spent millions of dollars trying to buy back the remaining missiles from the Afghan fighters.

According to Bouckaert, the CIA spent up to $100,000 a piece to reacquire the Stingers.

"In Libya we're talking about something on the order of 20,000 surface-to-air missiles," said Bouckaert. "This is one of the greatest stockpiles of these weapons that has ever gone on the loose."

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/nightmare ... d=14610199

Who is the ONLY POLITICIAN that Keeps warning about

Entangling Alliences and Un-Intended Consequences

RON "FRICKEN" PAUL

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Even if you refuse to Elect him (Which I think would be a Massive Mistake) you better start booting these NUT out of Control TEMPORARY POLITICIANS from making PERMANENT Changes to your Life

Free for all: Up to 20,000 anti-aircraft missiles stolen in Libya

Published: 2:54 PM 09/27/2011 | Updated: 4:11 PM 09/27/2011
By Neil Munro - The Daily Caller

Large mortar shells sit unguarded, with boxes that once held anti-aircraft missiles and other heavy weapons are strewn about arms depots in Tripoli on Wednesday Sept .7, 2011. Former rebels say they've taken some ammunition for the fight against supporters of Moammar Gadhafi, but U.S. officials and others express fears the weapons could fall into the wrong hands. (AP Photo/Ben Hubbard)

A survey of weapon depots in Libya shows that up to 20,000 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles are now missing, partly because President Barack Obama has refused to send troops to guard the weapons depots, according to a left-of-center advocate.
“We were quite disappointed after talking to administration officials … that nothing more was done, even about the [storage] facilities in Tripoli, which are unsecured now,” said Peter Bouckaert, director of emergencies at left-of-centre group Human Rights Watch.
‘“The major impediment [to action] is that the administration doesn’t want ‘boots on the ground,’” he said.
“If these weapons get into the wrong hands, any civilian aircraft operating in the region will be threatened,” said Bouckaert, who has just returned from a visit to Libya.
White House spokesman Jay Carney today downplayed concerns about the missing missiles. “We have … worked closely with the [Libyan rebel leaders] as well as NATO in investigating and dealing with the issue of conventional weapons in Libya … [and] we are exploring every option to expand our support.”
So far, said Carney, an official from the State Department has been posted to Libya. He is being aided by five contractors, Carney said.
The missing missiles are Russian-made SA-7s and SA-16s: Shoulder-launched missiles that can home into the hot exhaust trails from civilian and military jets. The SA-16 is only five feet long and weighs just 24 pounds.

A few of those types of missiles were used by al-Qaida’s allies in Iraq. Al-Qaida’s allies in Yemen have also showcased their possession of a number of the missiles.
In the last few weeks, Bouckaert said, administration officials have met to discuss the threat. “This has moved sharply up on Obama’s agenda,” partly because the administration-backed National Transitional Council can’t guard the weapons depots, he said.
“European intelligence agencies are also very concerned about these missiles, and they’ve been in contact with me,” he added. The European intelligence agencies “have a larger capacity on the ground [in Libya] because they’re not operating under the same restrictions that President Obama has placed himself in,” Bouckaert explained.
Obama sent missile-armed aircraft to help the rebel tribes push back the heavily-armed Libyan army, but has consistently refused to send U.S ground troops to win land battles or to protect the fledgling democratic government once dictator Muammar Gaddafi fled the Libyan capital of Tripoli in August. When Obama announced the U.S. intervention on March 18, he was explicit: “The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya.”
“The problem is that the missiles are already out of the storage facilities and in the hand of unknown people,” Bouckaert said. “Libya has thousands of miles of unsecured desert borders to Chad, Mali and Algeria,” where an al-Qaida subgroup now operates, he said.
The al-Qaida subgroup is called al-Qaida in the Maghreb.
The missing missiles and other weaponry has gotten relatively little publicity, despite the danger posed to the U.S. and European and African countries. In October 2004, in contrast, the New York Times ignited a political scandal just days before the 2004 presidential election by publishing a front-page report claiming that a few hundred tons of explosives had been stolen by gunmen from the Iraq’s al Qa’qaa storage facility.
“I was in Iraq in 2003 and the amount of weaponry floating around in Libya is much greater than the anything we saw in Iraq,“ said Bouckaert.
Islamists have used surface-to-air missiles against aircraft in Iraq, and tried in 2002 to shoot down an Israeli civilian airliner in Kenya. The Israeli aircraft survived, likely because it “had some form of defense systems against the missiles, which U.S. airplanes don’t,” Bouckaert said.
Despite the growing concern among officials in the U.S and Europe, he said, “you can still walk into any facility without anyone stopping you.”
The U.S. supplied heat-seeking Stinger missiles to Afghan insurgents during the war against the Soviet military in Afghanistan. The missiles proved very effective, and after the Soviets left in 1989 the CIA launched a major effort to buy back unused missiles.

Follow Neil on Twitter

Anti-Aircraft Missiles | Libya | Missing | The Daily Caller

bttt

Prisoners Help Build Patriot Missiles



By Noah Shachtman March 8, 2011 | 12:24 pm

This spring, the United Arab Emirates is expected to close a deal for $7 billion dollars’ worth of American arms. Nearly half of the cash will be spent on Patriot missiles, which cost as much as $5.9 million apiece.
But what makes those eye-popping sums even more shocking is that some of the workers manufacturing parts for those Patriot missiles are prisoners, earning as little as 23 cents an hour. (Credit Justin Rohrlich with the catch.)
The work is done by Unicor, previously known as Federal Prison Industries. It’s a government-owned corporation, established during the Depression, that employs about 20,000 inmates in 70 prisons to make everything from clothing to office furniture to solar panels to military electronics.
One of the company’s high-tech specialties: Patriot missile parts. “UNICOR/FPI supplies numerous electronic components and services for guided missiles, including the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) missile,” Unicor’s website explains. “We assemble and distribute the Intermediate Frequency Processor (IFP) for the PAC-3s seeker. The IFP receives and filters radio-frequency signals that guide the missile toward its target.”
The missiles are then marketed worldwide — sometimes by Washington’s top officials. Last year, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pitched the Patriots to the Turkish government last year, a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks reveals: “SecDef stressed that ‘nothing can compete with the PAC-3 when it comes to capabilities.’”

Patriot assemblers Raytheon and Lockheed Martin aren’t the only defense contractors relying on prison help. As Rohrlich notes, Unicor “inmates also make cable assemblies for the McDonnell Douglas/Boeing F-15, the General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin F-16, Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter, as well as electro-optical equipment for the BAE Systems Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder.”
Unicor used to make helmets for the military, as well. But that work was suspended when 44,000 helmets were recalled for shoddy quality.
Government agencies — with the exception of the Defense Department and the CIA — are required to buy goods from Unicor, according to a Congressional Research Service report (.pdf). And no wonder: the labor costs are bordering on zero. “Inmates earn from $0.23 per hour up to a maximum of $1.15 per hour, depending on their proficiency and educational level, among other things,” the report notes.
Last year, Unicor grossed $772 million, according to its most recent financial report (.pdf). Traditionally, inmate salaries make up about five percent of that total.
Unicor insists that the deal is a good one for inmates — and for the government. The manufacturing work offers a chance for job training, which “improves the likelihood that inmates will remain crime-free upon their release,” the company says in its report. (Some reports suggest that Unicor prisoners are as much as 24% less likely to return to crime.)
The work also keeps the inmates in check, Unicor insists. “In the face of an escalating inmate population and an increasing percentage of inmates with histories of violence, FPI’s programs have helped ease tension and avert volatile situations, thereby protecting lives and federal property,” the company says. “Prisons without meaningful activities for inmates are dangerous prisons, and dangerous prisons are expensive prisons.”

Photo: U.S. Army

Prisoners Help Build Patriot Missiles | Danger Room | Wired.com

See Also:

• Iron Eagle Nominee: Lockheed's Awesomely Bad Missile Promo …
• Pentagon: Missile Critics Use 'Wile E. Coyote' Physics
• Patriot Missile Found in Tampa Junk Yard
• Pain Ray, Rejected by the Military, Ready to Blast L.A. Prisoners …
• Israeli Soldier Defends Her 'Sexy' Facebook Prisoner Pics
• Miss Gulag: Women Compete in Russian Prison Pageant
• World's Most Expensive Prison Food
  
  
  

US says terrorists seeking missing Libyan missiles

By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press 10/14/2011

BRUSSELS (AP) Terrorist groups have expressed interest in obtaining some of the thousands of shoulder-launched missiles that have gone missing in Libya and the issue has become a priority for the Obama administration, a senior U.S.official said Friday.

Andrew J. Shapiro, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, said Friday the missiles "could pose a threat to civil aviation."

"We know that terrorist groups have expressed interest in obtaining these weapons," he said, adding that the issue issue of securing the weapons was a priority for President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Libya was believed to have about 20,000 such missiles in its arsenals before civil war began in March, Shapiro said. Although many were destroyed by NATO air strikes, thousands are missing.

"The possibility that these weapons may cross borders is an area of considerable concern," Shapiro said. "That's why U.S. has been working with countries bordering Libya to prevent (proliferation)."

Reports that thousands of the portable, short-range missiles were missing first surfaced at the end of September, when NATO's top military officer, Adm. Giampaolo Di Paola, was cited as telling German lawmakers that the alliance had lost track of at least 10,000 surface-to-air missiles from Libyan military depots.

The State Department had sent 15 specialists to Libya to track down the weapons and plans to increase the number to 50 soon, Shapiro said, adding the U.S. has allocated $30 million to the effort.

He said vast majority of the missing missiles were Soviet-made SA-7 Strela (Arrow) with infrared homing.

The United States and other Western nations have been trying for decades to reduce the global stock of portable missiles, fearing they could fall into the hands of terrorists. The small, easily concealable SAM-7s are considered obsolete by modern military standards but could pose a threat to civilian airliners or helicopters.

Weighing just 14 kilograms (31 pounds) and only 1.40-meters (4-feet) long, the 1960s-era missile can reach an altitude of over 3,000 meters (10,000 feet).

Thousands have been used in wars in the Middle East, Latin America, Central Asia and former Yugoslavia. Civilian aircraft as well as U.S. and allied warplanes and helicopters have been damaged or downed by the missiles in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Libya was largest non-producing country holding MANPADS," he said, referring to the weapons by their official designation of Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems.

Also on Friday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that although the missing weapons were a matter of concern, "it's not a part of NATO's mandate to deal with that."

He said that according to a U.N. Security Council resolution it was the responsibility of the new authorities in Libya to make sure the stockpiles of weapons are monitored and controlled effectively.

"But I know that individual NATO allies are also engaging with the new authorities to help them fulfill that task." Fogh Rasmussen said in an AP interview.

Follow Slobodan Lekic on Twitter at http://twitter.com/slekich

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/ ... n-missiles

Missing Libya Missiles Find Their Way to Gaza Border


A convoy of Egyptian armoured vehicles head along a road in El-Arish on the Sinai Peninsula on the way to the city of Rafah near the Gaza border in support of an operation against militants, Aug. 13, 2011. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Some of the thousands of surface-to-air missiles that have gone missing since the collapse of the Gadhafi regime in Libya have now turned up just miles from the Israeli border.

U.S. officials say there were 20,000 Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles in Libya before the uprising, and thousands have disappeared in the looting of Moammar Gadhafi's arm caches. According to the Washington Post, many of those Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons are being sold in Egyptian black markets, and so many are available the price has dropped from $10,000 to $4,000.

Egyptian officials told the paper they have intercepted looted Libyan weapons, including anti-aircraft guns, missiles and artillery, on the road from Libya into Egypt, in black markets on the Sinai Peninsula, and in the smuggling tunnels between the Sinai and Gaza.

The heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, most of them shoulder-fired, have a range of two miles and would pose a threat to Israeli helicopter and planes on either side of the Israel-Gaza border.

Though Libya had an estimated 20,000 man-portable surface-to-air missiles before the popular uprising began in February, Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro told ABC News in September the government does not have a clear picture of how many missiles they're trying to track down.

A spokesperson told ABC News that the State Department "commend[s] Egyptian authorities" for seizing the missiles and other arms.

"[W]e are seeking additional information from Egyptian authorities as their investigations continue," said Noel Clay. "Egypt is one of several nations in the region where we have held discussions about potential conventional weapons proliferation from Libya in recent months. It is clear that the Egyptian government shares our concerns about weapons smuggling."

"Preventing the proliferation of these weapons is of international concern," said Clay. "We are committed to working with the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC), Libya's neighbors, and the wider international community to build a coordinated approach to this shared security challenge."

U.S. government officials and security experts have long been concerned some of the thousands of heat-seeking missiles, along with smaller arms, could easily end up in the hands of al Qaeda or other terror groups.

"Matching up a terrorist with a shoulder-fired missile, that's our worst nightmare," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D.-California, a member of the Senate's Commerce, Energy and Transportation Committee, said in September.

The missiles, four to six-feet long and Russian-made, can weigh just 55 pounds with launcher. They lock on to the heat generated by the engines of aircraft, can be fired from a vehicle or from a combatant's shoulder, and are accurate and deadly at a range of more than two miles.

ABC News visited a massive weapons depot in Tripoli, and confirmed that the arms were unguarded and available to whoever could cart them away. Crates upon crates of weapons and ammunition, from AK-47 assault rifles to grenades to surface-to-air missiles, were forced open and their contents missing.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/missing-l ... d=14729363

Nightmare in Libya: Thousands of Surface-to-Air Missiles Unaccounted For

Video at the link

Missile 'Nightmare': Thousands Missing

By BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) and MATTHEW COLE
Sept. 27, 2011

The White House announced today it planned to expand a program to secure and destroy Libya's huge stockpile of dangerous surface-to-air missiles, following an ABC News report that large numbers of them continue to be stolen from unguarded military warehouses.

Currently the U.S. State Department has one official on the ground in Libya, as well as five contractors who specialize in "explosive ordinance disposal", all working with the rebel Transitional National Council to find the looted missiles, White House spokesperson Jay Carney told reporters.

"We expect to deploy additional personnel to assist the TNC as they expand efforts to secure conventional arms storage sites," Carney said. "We're obviously at a governmental level -- both State Department and at the U.N. and elsewhere -- working with the TNC on this."

ABC News reported today U.S. officials and security experts were concerned some of the thousands of heat-seeking missiles could easily end up in the hands of al Qaeda or other terrorists groups, creating a threat to commercial airliners.

"Matching up a terrorist with a shoulder-fired missile, that's our worst nightmare," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D.-California, a member of the Senate's Commerce, Energy and Transportation Committee.

Though Libya had an estimated 20,000 man-portable surface-to-air missiles before the popular uprising began in February, Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro told ABC News today the government does not have a clear picture of how many missiles they're trying to track down.

"We're making great progress and we expect in the coming days and weeks we will have a much greater picture of how many are missing," Shapiro said.

The missiles, four to six-feet long and Russian-made, can weigh just 55 pounds with launcher. They lock on to the heat generated by the engines of aircraft, can be fired from a vehicle or from a combatant's shoulder, and are accurate and deadly at a range of more than two miles.

Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch first warned about the problem after a trip to Libya six months ago. He took pictures of pickup truckloads of the missiles being carted off during another trip just a few weeks ago.

"I myself could have removed several hundred if I wanted to, and people can literally drive up with pickup trucks or even 18 wheelers and take away whatever they want," said Bouckaert, HRW's emergencies director. "Every time I arrive at one of these weapons facilities, the first thing we notice going missing is the surface-to-air missiles."

The ease with which rebels and other unknown parties have snatched thousands of the missiles has raised alarms that the weapons could end up in the hands of al Qaeda, which is active in Libya.

"There certainly are dangerous groups operating in the region, and we're very concerned that some of these weapons could end up in the wrong hands," said Bouckaert.

"I think the probability of al Qaeda being able to smuggle some of the stinger-like missiles out of Libya is probably pretty high," said Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism advisor and now a consultant to ABC News.

Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, told ABC News in a statement similar to Carney's remarks that, "Since the beginning of the crisis, we have been actively engaged with our allies and partners to support Libya's efforts to secure all conventional weapons stockpiles, including recover, control, and disposal of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles."

Adding to the urgency is the fact that America's passenger jets, like those of most countries, are sitting ducks, despite years of warning about the missile threat. Since the 1970s, according to the U.S. State Department, more than 40 civilian planes around the world have been hit by surface-to-air missiles. In 2003, Iraqi insurgents hit a DHL cargo plane with a missile in Baghdad. Though on fire, the plane was able to land safely. Four years later, militants knocked a Russian-built cargo plane out of the sky over Somalia, killing all 11 crew members.

Now there are calls in Congress to give jets that fly overseas the same protection military aircraft have.

After the fall of Gadhafi's Libya, U.S. officials are concerned about the possible proliferation of thousands of portable surface-to-air missiles stockpiled in the country.

"I think we should ensure that the wide-bodied planes all have this protection," said Sen. Boxer, who first spoke to ABC News about the surface-to-air security threat in 2006. "And that's a little more than 500 of these planes."

Boxer sent a letter today to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano urging the two to establish a joint program "to protect commercial aircraft from the threat of shoulder-fired missiles."

According to Boxer, it would cost about a million dollars a plane for a system that has been installed and successfully tested over the last few years, directing a laser beam into the incoming missile.

"For us to sit idly by and not do anything when we could protect 2 billion passengers over the next 20 years [with] a relatively small amount of money [from] the Department of Defense, I think that's malfeasance," said Boxer. "I think that's wrong." And it could be more practical than trying to round up all the missing Libyan missiles.

"Once these missiles walk away from these facilities, they're very difficult to get back, as the CIA realized in Afghanistan," said Bouckaert.

When the Afghan mujahideen were fighting the Soviets more than two decades ago, the CIA supplied the Afghans with 1,000 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, which had a devastating effect on Soviet military aircraft. After the Soviets had retreated, however, the CIA spent millions of dollars trying to buy back the remaining missiles from the Afghan fighters.

According to Bouckaert, the CIA spent up to $100,000 a piece to reacquire the Stingers.

"In Libya we're talking about something on the order of 20,000 surface-to-air missiles," said Bouckaert. "This is one of the greatest stockpiles of these weapons that has ever gone on the loose."

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/nightmare ... d=14610199

U.S. Sending More Contractors to Secure Libya's Weapons Stockpile

Eric Schmitt and Kareem Fahim
New York Times
October 15, 2011

The State Department is sending dozens of American contractors to Libya to help that country’s fledgling efforts to track down and destroy heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles looted from government stockpiles that could be used against civilian airliners.

The contractors, weapons and explosives specialists, are part of a growing $30 million American program to secure Libya’s conventional weapons arsenal, which was ransacked during the fall of the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

American and other Western officials are especially concerned that as weapons slip from state custody, they can be easily sold through black markets to other countries, fueling regional wars or arming terrorist groups. Analysts are particularly worried about the dispersal of the SA-7, an early-generation, shoulder-fired missile in the same family as the more widely known Stinger.

Read full report here

http://www.infowars.com/u-s-sending-...ons-stockpile/

U.S. Spends $30 Million Looking For Gadhafi Missiles

October 17, 2011 by Sam Rolley


A Libyan opposition forces fighter manages a mobile anti-aircraft gun.

After the U.S. helped Libyans oust Moammar Gadhafi, hundreds of surface-to-air missiles and other dangerous weapons fell into the hands of Libyan rebels and terror groups. Americans are now footing the bill for a $30 million program to track down the weapons.

Under the program, the U.S. government has sent 14 civilian military contractors to help the Libyan transitional government search for the weapons, according to an article in The Washington Post.

President Barack Obama refused to send U.S. soldiers to Libya for the missile retrieval mission to avoid raising ire in the region and from members of Congress at home. Despite the lack of military involvement, the contractor mission represents the biggest weapons-retrieval initiative since those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the rebel raids on the Gadhafi compound last month, Libyan rebels — many of whom are linked to al-Qaida — were said to be seen looting hundreds of weapons, including assault rifles, grenades and shoulder-fired missiles. The U.S. urgency in recovering the surface-to-air missiles stems from the ability of those weapons to shoot down commercial aircraft; in fact, 40 commercial planes have been shot down in such manner since the 1970s.

Last week, security forces apprehended several Libyan missiles en route to Egypt, where they are often sold on the black market. Reportedly, in regions with a high number of surface-to-air missile black market sales, the number available is so high that the price of a missile has dropped from $10,000 to about $4,000.

http://www.personalliberty.com/news/u-s ... 10_17_PLA_[P11550062]&rrid=238434262