It is perhaps more plausible to argue that the Libyan leader played his WMD card when he saw the benefits of forging strategic partnerships with the US and European powers. He certainly paid little heed to Mr Bush’s so-called “freedom agenda”, which held that the US no longer held common cause with dictators and despots and that democracy and human rights were just around the corner. It was after all more or less business as usual between Washington and the other authoritarian Arab rulers whom the US called friends and allies.
