Ex-Congressman to Meet With Gadhafi in Libya

A former GOP congressman is in Libya today to meet with Moammar Gadhafi to try to persuade him to step down, reports CNN. "I’ve met him enough times to know that it will be very hard to simply bomb him into submission," writes Curt Weldon in a New York Times op-ed about his trip. He says the White House is aware of his visit—at the invitation of Gadhafi's chief of staff—but that he represents a "small private delegation," not the government.

It's "no surprise" that Weldon is doing this, writes a skeptical Noah Shachtman in Wired. The former vice chair of the House Armed Services panel has "traveled repeatedly to Libya" over the last decade, "becoming so close with the Gadhafi regime that the firm Weldon worked for (Defense Solutions) even floated the idea of selling arms to Tripoli." Good thing the deal fell through, writes Shachtman, or NATO's Libya mission would be even harder today. (More Curt Weldon stories.)