According to various reports, Muammar Qaddafi is employing everything from cluster bombs to rocket launchers to land mines in his fight against the Libyan rebels. Today, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations suggested another tool of war: the impotency drug Viagra.

In a closed-door Security Council meeting, Susan Rice said that Qaddafi was "issuing Viagra to his soldiers so they go out and rape" women, without providing evidence to support the assertion, an unnamed U.N. diplomat who was in the meeting tells Foreign Policy's Colum Lynch. Another diplomat tells Reuters that attendees greeted Rice's statement with silence.

As Lynch points out, Rice isn't the first person to charge the Qaddafi regime with using rape as a weapon of war. Here's a brief history of the claim:

March 26 - A Libyan woman named Iman Al-Obeidi storms into a Tripoli hotel filled with foreign journalists and tells them she's been gang-raped by pro-Qaddafi fighters, elaborating on her claim after the government released her from detention. She claims she was targeted because she is from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi but a regime spokesman dismissed the suggestion, asserting that Al-Obeidi was a prostitute with a criminal record.
The photo above shows women unfurling a picture of Al-Obeidi during a protest in Benghazi.

March 28 - Doctors tell Al Jazeera theat they've found Viagra tablets and condoms in the pockets of dead Qaddafi soldiers, which they believe are intended for rape, and that they are treating women who say they've been raped by Qaddafi's soldiers.

April 25 - Save the Children tells The Daily Mail and other news agencies that during its work in refugee camps in Benghazi, the organization is hearing reports of Qaddafi's forces sexually assaulting women and children. A rebel spokesman in the besieged Western city of Misrata tells the paper that Qaddafi's forces "have been ordered to rape because this means they are insulting Misrata itself."

Yet even with this series of reports, Foreign Policy's Lynch explains that the evidence for a concerted rape campaign by the Qaddafi regime is thin. A consultant for Human Rights Watch tells Lynch that the organization has learned of "a few credible cases of gender based violence and rape, but the evidence is not there at this point to suggest it is of a systematic nature, or an official policy. On Viagra and condom distribution we have nothing so far."

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Uri Friedman