The Death of Gaddafi

Libya's dictator is now dead. But should we rejoice? For the shaken nation now must begin the hard task of regaining stability. What do you think?

I think that it is ashame that he wasn't treated like the Berlin Wall was treated (cubed and sold as soveniers) .

Incidentally, do you think that there would have been more "stability" if he had prevailed? Well, maybe there would have been. Slaves and dead people have a great deal of stability.

The alternative is to feel mopey about it?

I'm pretty much ambivalent, through and through.

Or maybe just through and, hey look a shiny penny.

Hello ..lo..lo....lo..lo..loooo. This is the voice of your Father Leader...er....er...er...er...er....er. Look up in the sky to Allah and pay no attention to the man in the concrete pipe.....ipe...ipe...ipe...ipe...ipe!!!!!

Not sure how to feel about it other than poking black humor fun. It cost the USA a billion dollars to snuff him {billions more for France et.} and he did kill a lot of USA citizens no matter that he somehow became a USA political ally in the intervening years. Newscasts state that he was ego blinded & divorced from reality by the sycophants he surrounded himself with until the end. Libya needs to keep their freedom and not sign it over to wacko religious zealots. I don't want to pay any money to do that other than diplomatic trips.

Anybody giving odds on the chances of the jihadists gaining control of the rebel government?

3 to 1

In two years will both Iraq and Libya be colonies of Iran?

~9

Undoubtedly soon the whole mideast and then the whole world will be run from Tehran. Beware!! Check under your beds for a threatening Mullah!! Be vigiliant!!!

First the Kaiser was going to be taking over the world, threatening our Great Democracy, and ending civilization, and then it was the Reds, and then it was the Nazis (who actually did take over a few things, but didn't last very long) and then it was the Reds again, and then The Terrorists, and now Iran.

Of course, Saudi Arabia is at least as oppressive a country, has been the point of origin of most of those TERRORISTS who actually have done anything terroristic, has a history going back 1300 years of being an imperial power, is the home of a fanatical fundamentalist movement relied on by the monarchy to maintain its power, and has corrupted most of the Mosques in the world. But Saudi Arabia just isn't on the menu today. Today, The Enemy is Iran. The Saudis are "really" our friends, but the enemies of the Saudis are clearly Our Enemies Too.

Yawn.

Ah, Bismarck, what a wonderful game you have created.

The Saudis are "really" our friends, but the enemies of the Saudis are clearly Our Enemies Too.

Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

In two years will both Iraq and Libya be colonies of Iran?

There is no chance of the latter. Iran's pull on Iraq comes from the fact that a majority of Iraqis are Shiites. Libya, however, is more than 99% Sunni. Coptic and Catholic minorities, under 1%, are larger. There is no affinity here.

Will Islamists take over in Libya? Maybe. Will they be friendly to Iran? Absolutely not. Radical Sunni islamists are highly antagonistic toward Shiites at a minimum, and often regarding them as apostates liable to death.

9
Iran doesn't need colonies it needs customers.

Almost everyone is glad Gaddafi is gone, but it would have been nice if he had been arrested and stood trial, instead of being killed by soldiers-turned-angry-mob. It's not a good way to start a new regime.

Yept. Quite true. There could have been a stacked trial like was given to Saddam's propaganda minister - who distributed lies like there being no weapons of mass destruction and paid the price for such lies. Then his head could have been popped off in front of a room full of jeering insulting barbarians, like was done with Saddam. That would have been much better.

Or he could have stood trial, as at Nuremberg. Of course, those were show trials too, for which the outcome was predetermined, but at least there was some semblance of justice and fairness.

"jeering insulting barbarians"? Well, capital punishment is always barbaric, in any country.

The 3AM call that Hillary spoke of in her campaign.

Now she is the one receiving it.

Can you imagine being in her position and having to immediately order the proper American response when you know that human lives and the world's reaction to that response are on the line?

I do not like Hillary Clinton but, my god, I do feel for her for what the last few weeks have thrown at her.

Strange week or so. Is it okay for

__ Libyan soldier to shoot hostage Gadaffi (if that's what happened)?

__ US military to remote-kill American-cleric terrorist (and son?) in Yemen?

__Ohio policemen to shoot escaped lions, tiger, and bears?*

*Arianna Huffington notes that the critters received more sympathy than the dictator.

Arianna Huffington notes that the critters received more sympathy than the dictator.

Well, to be fair, Bengal tigers are a highly endangered species; 'dictators' are not.

Protecting Gaddafi until such time as he could stand trial might just be expecting too much of the Libyans into whose mitts he fell.

Ghaddafi's entire life lead up to that final moment, sic semper tyrannis and all that. I hope he savored it.

Live by the gun, die by the . . .

who distributed lies like there being no weapons of mass destruction and paid the price for such lies.

I just wanted to see that again.

here could have been a stacked trial like was given to Saddam's propaganda minister - who distributed lies like there being no weapons of mass destruction and paid the price for such lies.

Saddam's Propaganda Minister, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, did not face any criminal or civil prosecution whatsoever. He was picked up by US forces briefly after the war and let go. He lives free. Look it up. Read it. Facts. Little things. So hard to get right. Again.

I presume you're actually referencing Tariq Aziz, the Foreign Minister. If so, Aziz was sentenced by the current Iraqi government, not the US. The Maliki government don't care about the US's WMD issue. They certainly are anti-Bathist, but that's a strong, well-understood and perfectly explicable hatred, not requiring some sort of US vendetta against him for telling the truth about WMD.

Aziz was sentenced by the Iraqi government for a variety of crimes, including his role in 42 executions, Kurdish ethnic cleansing and persecuting political parties. General feeling in the international community is that, while a central member of a brutal, dictatorial, criminal and, as regards Kurds, genocidal government, Aziz himself, as foreign minister, did not have direct sign-off except on diplomatic issues. Foreign reaction to his death sentence was largely negative, and the Iraqi president has declared he will not sign an execution order. The general feeling is that he will not be executed.

So, basically, your charge that he "Saddam's propaganda minister - who distributed lies like there being no weapons of mass destruction and paid the price for such lies" is complete and utter horseshit from front to back. How remarkable that your claim should be so devoid of truth, when you were trying to make some sort of point about telling the truth!

#14: it would have been nice if he had been arrested and stood trial, instead of being killed by soldiers-turned-angry-mob.

Maybe not so much an angry mob, but an underaged rebel fighter who didn't want a different Lybian rebel group to get their hands on Gaddafi alive.

There are so many conflicting accounts, we may never know who killed him. See story here:

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1074604--stray-bullet-may-have-killed-...

Re #23: Tim, I don't know why you're challenging lawecon's grasp of the issues. As he says,

" But we all have a right to believe and say whatever we want. (Something I've never disputed.) Apparently along with that right comes no responsibility to exert some effort to assure that what we are saying and believe is based on facts or is logically coherent, i.e. that what we say is more than a slogan."

Tim,

The discussion was about what Libyans had done to a Libyan official and the fall out therefrom . It was not about what Americans had done to anyone. I am so sorry I got the official in question's office wrong. In fact, there was no such thing as a Propaganda Minister in Saddam's Iraq. Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf was Information Minister.

But you are right, I was thinking of Tariq Aziz, the Saddam official who was widely reported as having claimed that there were no weapons of mass destruction held by Saddam and who was later sentenced to death by Saddam's successors. Obviously this episode is not at all barbaric and has caused no disruption in Iraq (the issues we were talking about), thereby proving that it was better that he was not shot out of hand at the conclusion of the fighting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariq_Aziz

In any case, Tim, as we all know, factual accuracy doesn't matter when posting to a Librarything group. "I have a right to my opinion," regardless of any factual errors underlying such an opinion. Indeed, no facts need to be specified at all in any of these posts, just opinions. This is merely tea time interaction over opinions and perspectives. It would be unfair and elitist to discuss facts or the accuracy of facts. That is the standard for posting to Groups on Librarything, isn't it, Tim? It certainly is what I'm being told over and over again, and I have never seen you disputing that claim.

Here, for instance, is what was just said in an adjacent thread when I was pleading for some people having some knowledge about what corporations are legally and what they in fact do before joining the latest crusade against "corporate greed," being "the 99%" like they are:

" And that's all this is, a conversation. Often heated, but a discussion among people with differing experiences and points of view about things which radically affect our lives. Do we have a right to speak, even without qualifications? Well, not as experts in an official setting, certainly, but here, at this virtual gathering? Yes, of course."

I believe that "Bob" also chimed in about how this was a "chat room".

Hey Bob, very interesting. I guess you just forgot to mention your standard for posting to these groups to which I was reacting in your quotation from me above. But never mind, I've just described your position. Should I quote you from the thread I just mentioned and several previous threads? Why not, it is as relevant as anything else in this discussion. After all, we're just throwing out opinions in this chat room.

Since we've entered the debate about responsibilities for disinformation and lies about WMDs, it might be worth remembering the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. (Who was apparently a source for Colin Powell's U.N. testimony.)

I've been involved in various debates about torture, and his case keeps coming back as one of the more troubling ones, in my estimation. The long-term unintended consequences were, plausibly, enormous.

Sourcing such a story is problematic, of course, and I don't pretend to have the inside scoop. Wikipedia has its obvious potential pitfalls but for this example, it's not a bad place to start for a general overview.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Shaykh_al-Libi

(Note also the circumstances of his death, to the extent that we know them.)