Such as it is:
Obama and Hillary did everything but cut off one of Qaddafi’s ears and stick his head on a pike. And they get a two-point bounce from yesterday.
I have joked that Obama would need to bite the head off a rabid chicken to match his rampant bloodletting. But really what he needs is more notorious Muslims to kill. I’m sure the Muslims will oblige.
Eat lead, you Mohameddan camel[bleeper]. Obambo.
Warning: Graphic image below.
I told you it was bad. He looks pretty badly worked over, doesn’t he?
Muammar Gaddafi’s blood-streaked body was on display in a commercial freezer at a shopping center Friday as Libyan authorities argued about what to do with his remains and questions deepened over official accounts of the longtime dictator’s death. New video emerged of his violent, chaotic last moments, showing fighters beating him as they drag him away.
Nearly every aspect of Thursday’s killing of Gaddafi was mired in confusion, a sign of the difficulties ahead for Libya. Its new rulers are disorganized, its people embittered and divided. But the ruling National Transitional Council said it would declare the country’s liberation on Saturday, the starting point for a timetable that calls for a new interim government within a month and elections within eight months.
The top UN rights chief raised concerns that Gaddafi may have been shot to death after being captured alive. The fate of his body seemed tied up in squabbles among Libya’s factions, as fighters from Misrata – a city brutally besieged by Gaddafi’s forces during the civil war – seemed to claim ownership of it, forcing the delay of a planned burial Friday.
I would like to suggest that the manner of Libya’s disposal of His Fearsome Feces may presage a violent future—more French Revolution than American—but upon reflection, Qaddafi’s death recalls that of Benito Mussolini after the fall of Italy’s fascist government. As much of an embarrassment as Italy’s succession of post-war governments has been, it would be a model of stability and decorum in any Arab country. Here’s hoping Libya can manage to be a shadow of Italy.
PS: Look who’s clarifying her remarks:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that she supports an investigation by the United Nations of the circumstances surrounding Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s death.
…
“From my perspective, such an investigation would be very important to establish accountability, rule of law and pave the way for the inclusive democratic future that the Libyans tell me that they want,” Clinton said.
What happened to “we came, we saw, he’s dead”? So much for the liberal value of every single life. Except for fetuses, Republicans, and Arab dictators, I guess.
Members of Libya’s Jewish community, who emigrated en masse to Israel, are happy to reminisce and cling to their cultural heritage but they have no nostalgia for fallen leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed by Libyan rebels Thursday.
In Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv, a group of around 20 elderly punters, who all emigrated from Libya, are sitting around tables in the local Sports Cafe for their weekly get-together.
“It’s the parliament of the Libya Jews,” chuckles cafe owner Sergio Duyeb.
This community, which now numbers around 180,000 people, immigrated to the Jewish state in three stages: After the 1945 pogrom in Tripoli, in the wake of the unrest which accompanied Israel’s creation in 1948, and following the Arab defeat during the 1967 Six-Day War.
While well integrated into Israeli society, many of them chat in Italian, a throwback to Libya’s colonial past when the North African country was ruled by Italy between 1911 and 1943.Sitting around the tables, the group suddenly breaks into song, then bursts out laughing as they belt out martial choruses from the Mussolini era.
“We will never forgive the Italian fascists for collaborating with the Third Reich,” says Meir Sayegh, a 69-year-old survivor of the Giado concentration camp, some 150 miles (250 kilometers) south of Tripoli, where more than 500 Libyan Jews died from abuse and a typhoid epidemic in 1942.
“Nor will we forget the massacres of Jews carried out by the Muslims in Libya, let alone Gaddafi’s abuses. He committed the worst of crimes by razing the graveyards where our grandparents were buried in order to build there,” says Nashte Gilboa, the bitterness evident in his voice.
Gilboa, who owns a commercial vineyard in southern Israel, has fond memories of the era of King Idris I in the period after Libya gained its independence in 1951 and before Gaddafi’s coup in 1969.
“Libya was a model of coexistence and tolerance,” he says.
Ah yes, that renowned Muslim tolerance and multiculturalism—all 18 years of it. Good times.
Actually, this story touches a couple of buried truths. Not just the abuses and pogroms against Jewish communities over the decades across the Middle East and North Africa, but the willing adoption of fascist ideology in so many of these countries. It still shapes their politics and their thinking to this day.
But Israel decides to put a spare bedroom over the garage, and it is demonized as an apartheid state. Hey, it’s your world, not mine.
Best point from James Taranto’s column today:
One difference between Obama’s foreign and domestic policies is that the former are conducted in a relatively economical fashion. National Journal reports that “according to the Pentagon, [this] was the cost to U.S. taxpayers for Muammar el-Qaddafi’s head: $1.1 billion through September, the latest figure just out of the Defense Department.”
At that rate, you could knock off 400 dictators for $440 billion–still less than Obama wants to waste on Stimulus Jr. That’s the best illustration yet of just how skewed this administration’s priorities are.
And not one cop was raped while a fire fighter was laid off while saving a teacher’s burning house during the kinetic military action.
He’s dead, who cares how he spells it? Eff ‘im.
There are reports that deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has been either captured or killed. This story is fast developing.
[Update 9:29 a.m. ET] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can’t confirm reports of Moammar Gadhafi’s capture or death. But she said on Thursday either development would “add legitimacy and relief to the formation of a new government” in Libya.
A former member of the Libyan National Transitional Council, Guma El-Gamaty, told CNN from London that Gadhafi is dead. “This is the end of the tyrant,” he said.
[Update 9:21 a.m. ET] Rebels said Moammar Gadhafi was killed when fighters attacked the house where he was Thursday, National Transitional Council Information Minister Mahmoud Shamman told CNN. “He tried to flee and they killed him. When they met him, he was alive and he was killed in action,” Shamman said. Shamman said the NTC’s chairman or prime minister will officially confirm the death.
Maybe this will convince Hillary:
Not to be insensitive, but he hasn’t looked that good in a long time. At least he has a little color in his cheeks.
First Helen Thomas, now Qaddafi. Watch out Garofalo, your next on BTL’s “hag list”. We always get our… woman. And Qaddafi was better dressed than you.
UPDATE:
Lest the O-bite-me team try to claim the scalp:
BREAKING: French defense chief says a French fighter jet fired on the convoy carrying Moammar Gadhafi.
And this lovely touch:
Amnesty International is calling for an inquiry into Gadhafi’s death.
Good, fellas, you do that. Maybe some of the less diseased among the liberals will cancel their memberships. Hah! That’ll be the day.
When the Obama presidency is buried (in January 2013), it’s epitaph will read: What was that all about?
Outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, while taking satisfaction that the NATO coalition has “dramatically attrited” Qadaffi’s forces, was still forced to use the term stalemate in describing the situation in Libya. The current stalemate and the knowledge that it will not be broken in the next few weeks due to desert temperatures ballooning to 45-50 centigrade (115°F) and the Muslim month of Ramadan approaching (where the believers abstain from fighting), is motivation to search for a diplomatic way out.
Yesterday, British foreign Secretary William Hague admitted that Britain would not insist on Qadaffi going into exile. Currently the position has softened into “Our position is that the best way of showing the Libyan people that they would no longer live in fear of Qaddafi would be for him to leave Libya. (But) whatever happens Qaddafi must leave power.”
In this respect Hague has now aligned itself with the French position. Last week French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, interviewed on French news channel LCI, floated the idea“One of the possibilities is that he (Qadaffi) remains in Libya…But on the condition that he stays away from Libyan political life. This is what we are waiting for before we begin the political process for a cease-fire.” The ceasefire would commence following
“A formal and clear commitment by Qaddafi to give up his civil and military responsibilities.”
It took us “days [130 by my count Ed.], not weeks” to get to where we started? Unbelievable.
No, I mean that. I can’t believe it. What was that all about?
It’s there, though under wraps, so to speak:
Following are excerpts from an interview with Saudi columnist Princess Basma bin Saud bin Abd Al-Aziz Aal Saud, which aired on BBC Arabic TV on June 28, 2011:
We are familiar with Islamic customs, and we return to the Koran in order to know our rights as Muslims – men and women alike. What is being practiced de facto in our Arab societies is a tribal legacy, not an Islamic one. What is permitted is clear, and what is forbidden is clear, and punishments should be the same for men and women.
What we see today, however, is that the woman is always punished, the woman is treated with violence. Thus, our society becomes a violent society, because the woman who suffers violence is the one who raises the children. She raises men and women. What will become of these future generations, if they are raised by women who suffer violence and subjugation, within a system of laws that do not, in fact, exist in our shari’a?
Wow! How long before the “modesty police” beat some sense into her? But that won’t happen, of course. If you didn’t notice, she has two Sauds in her name, and calls herself a princess. She’s connected (a point she makes herself later).
Any other Mohammedan honeys burning their burkhas?
Following are excerpts from an Al-Arabiya TV program on the military training of pro-Qadhafi housewives, which aired on June 20, 1011.
Reporter: Huda Abd Al-Qadr is a Libyan housewife in her twenties from the city of Sirte. For two weeks, she has been leaving her home every day to participate in a weapons training course.
This kind of course takes place in various places in Libya, and its purpose is to train women of all ages and walks of life in dismantling and assembling weapons, as well as in firing light and heavy weapons.
Libyan housewife Huda Abd Al-Qadr: I have been training for ten days in the use of light weapons – 9 mm, sub-machine guns, Kalashnikovs, RPGs, as well as RGD 5 and F1 grenades.
…
Libyan army officer Fatima Sabah Baraka: Women must train in the use of weapons, just like their brothers, the men, in order to protect themselves, their land, and their honor. We have trained in the use of several light and heavy weapons.
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Libyan housewife Ibtisam Uthman: We were trained at school, which was not so long ago. We were trained in the use of light weapons, in order to defend our country and our Leader.
Reporter: The armed participants did not miss the opportunity to protest Al-Arabiya TV’s coverage of the events in Libya.
Libyan army officer Fatima Sabah Baraka: You, on Al-Arabiya TV, must show the truth, or at least a small part of the truth… The truth is that we love Mu’ammar Al-Qadhafi.
What’s not to love?
Mark Steyn at NRO’s The Corner:
Daniel, re Lindsey Graham’s suggestion that everyone should just “shut up” about the Libyan Non-War, you’ll recall that the last time the Senator attracted any attention in these parts he was also telling everyone to shut up – this time about Islam. Maybe it would be easier if he just issued the rest of us with an approved list of conversational topics.
Alternatively, here’s a suggestion for Senator Graham: Why don’t you shut up? Not permanently, but just long enough to:
a) reflect whether this apparently reflexive response of yours is really appropriate for a citizen-legislator in a self-governing republic;
b) articulate a rationale for the Libyan mission that would be so persuasive it would save you the trouble of making a fool of yourself by insisting that those who have the temerity to disagree with you are beyond the bounds of public discourse;
and c) spend ten minutes in a darkened room with a nice cup of herbal tea and ponder, re your assertion that those who won’t “shut up” are “empowering Qaddafi”, whether that line has any credibility coming from a member of the Congressional jet set who only two years ago was “empowering Qaddafi” by taking tea in the pock-marked transvestite’s tent as part of some greasy little Senatorial outreach mission.
A delegation of U.S. senators led by John McCain met with Libya’s leader Friday to discuss the possible delivery of non-lethal defense equipment.
The visit and Washington’s offer of military equipment was another sign of the improving ties between the former longtime adversaries.“We discussed the possibility of moving ahead with the provision of non-lethal defense equipment to the government of Libya,” McCain said at a news conference. He gave no details on the kind of military equipment Washington is offering.
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McCain, however, said the U.S. remained concerned about Libya’s record on human rights and political reform.
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The U.S. State Department’s 2008 human rights report on Libya says problems include reported disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests and the detention of political prisoners. The report also cites a lack of civil liberties, restrictions on freedom of religion and discrimination against women and ethnic minorities.
Still, McCain said, “ties between the United States and Libya have taken a remarkable and positive turn in recent years.”The American delegation also included Sens.Joseph Lieberman, Susan Collins and Lindsay Graham.
Those who forget how stupid their senators are are condemned to reelect them. That was less than two years ago.
The government has confirmed that Libyan leader Col Gaddafi will not be attending the London 2012 Olympics.
Tickets are due to be allocated to Libya’s National Olympic Committee (NOC), but the UK government said an EU travel ban would prevent members of the Libyan government from attending.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it had not yet handed over any tickets to Libya’s NOC.
Well, he might make it—or little pieces of him anyway.
But I doubt Mo’s losing any sleep over it. The nocturnal bombardments are another story…
Bob Dylan’s unwritten verse:
How many days can a man wage war
Without Congressional assent?
Yes’n how many ways can he flout the War Powers Act
‘fore we hear a word of dissent?
The answer my friend lies in blowin’ up Mo’s kids.
The answer lies in blowin’ up Mo’s kids:
The US and France are joined in their determination to “finish the job” in Libya, Barack Obama has said at the G8 summit in France.
The US president said that meeting the UN resolution could not be achieved while Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi was still in power.
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In a joint news conference, Mr Obama said both countries agreed that progress had been made in the campaign in Libya.
But, he added, “meeting the UN mandate of civilian protection cannot be accomplished when Gaddafi remains in Libya, directing his forces in acts of aggression against the Libyan people”.
“We are joined in resolve to finish the job.”
However, he did not provide further details about how they would successfully bring the campaign to a close.
Further details? How about any details?
Hey, you want to kill Qaddafi’s whole family, fine with me. Just make sure you get his gown designer too. But there is this little thing known as… oh shoot, what’s it called? Congress! That’s it, Congress. Anyhow, you’re supposed to consult with them. Before you finish one job, you might want to start another.