Ruth King

In December 2003, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, sobered by the fate of Saddam Hussein, announced that he would dismantle his weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. His gesture was followed by easing of an economic embargo and in June 2004 the State Department opened a liaison office in Libya’s capital and reestablished diplomatic relations after a twenty-five year hiatus.

At the UN Libya established a presence in the Human Rights Council and became a member of the Security Council. On January 3, 2008, capping Libya’s steep ascent to respectability Libya’s ambassador to the UN became President of the Security Council.

Abdel-Rahman Shalqam, Libya’s Foreign Minister, has made the Washington A list, gushing: "We don't speak anymore about war or confrontation or terrorism. No, the contrary: wealth of the people, cooperation, investments, peace and stability." He got all sorts of goodies from the State Department.

But who is Qaddafi—besides being the new man on Condi’s block? First of all, he is a man of many spellings: Moammar Kaddaf, Qaddafi, Al Khatafi, El Ghadafi, and my very favorite, from his site, Al Ghatafi. Why the media, which has adapted names without vowels among Slavic leaders cannot get a single spelling is a mystery but for purposes of this article I’ll just call him Muammar.

In 1969, a youthful twenty seven year-old, Muammar led a coup against Libya’s King Idris and established himself as the nation’s leader. He was too modest to declare himself king so he holds the titles "Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah" and "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution.”

A fervent Moslem, Muammar blends faith, crackpot socialism and absolute power. All foreign bases, including British and American bases, were closed; cutting off hands for theft was reinstituted; gambling and alcohol were outlawed; and to further blend into the Arab neighborhood all Jewish property was confiscated and all Christian churches closed.

Muammar saw himself as the natural messiah of the movement to forge pan Arab/Islamic unity from “the Atlantic to the Gulf.” By the mid-1980s he was regarded in the West as the principal financier of international terrorism. He reportedly financed “Black September” and the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics and is also said to have arranged the bombing of a disco in Berlin in 1986 where a large number of the injured were United States servicemen. He has confessed to Libya’s complicity in the bombing of Pan Am’s Flight 103 in 1988 where 270 civilians were killed, offering compensation to relatives of the victims. He has had more than 300 dissidents, including journalists, assassinated in exile and was a member of the top ten in the list of world’s worst dictators.

This is how Freedom House appraised him in 2003: “The state owns all media, criticism of government policy is forbidden, political trials are secret, and torture is common.” One year later he only won “honorable mention” among the top ten: Freedom House stated: “He gave up his nuclear weapons program and is opening his nation’s economy to foreign investment. Yet at home he continues to run a brutal dictatorship, maintaining total control over all aspects of Libyan life. Freedom of speech, assembly and religion are harshly restricted. Entire families, tribes and even towns can be punished for ‘collective guilt.’ Political opposition and damaging public or private property are considered ‘crimes against the state.’”

However, to show he’s contrite, after an ordeal of nine years, Muammar released Bulgarian medics who had been jailed for “deliberately” infecting children with AIDS. Their descriptions of confessions extracted under torture are hair-raising.

Although his credentials as an enemy of Israel keep him ensconced in the Arab League, Arab rulers with ambitions of their own rejected him and he turned his attention to meddling in the affairs of other African nations. He was involved in dozens of revolutions which soaked the soil of Africa in blood and actually invaded Chad in 1973. (He was finally forced to leave in 1994.)

In addition to Idi Amin, one of his best pals was Charles Taylor, the war lord of Liberia, who is responsible for the deaths of 200,000 and the dislocation of more than two million people in a country of 6,000,000. Muammar gave Taylor safe passage and ran arms for him. He has denounced Taylor’s trial for crimes against humanity at the UN War Crimes Tribunal on the grounds it would set “an unacceptable precedent that threatened all African leaders.” Well, what are friends for?

The State Department air-brushes his history of brutality by calling him “flamboyant”….read that as nuts.

A “Brotherly Leader and Guide” needs security and like the King of Dahomey of yore he maintains an all female army of body guards called the “Amazon” division. Although Muammar is a devout Moslem they do not cover their faces. They are well coiffed and look like Charlie’s Angels in flak suits. They run in place and demonstrate skills in judo and combat, ready to kill anyone who comes within ten feet of Muammar. Of course his new buddies such as Chavez, Blair and Sarkozy are given a wider berth.

His interesting children own and run everything. Muammar's only daughter Ayesha is one of the lawyers who served as defense counsel for Saddam Hussein. Eldest son Mohammed owns all the telecommunication companies in Libya. Mutasim-Billah, another son, masterminded an Egyptian-backed coup attempt against his father. Muammar forgave him and he is now national security adviser, also heading his very own unit within the army. Son Hannibal was involved in a series of violent incidents throughout Europe, including charges for beating up his pregnant girlfriend. Boys will be boys and one of them is slated to eventually run Libya—via elections, of course.

Muammar changes his gold-threaded robes continually and, according to Bob Woodward, has been spotted cross-dressing. In his book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 Woodward quotes a CIA agent describing Muammar in high heels and make-up in Spain. Others have described an event where Muammar stumbled when walking up a podium because he was wearing high heeled ladies’ shoes.

Muammar is also a literary scholar. In 1980 he declared that Shakespeare was really an Arab poet whose name was Sheik El Zubeir.

Muammar’s Magnus opus is the Green Book, a guide to living, governing and everything else in three volumes, which is required reading in Libyan schools. In his own words, the book is “a guide for the whole of humanity, not just Libya.”

Among the Green Book’s pearls of wisdom and erudition are the following observations:

The Arts? “If one group of people wears white clothes in mourning and another group puts on black, the sentiment of each group will be adjusted according to these two colours, i.e., one group rejects the black colour on such an occasion while the other one prefers it, and vice versa. Such a sentiment leaves its physical effect on the cells as well as on the genes in the body. This adaptation will be transmitted by inheritance.”

Biology? “Women are females and men are males. According to gynecologists, women menstruate every month or so, while men, being male, do not menstruate or suffer during the monthly period.”

Religion? “Religion contains tradition, and tradition is an expression of the natural life of the people. Therefore, religion is an affirmation of natural laws which are discerned therein. Laws which are not premised on religion and tradition are merely an invention by man to be used against his fellow man. Consequently, such laws are invalid because they do not emanate from the natural source of tradition and religion.”

I could go on but you get the picture of this Renaissance man.

Shortly after the opening of diplomatic relations with the U.S., Muammar issued an edict that all his opponents will be killed wherever they are.

Nonetheless, he is already slated to be one of Condoleezza Rice’s new “moderate” friends. Well, if she can take tea with Holocaust denier terrorists such as Abbas, it is only logical that the welcome mat will be extended to Muammar. He was even invited to Annapolis.