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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Gadaffi Dead or Captured

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102Comments

  3. 3.

    c u n d gulag

    If it’s true, and the scumbag didn’t run away, then I guess the captain decided to go down with his shit!

  8. 8.

    Brandon

    Who will be the first firebagger to cite this photo as a Geneva Convention violation? Which makes Obama a war criminal ipso facto. Gotta be Greenwald.

  10. 10.

    Scott

    Won’t just be FDL — Limbaugh and the rest of his hangers-on will bewail that devil Obama turning on one of our greatest allies…

  15. 15.

    amk

    @Brandon: gee gee is frothing at his mouth and is assaulting his key board as we speak.

    Of course, assad-is-my-bosom-buddy kucinich will bring on an impeach obama motion in the congress …yet again.

  20. 20.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @lol: Well, if he’d offered his head to the monks first, this wouldn’t be an issue.

  21. 21.

    JPL

    An author who writes about Libya is being questioned on France24/news and said the picture certainly looks like Gaddafi and if it is “he appears to be in bad shape”.
    Really!

  24. 24.

    wilfred

    I don’t think people in the US have any idea what a big deal this is for Arabs, what the whole Arab Spring continues to be. Seven or eight months ago these guys had nothing. Now they’ve managed to overthrow a tyrant with tons of money, enough to have a secret police that was as suffocating as anything in the Arab world, and that’s saying something.

    These guys are fucking heroes. They took on a tyrant and beat him. Miracles do happen – let that be a lesson to everyone in the street.

  26. 26.

    Butch

    Would love it if someone would ask McCain about his “interesting meeting, interesting man” comment after he met with Gadafi a couple of years ago.

  27. 27.

    Elizabelle

    @wilfred:

    Yes, the Arab youth and rebels and and anti-Qaddafi civilians deserve credit.

    OT: kinda wish the GOP debate was tonight so that someone could ask those ridiculous candidates about Obama vs. GWBush on foreign policy outcomes.

  30. 30.

    wilfred

    It’s no use politicizing this. I saw on one of the Arab stations that they also captured one of his sons, the 5th one they said, and then they showed a picture of this son shaking hands with Hilary Clinton.

    We’re still supporting the emir of Bahrain and the Saudis, who are as bad as Qadhafi. Better to just feel good for the Libyans today.

  32. 32.

    chopper

    wheth you agree with the bombing of Libya or not, it’s instructive to see the diffrences between Obama and bush in terms of this sort of mission. hopefully there’s a great difference in how the country rebuilds.

  33. 33.

    wilfred

    @Chopper:

    Better wait a few days. Now they’re saying that there will have to be ‘close monitoring’ of the next stages in Libya. Qadhafi had huge stockpiles of sophisticated weapons, especially SAMS, which were useless against Nato planes but could easily be used against civilian airplanes by…you guessed it – al q’aida.
    I just heard someone say all that on al jazira

  35. 35.

    Hawes

    Firebaggers and Limbaugh have already moved on to our NEXT quagmire in Uganda. Libya is so April.

    There’s a middle ground between doing Shock and Awe and saying “Aw, shucks, what can you do?” The West can help level the field against sociopaths like Qaddafi and Kony. What we shouldn’t do – and haven’t been doing for the last three years – is telling them what comes next.

    We can be the “world’s SWAT team” without being imperialist.

  36. 36.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    @lol:

    ABC is reporting he accidentally died in custody from his injuries after being beheaded.

    I know it gruesome but that’s funny.

  37. 37.

    wilfred

    Oh, dear. But we never act as the world’s SWAT team unless it serves some interest connected to our imperialist ambitions. If that were not the case, we’d have intervened in Syria, and Bahrain, and Yemen, where people are being gunned down and the street and doctors are locked up for treating them.

    Uganda? I hear that intervention is to guarantee Uganda’s support against the Palestinian Statehood resolution and its efforts to convince its neighbors to do the same.

  38. 38.

    cat48

    Sen Grassley on TV & has decided that he approves of the Libya Mission & states the UN Resolution sufficed b/c the US has a Treaty with the UN & no other approval needed. Good to know after months of hullabaloo from Congress. Also, too, Uganda Mission is great with him too! Good to know.

  39. 39.

    Yevgraf

    Clearly, Obama is a neophyte who has no business running foreign policy.

    Here’s an awesome question for your next cocktail party – what is the greatest difference between George W Bush, John Bolton, Dick Cheney, Dick Armey, Nino Scalia, Jane Fonda and Clarence Thomas?

    Unlike any of the men, Jane actually went to Vietnam.

  40. 40.

    Yevgraf

    @wilfred:

    h, dear. But we never act as the world’s SWAT team unless it serves some interest connected to our imperialist ambitions. If that were not the case, we’d have intervened in Syria, and Bahrain, and Yemen, where people are being gunned down and the street and doctors are locked up for treating them.

    You do what is feasible, and don’t throw yourself at the impossible.

  41. 41.

    cleek

    @wilfred:

    I hear that intervention is to guarantee Uganda’s support against the Palestinian Statehood resolution and its efforts to convince its neighbors to do the same.

    and i hear that many conspiracy theories are made up by people looking to justify pre-existing biases.

    heaven forbid we just want to help get rid of a murderous band of villains.

  42. 42.

    ericblair

    @cat48:

    Sen Grassley on TV & has decided that he approves of the Libya Mission & states the UN Resolution sufficed b/c the US has a Treaty with the UN & no other approval needed.

    Nice to see he finally figured out which way the wind was blowing on this one. I mean, you expect Congressional spinelessness, but refusing to authorize the Libyan action and then funding it anyways really marked a new low for those assholes.

  44. 44.

    wilfred

    I heard that at a reception at the American Embassy in the country where I live. The LRA has been in Uganda a long time, why now?

    You might have heard that the US is exerting great pressure to get the UN General Assembly. Only a person capable of critical thinking could ask why it suddenly became an urgent need.

    That would exclude you. You remain an eternal stupid twat.

  45. 45.

    cat48

    @ericblair:

    With a few exceptions, the current Congress is just embarrassing. Even Dick Lugar has gone bad. I think he has a Primary challenge by a Teapublican. But still…..

  46. 46.

    Culture of Truth

    Indeed, why politicize the overthrow of a political figure done by political activists backed by politicians in other countries using their nation’s armed forces?

  47. 47.

    JPL

    AlJazeera has a video of the capture and death of Gaddafi. It’s not safe for the workplace and in fact it’s not safe to watch at all.

  48. 48.

    wilfred

    @Culture of Truth.

    Hmm. A fair question. Here’s one reason. Until the news broke about Qadhafi, the big news was the snickering over Hilary Clinton lecturing the Taliban about how they should enter into negotiations and power sharing with the Afghan government.

    You remember the Taliban, right? The group that we mounted the big surge against, only to find that we could not beat them and are now getting ready to leave and are worried the whole surge thing was a waste of time, vide Clinton?

    Nah.

  49. 49.

    wilfred

    @JPL:

    It’s been on al jazira Arabic for a while. It’s veru un-Islamic; they’re being castigated for it, and rightly so.

  50. 50.

    Scott P.

    From the Guardian blog:

    Al-Jazeera is now showing a close-up of Gaddafi’s face. He does not seem to be alive.

    We cannot confirm his death.

  53. 53.

    salacious crumb

    well Obama got his blood and revenge for the latest election ..it will all be gloriously capped off by either USA or Israel attacking Iran..

    and then ABL and Harris-Lacewell will scream about how attacking Iran was justified and if anyone complains, they are racist.

  54. 54.

    Linda Featheringill

    AlJazeera seems to be convinced that Gaddafi is dead. The guy in the pictures seems dead. I guess the only question is whether it’s really Gaddafi.

    I suppose somebody will eventually do a DNA test. The world has possession of some of Gaddafi’s children, yes?

  56. 56.

    wilfred

    @Linda Featheringill

    Maybe. Another take is that the rebels would not take the chance that Qadhafi would be tried and end up dying well – the way Saddam did. I doubt any AMerican news organ ever mentioned it but the fact is that despite his crimes Saddam died like a Muslim is supposed to. The video of his hanging helped his supporters. Oh, and in the interest of conspiracy theorists, at least those in the pockets of the Americans, a dead Qadhafi can’t tell any tales of what Libya has been up to in petroleum traffic these past 10 years.

    @Salacious Crumb:

    Smart money is mid-November. Obama has certainly been belligerent enough lately. It’s actually why I’m posting so much lately.

  57. 57.

    Sentient Puddle

    @JPL:

    AlJazeera has a video of the capture and death of Gaddafi. It’s not safe for the workplace and in fact it’s not safe to watch at all.

    Indeed, if you watch it, Gaddafi will crawl out of your monitor seven days later, and…it won’t end well.

  58. 58.

    bjacques

    That leaves Saif al-Islam, who’s bad news. If he’s at large, most likely across the border, he’ll be running werewolves (but probably not suicide bombers). Aisha too, if she has any cash left after funding her lifestyle and keeping the local thugs paid off.

    Mutassim too, I suppose.

    I wouldn’t watch the video of Saddam Hussein being hanged, maybe out of a tiny bit of respect for his showing more class there than he’d shown his entire life (and more than his executioners did).

    Gadhafi’s Mussolini-headkicky video is hard to watch, too. But he went easy compared to how his victims went.

    2011 looks a lot like 1848, with somewhat better results, and it’s still only October.

  59. 59.

    Judas Escargot

    I love how the Libya issue crosscuts diagonally across the right/left divide here in the US. If Bush were still President, the Right would be crowing about how they had ‘gotten’ Bin Laden and Qadaffi within six months of each other. But they can’t do that now, can they? All hat, no cattle, as the saying goes.

    Meanwhile, so many on the left are so reflexively against intervention of any kind, they can’t help claim this as yet another foreign policy victory. IMO, the Obama administration and NATO handled this one perfectly. Now let’s hope they stick to their word, and get the hell out of Libya’s affairs once things stabilize there.

    But this isn’t about us: Let’s see what kind of government they form there now.

    Good freaking luck to them.

  60. 60.

    expatoz

    Yes for Libya….and thank you “judas” for being the first to remember that this is about them.

  61. 61.

    bjacques

    The Libyans really did it. Not pushed the leader aside or chased him out of the country, but capped him. They had help, but it’s their victory.

    As for the aftermath, people seem to be better at organizing themselves than they used to be, and here’s hoping that helps the Libyans build a functioning government almost from scratch. On the plus side, most of the infrastructure is still intact, and they have lots of cash.

  62. 62.

    Draylon Hogg

    BBC news interviewed a rebel who claimed he was shot with a 9mm pistol whilst emerging from a drain. There’s been footage of rebels with a golden pistol alleged to be Gadaffi’s. BBC also saying he was alive but died from his injuries with his body kicked about by a mob and then thrown onto a pickup. Also reporting Saif fled in a convoy which has been encircled by rebels. No doubt his corpse will be on display pretty soon as well. Live by the sword…

  63. 63.

    CarolDuhart

    @bjacques:As for the aftermath, people seem to be better at organizing themselves than they used to be.

    One reason is that people now have access by the internet to some of the documents and history of other governments’s forming. They can see what worked, what the challenges were, and how things turned out by just reading about it. Not only that, but there’s international resources a nation can turn to: the UN, various civic organizations, an engaged ex-pat community that has learned a thing or two. In 1776 and 1789 there was nothing except a few old Greek and Roman texts and a lot of theorizing.

    So things should turn out better. But the trauma of those 40 years leaves scars that are hard to heal. The cost simply to help those who have been brutalized by the previous regime will be immense in so many ways.

  64. 64.

    salacious crumb

    @mikefromArlington: no trollin here buddy…just speaking my feelings..if we had no business in iraq we have no business in libya..unjustified murder of a tyrant..we should played no role…helps during election season..with another killing of Muslims..dirty Arab bites the dust.

  65. 65.

    Draylon Hogg

    @64

    Both the American and British oil industries will be cock a hoop when the new and more reasonable regime invite them in to exploit those.reserves.

  67. 67.

    expatoz

    Could you for one moment not make this about USA and your politics and think about how the majority of people in Libya feel to not have to live under that man again?

  69. 69.

    WeeBey

    @salacious crumb:

    This makes not fucking sense.

    We provided air support in Libya.

    We had been providing air support in Iraq for decades before Bush invaded — and everyone sane thought it was a pretty good idea.

    Smarter monkeys, please.

  71. 71.

    fasteddie9318

    @wilfred:

    Uganda? I hear that intervention is to guarantee Uganda’s support against the Palestinian Statehood resolution and its efforts to convince its neighbors to do the same.

    I hear that the Ugandans stumbled unexpectedly on a huge vein of pure vibranium, and the move against God’s Holy Army of Child Enslavement is all about winning the mining concession for American mining concerns.

  72. 72.

    fasteddie9318

    OH NOES ALQAEDAJAZEERA JUST INTERVIEWED A BROWN MAN IN LIBYA WHO SAID “DIRKA DIRKA ALLAH DIRKA” THAT’S THEIR TERRORIST GOD THEY’RE ALL TERRORISTS I’M SO TERRIFIED SOMEBODY PLEASE HOLD ME!

    /wingnut

  73. 73.

    salacious crumb

    @WeeBey: and u r telling me that the rebels would have without our air support?

    its interesting that you have to resort to name calling because I criticize Obama. no different than GOP, my dear friend.

  75. 75.

    Mike G

    So glad the Tinpot Chimp is no longer in office, so we’re not treated to a credit-hogging, bombastic comic-book-language speech with dozens of repetitions of the words “freedom” and “justice” and “resolve”.

    “The terrists are terrizin’. In other words, we’re bein’ terrized by terrists!”

  76. 76.

    fasteddie9318

    @Mike G: If Bush were still in office, none of this would have happened. Bush thought Gadhafi was a model Muslim leader.

  77. 77.

    WeeBey

    @salacious crumb:

    Again, that makes no fucking sense.

    The two situations aren’t comparable, and to the extent they are, they argue prima facie directly against what you’re asserting.

    You’re either too dumb to see that or just a troll. I don’t care which.

    And I ain’t your fucking friend.

  78. 78.

    Kyle

    People now have access by the internet to some of the documents and history of other governments’s forming. They can see what worked, what the challenges were, and how things turned out by just reading about it.

    And if they’re Republicans, ignore that trove of scary, elitist commie “knowledge and experience” and retreat into magical-thinking, bigotry, endless invocations of Jeebus and blindly following authoritarian ideologies like dumb sheep.

  79. 79.

    Mnemosyne

    @salacious crumb:

    and u r telling me that the rebels would have without our air support?

    Would have what? Given the arsenal available to Ghaddafi and the mercenaries he was able to hire, I seriously doubt that the rebels would have been able to win if NATO and the Arab League hadn’t been willing to level the playing field and put the two sides on a more even footing.

    NATO and the Arab League gave some crucial assistance, but this is not our victory — this is the Libyan people’s victory.

  80. 80.

    fasteddie9318

    Thank Allah Jeebus that President McCain has issued a statement on the death of Gadhafi. The nation can’t fully process an event like this without relying on President McCain’s sage wisdom.

    What? Obama is going to issue a statement? For fuck’s sake, does that asshole have to strut around and hog the spotlight about everything? Can’t he ever just shut the fuck up?

    /wingnut

  81. 81.

    fasteddie9318

    @Mnemosyne:

    Would have what? Given the arsenal available to Ghaddafi and the mercenaries he was able to hire, I seriously doubt that the rebels would have been able to win if NATO and the Arab League hadn’t been willing to level the playing field and put the two sides on a more even footing.

    I’m not sure “doubt” even factors into it. The rebels were a week or two, at most, from being run to ground before the air campaign started.

    Er, I mean, OBAMA IS AN EVIL DICTATOR WAR MONGER! THE PEOPLE’S POPULAR FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF JUDEA WILL NOT STAND FOR HIS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AGGRESSION!

  82. 82.

    CarolDuhart

    @Mike G: That’s one of the things I like about Obama. His gentlemanly restraint. No chest-thumping exercise in humiliation that riles up people who feel humiliated already. That’s one of the dozen reasons why Ghadaffi’s, Osama’s, and other such deaths haven’t riled up the Middle East street. Respect and graciousness.

    Am I the only one who has noticed that Obama is pursuing a double-track policy on ending terrorism? On one hand he’s killing the psychotic leaders and immediate threats: on the other he’s helping people overthrow the leaders who are creating the hopelessness and rage that give the terrorist groups their recruiting ideology. The result could be decades of peace and prosperity in the Middle East, and an eventual end to the hyper-security due to 911. Al Queda is no more powerful than a street gang without the dictators oppressing everybody.

  83. 83.

    Judas Escargot

    @salacious crumb:

    just speaking my feelings..if we had no business in iraq we have no business in libya.

    What do your “feelings” have to do with foreign policy, kimosabe?

    The Libyan insurgency explicitly asked (in fact, almost begged) for US/NATO help. Iraq had no rebellion worth mentioning in 2002/2003, and we weren’t wanted there.

    These are two completely different cases. “Apples and Oranges”, as everyone’s new favorite saying goes.

  85. 85.

    fasteddie9318

    @Paul in KY: No, everybody knows that the unobtainium was in Germany, but we smuggled most of it out along with the Vogon starship technology that the Nazis had reverse engineered.

  90. 90.

    David Koch

    Families of those slaughtered in the bombing of PAN-AM 103 are hailing Obama.

    Even more evidence of the need to primary Obama with John Edwards.

  91. 91.

    David Koch

    Former Bush advisers are on tee vee complaining that Obama didn’t do it right.

    Hilarious, considering how they let bin Laden escape and how they fucked up Iraq.

  92. 92.

    liberal

    @Yevgraf:

    Yawn. This argument might hold a little water except for the wee fact that in many cases we actually _aid_ the bad guys.

  93. 93.

    CarolDuhart

    @Lydgate:These wars are ending. Libya’s over. We will be out of Iraq New Year’s Day. I doubt if Uganda will take more than a few weeks. Afghanistan is beginning a drawdown, and if Hillary can get the Taliban and the Afghan Government to terms, that could end even sooner than 2014. Yemen is just drones, and that should end fairly soon. So much for endless war.

    Really, you should stop hating on the guy so much, pretending he’s the incompetent Bush. Maybe that’s the problem, though.

  94. 94.

    Dream On

    “Yemen is just drones”

    I’m sure the people who get killed and maimed by them will appreciate the difference.

  95. 95.

    Lydgate

    @CarolDuhart:
    Exactly. It is about hating the guy. Nothing to do with actions. Just a lizard brain reaction.
    And I’m sure you would be thrilled with all these adventures whether it was Bush or Obama in charge.
    Eh, maybe you would. I mean you did write “Yemen is just drones” and “I doubt Uganda will take more than a few weeks”.

  96. 96.

    David Koch

    Leftys hate military intervention. That’s fine. I can see and respect that view. Yet, at the same time, Leftys worship Franklin Roosevelt, who was a big warmonger.

    He spent a fortune going nuclear. He fire bombed civilian populations. He brutally dropped napalm on women and children. He armed England and China in violation of the Neutrality Acts in 1940 and 1941. He hung German saboteurs. He authorized his buddy J. Edgar Hoover to engage in warrantless wiretaps. He made a series of provocative acts threatening Japan, leading to their “preemptive” strike at Pearl Harbor. He turned to right wing fascists like MacArthur and Patton, who killed Americans at the Bonus March. He imprisoned American citizens in concentration camps for simply being Japanese.

    Not only are all of his atrocities white washed, he’s worshiped.

    At some point you have to look into the mirror and accept that it’s a contradiction to hail FDR, while opposing militarism.

  99. 99.

    slightly-peeved

    @97: not to speak for him, but that many people on this blog who are unhappy with Obama would, given their standards, be unhappy with every U.S. President?

  100. 100.

    Karen

    If Obama cured cancer, the Obama haters on the left and right would be talking about how Obama was either evil for curing it or criticized for not curing it yesterday.

    If Obama does anything good, it’s never good enough or he’s Satan for doing it.

    The Obama haters on the left are as much zombies as the Obama haters on the right.

    If G-d forbid, a child was being kidnapped and he saw it and shot the kidnapper dead, the OH on the right would talk about how kidnapping is a first amendment issue and the OH on the left would say that Obama was just saving the child to be elected President again.

    As much as I loathe the Obama Haters on the right, at least they’re honest about it to people’s faces. They would dance in the streets if something was to happen to Obama. The Obama Haters on the left would be dancing just as hard and with as much glee but they wouldn’t publicly because they’re aware that to their frustration not everyone on the left is an Obama Hater and are be afraid of the backlash.

    And those who deny it are either ignoring the comments I’ve seen on KOS, FDL and other left OH blogs or they’re pretending they’re not there.

  101. 101.

    Karen

    @David Koch:

    Franklin Roosevelt was a war criminal. The biggest war criminal in US history. A mass murderer. Deal.

    Not that I agree with you about anything else Koch but FDR was also an anti-semite who turned away boats filled with Jewish people fleeing the Holocaust.

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