Althouse: "Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is believed to have fled the capital Tripoli after anti-government demonstrators breached the state television building and set government property alight."

February 21, 2011

"Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is believed to have fled the capital Tripoli after anti-government demonstrators breached the state television building and set government property alight."

"It is thought up to 400 people may have died..."

48 comments:

Triangle Man said...: Is Saudi Arabia (I assume) going to build some sort of retirement community for these bozos?; 2/21/11, 11:17 AM
Scott M said...: Maybe he can get Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi to protect him. I hear that guy owes Gaddafi big time.

Definitely a bad time to be a dictator in the middle-east.; 2/21/11, 11:17 AM
Scott M said...: I keep hoping something will catch on in, for instance, Venezuela, but I'm not holding my breath. If it did, where, oh where, would Sean Penn go to commiserate?; 2/21/11, 11:18 AM
Tim said...: How much longer until Obama demands Libya's rightful leader be restored to power, as he did for Honduras?; 2/21/11, 11:19 AM
John henry said...: Drudge has a picture of Khaddify at the top of the page. I remembered him from times past as not a bad looking man.

This picture looks like Keith Richards on a bad day.

Not good at all.

John Henry; 2/21/11, 11:24 AM
KCFleming said...: This is the international crisis that Biden said we had to gird our loins for, the one that would test the mettle of a half-term Senator from Illinois.

Should be a shitty roller coaster ride, with oil, gas, and food prices skyrocketing.

I hope the Libyans have better days ahead, but I fear otherwise. I pray for them and for us, led as we are by President who is all trees, and no forest.; 2/21/11, 11:24 AM
OneLifeLiveIt said...: This is one of those moments where you are seeing history being made right in front of your eyes... Tunisia , Egypt , Bahrain , Libya , Algeria , Yemen , Iran , Iraq and others all pushing various forms of popular revolts at the same time! Amazing and good to see these autocrats being thrown out of power.; 2/21/11, 11:26 AM
Kirby Olson said...: The problem is they have a winner take all mentality, and this doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be a democratic pluralist outcome: it probably means the opposite of that in many cases. If we do get pluralist outcomes, then I think the credit goes to W, and to PNAC.

It will be the equivalent of what Reagan did for the East Bloc.; 2/21/11, 11:33 AM
Automatic_Wing said...: If Saudi Arabia goes revolutionary, it's definitely gird your loins time.

Not to worry, Obama's got top men on the job, figuring out how to protect our national interests. Top. Men.; 2/21/11, 11:33 AM
HT said...: HR Watch is saying 253 based on last night's numbers. They can't get in touch with reliable sources today.

Gaddafi is strange looking. He is an oddity even among dictators. In no way would I ever say he is good looking. Among other things, he ruins any looks he may have with blacker than black hair dye, horrible hair styling and bad clothes.; 2/21/11, 11:37 AM
Anonymous said...: The reports out of Libya are horrifying -- foreign mercenaries firing on civilians and airplanes firing on and bombing protesters. Al Jazeera is reporting a massacre in Green Square.

It is time for President Obama to make a forceful statement condemning this brutality. It is time for the US to make a stand for our values.; 2/21/11, 11:43 AM
Phil 314 said...: Not wanting to be the Arab Ceausescu.; 2/21/11, 11:45 AM
Chennaul said...: Daniel Foster at NRO is reporting this:

Reuters has a flash report quoting British foreign minister William Hague, who says he has seen intelligence that suggests Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi has already fled the capital in Tripoli and is en route to Venezuela.; 2/21/11, 11:46 AM
Scott M said...: Qaddafi has already fled the capital in Tripoli and is en route to Venezuela.

Game-changer. Venezuela isn't immune to populism any more than any of the tinpot middle-eastern versions were/are.; 2/21/11, 11:49 AM
Peter V. Bella said...: Gaddafi is probably on his way to Madison to help settle the protests there.; 2/21/11, 11:51 AM
Chennaul said...: Just told my military expert this news-

Quote:

Good, he'll be closer.

Kind of a joke but you get it.

You're seeing the reports of the two fighter jet pilots asking for asylum in Malta.

Might be guys that were not willing to fire on the crowd.; 2/21/11, 11:57 AM
JAL said...: Heh. I heard Gaddafi (Khaddafy?) was headed to Venezuela.

May the anti-dictator revolution travel with him like cobwebs a shirt sleeve. To take seed and flourish into freedom for Venezuelans. (To mix a meta4 or 2.)

Re the pictures of Gaddafi: He once (40 years ago?) was a good looking man. Age has not treated him well.

My guess on the 2 Libyan jets that ended up in Malta is that the pilots were getting out of Dodge before they had to strafe their fellow citizens.

Or they want on the plane with Gaddafy? My guess is the former.

We live in interesting times. I pray the hunger for freedom in the human heart is not crushed and twisted in these dangerous places.

Meanwhile the idiot teachers with cadillac plans are whining that they'll lose "collective" extortion rights in WI.

No. Sympathy.

And the COOTUS is focusing on WI. Or not. Depending on which part of the foxtrot he is in.

Because community organizing against republican fat cats who want to live within our means is sooooo much more fun (and definitely sooo much easier) than being a Nobel Peace Prize winning POTUS.; 2/21/11, 11:59 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Scott M said...
I keep hoping something will catch on in, for instance, Venezuela, but I'm not holding my breath. If it did, where, oh where, would Sean Penn go to commiserate?

Madison?; 2/21/11, 12:03 PM
John henry said...: If I were ever elected president the first thing I would do is put a heft tax on gasoline. Perhaps $1.50-2.00/gallon.

I would offset it with cuts in the social security payroll tax rate.

I don't give a shit about CO2. I not only don't believe that global warming is not man made, I don't believe that the data is even precise enough to tell whether we are getting warmer or cooler (Please, 0.8 deg total over 130 years? Plus or minus 4 degrees? And you are going to draw a conclusion from that?)

No, my reason is strictly political. Too much oil comes from shitholes like Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other countries that don't like us.

Tax the Hell out of gasoline and let them see their sales slump. Since they have nothing else, they will soon be reduced to eating sand.

It will do them good and will prevent them causing trouble for us.

John Henry; 2/21/11, 12:11 PM
HKatz said...: Some irony - Gadhafi recently gave a speech urging Palestinians to stage an uprising in Israel.

"Fleets of boats should take Palestinians ... and wait by the Palestinian shores until the problem is resolved," Gadhafi was shown saying on state television. "This is a time of popular revolutions."
(quoted in Ha'aretz)

A time for popular revolutions indeed.; 2/21/11, 12:13 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: It is time for President Obama to make a forceful statement condemning this brutality. It is time for the US to make a stand for our values.

Are the protesters in Lybia unionized? Can he buy their votes? If not....Obama will just dither around like he always does.; 2/21/11, 12:20 PM
Unknown said...: Given recent events in Egypt (i.e., since Hosni resigned), this is either going to turn out very good or very bad, no in between.

PS Any news if he took the built blonde Ukranian nurse with him?; 2/21/11, 12:21 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Wouldn't it be great if these dictators were unable to find a country that would accept them?; 2/21/11, 12:26 PM
Chennaul said...: John Henry

Feels like the beginning of a really ugly economic cycle.

What happens to oil prices from here on out?

Food prices?

Now should probably be the time for Obama to loosen up the eco-limits on getting at our own supplies and getting them online.

Not going to happen.; 2/21/11, 12:29 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: News quote:

"things are getting worse in Libya"...

I guess that depends on whether you are for or agains Moamar the dictator.; 2/21/11, 12:33 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Btw, how come Ghadafi only made himself a Colonel?; 2/21/11, 12:34 PM
Michael McNeil said...: Wouldn't it be great if these dictators were unable to find a country that would accept them?

Don't think so — then they'd be forced to battle to the bitter end back home. A lot of folks would die — and then the dictator might win.; 2/21/11, 12:36 PM
Scott M said...: Now should probably be the time for Obama to loosen up the eco-limits on getting at our own supplies and getting them online.

Now??? G.W. missed a huge opportunity right after 9/11 when he had both parties and most of the free world on his side. He could have done a Kennedy and asked for a Apollo program-style project for energy independence that we would, now be a decade into. A DECADE INTO.

Given that he didn't and that the envirowacko faction of the already left Democrat party continue to fight tooth and nail against it, should something really shitty happen, we're going to be caught flatfooted.

Flatfooted is an excellent way to describe both this administration's reactions to events, as well as it's general level of competence.; 2/21/11, 12:37 PM
AllenS said...: I see dead people.; 2/21/11, 12:41 PM
David said...: The Drudge photo of Gaddafi is classic. The devil incarnate.

"Definitely a bad time to be a dictator in the middle-east."

But maybe a good chance to become a new one.; 2/21/11, 12:42 PM
David said...: Pogo said...
"This is the international crisis that Biden said we had to gird our loins for, the one that would test the mettle of a half-term Senator from Illinois."

Good point, though this could be just the beginning.

Wanna buy some gold?; 2/21/11, 12:46 PM
Chennaul said...: Well there's a German theorist who had a formula for stability.

I quit her class because she had too many exceptions to her own rules.

But, perverting her formula on my own there is could be a simple formula for revolutions

"X" dead by "Y" time frame=Dictator gone.

Now those unknown values- X, and Y-do they have to be greater or less these days?

Well externally because of the world's oil dependence the values might have to be greater, but perhaps more importantly because of technology internally maybe the values can't get as high as they use to.; 2/21/11, 12:47 PM
AllenS said...: It would be a good time for a religious organization to run the country for a while.; 2/21/11, 12:48 PM
Scott M said...: Wanna buy some gold?

I probably would have started years ago except for the huuuuge broker markups. Being a broker myself (transportation) it just irks.; 2/21/11, 12:55 PM
Chennaul said...: Scott M

There was a guy at Polipundit that use to blog obsessively about how Bush tried to get nuclear reactors up and going and what or who do you think frustrated the hell out of that blogger?

It wasn't Republicans or their interest groups.; 2/21/11, 12:57 PM
YoungHegelian said...: CNN is reporting that Gaddafi's "Amazonian Guard" has been granted poltical asylum at the Playboy Mansion.
.
.
.
.
.
Please, please, don't tell me you opened up a browser to cnn to see if it was true.; 2/21/11, 12:58 PM
Chennaul said...: 70 Libyan ambassadors have resigned?

Did anyone else hear that on Al Jaz?; 2/21/11, 1:02 PM
Chennaul said...: Libyan UN Council

Deputy Ambassador to the UN

Asking Kadafi to step down.

"A real genocide. .. We don't agree with anything the regime is doing."; 2/21/11, 1:05 PM
PSGInfinity said...: A.J.:

Muammar didn't make himself a general (he was a captain when he led a coup in '69) in a fit of grandiose non-grandiosity. Or something like that (hey, he ain't called Colonel crazy for nothing..); 2/21/11, 1:07 PM
ricpic said...: Gaddafi's gonna come down with a humongous set of blue balls if he didn't manage to get his all female body guard unit out with him. Poor guy.; 2/21/11, 1:32 PM
Chennaul said...: I'm going to lift Xennady from Belmont for the block-

Xennady
The problem of energy is political, not technical. We’ve just seen the Obama regime urinate away vast sums of wealth in exchange for approximately nothing. Imagine if he had instead spent a trillion dollars to commence building dozens of new nuclear power plants along with facilities to turn coal into vehicle fuel. Worse, he essentially shut down new drilling in the Gulf while loaning Brazil billions so they could drill off their coast. And his party has blocked blocked drilling in ANWAR for almost two decades.

Pity them. Once foreign supplies dry up or become significantly more expensive there will be hell to pay, obviously. Obama and his democrats will be stuck trying to explain to an enraged electorate just what the hell they were thinking by blocking the development of domestic energy supplies.

It won’t go well for them. People might not care that much when gas is $3-something per gallon- in the US I should add- but they certainly will when it’s $7-something or more. And the record of who wanted to do what and when is all written down in black and white.

I doubt yammering about “green jobs” and windmills will enough to save them.

********************************

He forgot about the refinery war but hey.; 2/21/11, 2:01 PM
Bob From Ohio said...: The Moslem Brotherhood will take over in Egypt to the detriment of Isreal. Iran will take over in Baharain which means the loss of an important US base.

So, I am ambivilent over those events.

Libya is currently led by an anti-American, Jew hating, terrorist supporting crazy person. The fact that anti-American, Jew hating, terrorist supporting Islamists will take over means a slight improvement.

So, on balance, I'm happy to support this revolution.; 2/21/11, 2:23 PM
Roger J. said...: Apparently Col Q is the mid east verson of Keith Richards--old, ugly and dissolute--on the other hand he, like cockroaches, will probably survive the end of our times. Although where remains problematic.; 2/21/11, 2:41 PM
Unknown said...: Bob From Ohio said...

The Moslem Brotherhood will take over in Egypt to the detriment of Isreal. Iran will take over in Baharain which means the loss of an important US base.

So, I am ambivilent over those events.

Libya is currently led by an anti-American, Jew hating, terrorist supporting crazy person. The fact that anti-American, Jew hating, terrorist supporting Islamists will take over means a slight improvement.

So, on balance, I'm happy to support this revolution.

Little Bobby thinks he's being cute and oh, so outrageous.

He also thinks being a traitor will save his sorry little ass.

Somebody needs to show him a history book, especially the part where Quislings are always the first to go to the wall.; 2/21/11, 3:24 PM
Anonymous said...: Amazing, isn't it, how you can topple a fascist government with just a few matches.

You don't need Ryder trucks filled with fertilizer or cruise missiles ... you just need a few Bic lighters and the courage to use them.; 2/21/11, 3:33 PM
test said...: According to Julius' logic liberals cheer the deaths of 4,000 people.; 2/21/11, 5:25 PM
Alex said...: Scott Walker wants to machine gun teachers on the capitol steps.; 2/21/11, 5:25 PM
Bob From Ohio said...: "Little Bobby thinks he's being cute and oh, so outrageous.

He also thinks being a traitor will save his sorry little ass.

Somebody needs to show him a history book, especially the part where Quislings are always the first to go to the wall."

What are you talking about?

I was trying to point out that I couldn't get behind the other revolutions because of the downside to the US and Israel but there isn't any downside to Libya that I can see.; 2/21/11, 6:52 PM