Gadaffi is quite something isn't he?

[LadyBlaBlah]

He seems a little barking................he thinks he is 'loved by all his people" and had seen no protests.

They are gonna have to drag him kicking and screaming. It's gonna be messy !

And he does have the world's smallest eyes

Personally I don't see dictators having nukes being anymore dangerous then countries that elect new leaders every 4 years or so, you never know what might happen in the future.

Ryoko has made a great point about the civilian plane shot down by reckless/malicious US navy officers. Six months later, hey presto, Lockerbie.

It's astonishing how one-sided and pro US most discussions/articles are, even if they appear not to be.

Most people thought/think that the Sept 11 attacks were unprovoked and out of the blue, not bothering to look at the history.

The way the Americans took the absolute p*ss in Latin America for so long leaves me astonished that their southern neighbours didn't organise and fight back in any coherent manner. Their behaviour down there was downright evil both on a state level and a company level.

I guess the suicidal maniacs of the muslim world showed the way to exact revenge for decades of abuse.

Why can't we all just live nicely together, eh?

Tis true back in his day Churchill used to drop booby trapped toys from planes in to Iraq for the little kiddies to pick up and play with/blow their arms off with.

I don't remember the exact quote from him but it was something along the lines of a sustained campaign of terror is the only way to keep order and control. or something alluding to that.

nice man wasn't he.

so many atrocities in the world that create hate and anger, we only ever get spoon fed half the story.

"I'm not actually too interested in the US view of thing. People giving up awful weapons is surely a good thing, no?"

People giving up a weapons program that hasn't delivered in ten times the years that the original program gave results isn't giving up very much. When you consider that a large amount of data produced by the original program is in the public domain giving up the program is giving up even less. There was quite clearly something very wrong going on with the research.

People then saving an awful lot of money by giving up that non delivering program is giving up even less.

Yes the Libyans were quite serious about trying to get nuclear weapons. But the west, especially the US, has cynically exaggerated what a "big deal" the Libyans giving up on their nuclear program really was in order to get better access to their oil just at the time when the middle eastern supply was looking a bit problematic.

"Ryoko has made a great point about the civilian plane shot down by reckless/malicious US navy officers. Six months later, hey presto, Lockerbie."

If Libya is to blame for Lockerbie, which isn't in my opinion a certainty, then that shoot down wasn't connected with it other than to possibly provide a scapegoat.

If Gadaffi did the attack then what would have been a far bigger motivation is that the US killed his wife and adopted child in 1986 when they tried to assassinate him in a bombing raid. Libya tried conventional military retaliation after that to very little effect.

Think about that for a second... The US military personally targeted him in a bombing raid and killed his loved ones while he only just escaped. Gadaffi is more than a bit mad but there's an awful lot of things that have stirred the pot of his mental state.

"Tis true back in his day Churchill used to drop booby trapped toys from planes in to Iraq for the little kiddies to pick up and play with/blow their arms off with."

Do you have any evidence for that at all?

That is a Russian tactic from Afghanistan but I've not heard of Churchill using it in Iraq.

However Churchill certainly did push for gas to be used on the population (whether it was or wasn't is a point of debate) and the view was that the laws of war didn't apply to revolts and uprisings.

So that's bad enough.

Hi Badgers

You're absolutely right of course to refer to the main motivation being the US assassination attempts and bombing of 1986.

I was thinking about that today and knew someone would pick me up on it.

I know, its astonishing, isn't it, that a supposedly advanced, developed and civilised country would be behaving in such a manner.

By the way, did anybody notice that the other day the first westerner to be jailed in Iraq for killing people was sent down...for killing, wait for it, two other westerners.

How many hundreds of thousand of Iraqis died after the invasion, yet as soon as a couple of white people die, the wheels of justice grind into action.

Those despicable criminals from that "security" firm should have been jailed years ago in Iraq after they shot indiscriminately into a crowd. Where were they from again? You guessed it...

It was on Bremner Bird and Fortune some years ago.

I think it was done just before the Anglo Iraq war when Churchill was the secretary of state for war.

"It was on Bremner Bird and Fortune some years ago.

I think it was done just before the Anglo Iraq war when Churchill was the secretary of state for war."

The Anglo Iraq War was in 1941, the bombing in Iraq by the RAF was in 1920 when the area was still known as Mesopotamia and that was also when Churchill was Secretary of State for War.

I've never heard the booby trapped toy story before, and a remembered reference from B,B & F "some years ago" can't really be taken as any kind of proof.

What the RAF did use in it's bombing, and what B, B & F might well have referred to was the use of time delayed bombs. That is bombs that would go off some time after they were dropped. That sort of thing does cause carnage to civilian populations who are the ones who will go back to bombed areas. Also smaller ones will be picked up by curious children, with obvious nightmarish results. The modern arguments against cluster munitions are basically the same issue.

But that's not the same as booby trapped toys.

However as said Churchill did push to use poison gas on the locals and considered that the rules of war didn't apply, so I'm not trying to paint him in a particularly good light over this. I just think that there's enough questionable stuff without having to make anything extra up.

I think he's hilarious - in a Ali G kinda way

lots and lots of shiny medals

" my peoples - they love me - love me I tell you!

no one protesting against me - they are just pigs on drugs - when drugs wear off - everything ok "

Well if I could find a link I would, but they definitely did say booby trapped toys, it was a whole show about the histroy of Irag (actually it might have been a two parter) saying about how we carved the place up and named it, and the white prosperous bombings etc.

At the end of the day everyone has blood on their hands all over the world, and people have long memories, tit for tat for all time.