Libya disarmed its WMDs at the request of the US. Now Gaffadi must be wondering why he did.
The Ballad of Moammar Gaddafi
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Well, I’ve been following this whole “Libyan Affair” since it started about a week ago, and the whole thing is nothing but a tissue of lies. The supposed control that the rebels have over the country is actually very weak. They’ve been dropping flies in Tripoli due to resistance from loyalists there.
And as for the obligatory showing the “extravagance” of a toppled leader on TV, well, what I see is that the Qaddafis lived a typical upper-middle class lifestyle. No different than a normal, prosperous Long Island family. I mean, what’s the big deal about designer underwear? Give me a break.
This was true of Mullah Omar and Saddam as well.
Why do we as a country feel the need to take people, that are already supposedly “evil” based on deeds, and then talk about their underwear and porn stashes? It seems odd to me that Mass Murder isn’t a serious enough crime, but buying fancy underwear, or looking at porn? Better watch out, America doesn’t stand for that shit in their Muslims.
Dehumanization requires propaganda on all channels.
He had all those photos of Condoleeza Rice.
Do you think she parked her tanker there?
Most of the reports I’ve read said Ghaddaffi traded a couple of warehouses full of machine tools and equipment no one in his regime had the slightest idea how to use properly for dropping trade sanctions, allowing weapons shipments and foreign investment in oil production. He gave up something he never had, and because it suited the Bush propaganda that Iraq was a good thing (look at Ghaddafi giving up his nukes!), was allowed to charge a huge price for it.
Also, if it had just been up to the Americans, Ghaddaffi would still be in power. The French were the ones who pushed hard for this particular intervention, and did most of work. You might say that his mistake was not trusting the Americans, it was trusting the Americans too far.
@patron002 The whole porn-stash, herbal viagra, designer underwear stuff says more about ourselves than it does about the supposed owners of said material. Bin Laden had a porn-stash, with viagra, and liked to watch himself on TV. Well, that would make him a typical American male, wouldn’t it? So any American who laughs at this is actually laughing at himself. But the way we’ve treated him after his death tells me that nobody really believes that Bin Laden committed 9/11 at all—we respect man who can kill 3000 people with nothing but box cutters, so if we’re laughing at his medicine cabinet, clearly he did nothing of the sort.
The same with the Qaddafi family. If they really killed “their own people”, we wouldn’t be showing their underwear on TV, would we?
@Susan Stark: and therein lies the issue. Americans (especially most mainstream conservatives) have been largely trained to have massive double standards in their own v.s. others conduct. These same people who are deriding a few middle eastern men for their, purported, porn stash when it is far smaller then their own, are also the people who:
1) Are on their eighth/wife husband (and are currently actively cheating on them) and yet consider it Serious Business worthy of mocking derision when a celebrity couple breaks up.
2) Think that Homosexuals are ruining the sanctity of marriage and not, say, themselves for reasons outlined in part “1)”
3) Preach “Good Christian values” to others and judge them harshly based on esoteric Bible versus that they themselves don’t really understand while openly eschewing any and all of Christianities main (and only decent) teachings and values.
4) ect… ad nauseum.
Given the level of gross hypocracy and double standard already in these people’s minds, the porn stash thing is small potatoes by comparison. You will never get them to understand it until long after headway can be made on their far more major hypocrisies as outlined above as well as many others I did not list.
Besides, most of them have to actively deny the porn stashes they posses to keep face with their peers (who are also hiding their own). As such they believe best way to do that is to not just deny it, but attack others as they are revealed. This public unvailing has given them an opportunity to farther mask their shame by publicly deriding others. Thus its not just their pervasive and deep hypocrisy at work here, they also stand to gain in the perceived strength of their own protective illusion by harping on these middle eastern porn stashes as well.