Gaddafi's final hours: Nato and the SAS helped rebels drive hunted leader into endgame in a desert d

[jakeXT]

Gaddafi's final hours: Nato and the SAS helped rebels drive hunted leader into endgame in a desert drain

As the sun rose over the shell of Sirte on Thursday, Ben Farmer, the only British newspaper journalist left in the city, found it was immediately apparent that something had changed.

Utterly ravaged by months of bombardments, Sirte was a skeleton of a city – a place without food, water or light; a city without citizens. Its streets were turned into rivers by burst pipes, as fighters battled through waist-high swathes of mud brown water, street by bloody street.

But as the sun rose over the shell of Sirte on Thursday, it was immediately apparent that something had changed.

I had arrived at the rebel position in the western suburb of Zafran in anticipation of another massed assault into District Two – the final pocket where Gaddafi loyalists had been holding out. Rebels from Misurata had told me the day before to be ready early to witness a home-made armoured battering ram, and their few tanks spearhead what they boasted would be a decisive thrust into the remaining bastion of defenders.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8843684/Gaddafis-final-hours-Nato-and-the-SAS-helped-rebels-drive-hunted-leader-into-endgame-in-a-desert-drain.html

[Swagman]

1. 60 years after the Nuremberg Trials when we, the victors were

determined to show the world that no how odious a war criminal. they must be seen to receive a fair trial.

It was (despite Churchill's desire to just put people against a wall and shoot them)a valiant attempt to show the world that we were not savages and that the rule of law is one of the most precious entities the world should cherish.

Two days ago many world leaders lined up to cheer the torture, beating, humiliation, (and now it seems the attempted sexual assault)the torture and ultimate summary execution of the Lybian leader.

Not one, not one single one has condemned this-in fact British PM David Cameron chortled away in his press conference.

Gaddafi executes a man without trial = exile dictator

Baying mob executes Gaddafi without trial = heroic freedom fighters.

As a race we now delude ourselves that we are not as savage, as brutal, as murderous as those we choose to wipe out once they have served their usefulness.

Still...there will be plenty of oil.

[Kurmudgeon]

2. Do you think the LIbyan people know or care about the Nuremberg trials?

As you set in self righteous judgment of them, at least take the time to consider what they went through to get to this point.
BTW, the account of the incident was one person made a judgment call and shot him in the temple.
Not world leaders, not David Cameron, not a "baying mob", one person. A Libyan who had had enough.
It would have been better if Gadhafi had been put to trial, but when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.
The oil you are so worried about was incidental, this wasn't Bush-Cheney storming into one country after using another as an excuse.
This was a country ridding itself of a tyrant. You can call them "savage", but now they can call themselves free.

[tcaudilllg]

4. And I suppose you would argue America's corporate masters are not dicatators themselves?

[Kurmudgeon]

6. The fact you moved the goal posts shows you don't have any answer.

Let Libya take care of Libya, they don't need YOUR judgement.

[Gman]

3. And you make no mention of any of the atrocities Ghadafi committed as if they never happened

You live by the sword, you die by the sword.

[lg59kis]

7. Couldn't agree more

Good riddance to Gaddafi

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Old and In the Way]

5. Nice false equivalence you've got going here.

Gaddafi executes a man without trial = exile dictator
Baying mob executes Gaddafi without trial = heroic freedom fighters.

I mean, you don't believe this, right? In your eyes, they are both the same.

When you recover from your period of mourning for Gaddafi, perhaps you can share with us a "how to" manual for quick and bloodless deposing of authoritarian, anti-democratic dictators - sociopaths who have no inhibitions in mass murdering civilian populations with their military assets to maintain their power - without infringing on said dictator's human rights.

In the meantime, I'll note that it's been a bad year for dictators and the real value of Gaddafi's demise is that future wannabe Gaddafi's might be recalculating the cost-benefit analysis of taking over a country by anti-democratic force today. The simple message being sent to these wannabes is that a broad-based insurrection by your people gets you on the short list for a UN-approved targeted surgical application of military technology on your totalitarian ass. The advances in military technology may be a blessing to surpressed people everywhere - dictators in the past had the advantage in knowing removal meant large-scale military actions and a long period of time between the initial action consideration and the application of force to attempt the removal. Today, not so much. Despots everywhere can't be happy with the new reality.

[classysassy]

9. Why Gaddafi and not Netenyahu?

BiBi has murdered more men,women and children than the former Libyan leader but not a murmer from the western media,I wonder why,could it be that one has the media in his pocket and the other was murdered?We in the west refuse to be just but we always demand justice,that's not the way thing are suspose to be,be just and you will have justice,too bad our citizens have been lied to by our governments.