Even Chad Has Defeated Him

Jihad Khazen Al-Hayat - 14/10/05

Colonel Moammar Qaddhafi is a living example of how not to be a president.During 36 years of rule, he has committed all sorts of mistakes, sins, and crimes, without one redeeming quality to his name, even as a coincidence. You could give a monkey a typewriter and let him type away for a few decades, and with the law of probabilities, might end up typing “to be or not to be.”
Brother Moammar (he's not my brother, of course - it's what he's called officially) wrote the Green Book; he's a poet, philosopher and novelist, as he modestly describes himself. He's nothing of the sort. The Green Book is unreadable, unless as unintentional farce.I say to all presidents of the world, Arab and non-Arab, that they should learn from Moammar Qaddhafi. Just watch what the Libyan leader does and either not do it or do the opposite. This way, you'll never wrong your people or any of the world's other peoples.Machiavelli advised his Prince about what to do. I advise modern presidents what not to do drawing on Colonel Qaddhafi's record. The following acts are no-no:-work for Don Quixotic unity that ends up seeing people go sour on the idea of unity.-put opponents in prison or liquidate them, or go after them abroad and assassinate them in London, or kill the policewoman Yvonne Fletcher, or any policewoman, whatever her name.-see Imam Mussa Sadr disappear in your country.-kidnap Mansour Kikhia in Egypt, bring him to Libya and have him killed.-bomb La Belle disco in Berlin because the US air raids in response killed dozens of Libyans, including your adopted daughter, who would have been alive if not for the disco bombing.-attack Chad, so that Chad doesn't defeat you.-finance terror and cooperate with terrorists.-blow up a civilian plane over Lockerbie, killing 270 civilians, see a Libyan intelligence operative jailed, pay $2.7 billion to the families of the victims instead of paying to fight poverty in Africa.-surprise us by arguing that you're African, and not Arab. I wish you were. A person can divorce a spouse, but not a father or mother (Qaddhafi is Arab, despite us and despite himself and despite our wishes).-spend years trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones, as you don't know how to use conventional weapons, as we have seen in Chad.-try to assassinate then-Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz, who is now King Abdullah.The conspiracy did take place, and I have additional information about it, which can be added to the details that we already know. Abdel-Rahman al-Amoudi has been sentenced to 23 years in the US after he tried to recruit Saudi dissidents in London to carry out the plot. The Saudi authorities arrested conspirators, including 4 Libyan intelligence agents; they have been pardoned by King Abdullah.The King must have considerations of state to prompt the pardon, as he knows that the plot was real 100 per cent.And all of these incidents mentioned above have failed to prevent Moammar Qaddhafi from becoming America's partner in fighting terrorism after being America’s number one enemy.The Libyan regime did not change out of fear of the fate that befell Saddam Hussein (and Aisha Qaddhafi continues to defend him). The gradual transformation actually began in the mid-1990s, after Qaddhafi realized the threat of extremists Islamist groups to his regime. The Armed Islamic Group tried to kill him in 1996 and perhaps in 1998 and 1999. This ended when information from the Far East, with the help of the CIA, led to the arrest of the group's leader, Abdullah Sadeq, in Thailand, and his deputy Abu Munzer al-Saadi in Hong Kong. They were handed over to Libya, where they're now in prison.Stranger than the CIA's help in arresting opponents of Qaddhafi is that the country is now a candidate, with 9 other countries, in a $500 million US program to fight al-Qaida in the region.And even more strangely, Mousa Kousa, the head of external intelligence, is the chief liaison with US intelligence, even though the verdict against Abdel-Basset Magrahi (from the Lockerbie case) mentioned that "he worked in the service of Libyan intelligence's goals."Kousa was the head of the diplomatic mission in London when two Libyans were assassinated, and he was expelled; his name has been linked with almost every terrorist act by Libya, including the plot against King Abdullah.Even so, Mousa Kousa was behind Libya's giving up its nuclear program. The country turned over 55,000 pounds of nuclear equipment, without even being close to producing anything. Behind Kousa is Saif al-Islam Qaddhafi, who runs Libya's foreign policy from London, helped by minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam. There are direct contacts with the neo-conservatives and the Jewish lobby in the US.Colonel Qaddhafi released the famous opposition member Fathi al-Jahmi from prison and President Bush welcomed the move, calling him a "brave opponent." The bravery didn't benefit al-Jahmi since he was re-imprisoned after two television interviews.
President Bush, however, said in April 2004 that Libya had turned its back on terrorism. State Department officials have traveled to Libya and diplomatic relations restored. A month later American companies won big oil contracts against European competition, and this is the important point in the whole matter.Now, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is planning to visit Libya, although it remains on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, issued by the State Department. However, Congressman Tom Lantos, an old Likudnik, visited Libya and met with Mousa Kousa, even though is on Congress’s human rights "team." Afterward, Lantos asked that Libya be taken off the list of state sponsors of terror.