Thursday, October 20, 2011

Reminds me of something else

Libyan State TV has announced that ex-President Gaddafi has been killed when the last stronghold, Sirte, was captured. Other sources talk of him being captured and/or wounded. On the whole, his death in those circumstances, difficult to disentangle, would not be good news though, obviously, many problems would be solved. It reminds me too much of the hole-in-the-corner "execution" of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, on Christmas Day 1989, which was extremely convenient to those who took over in Romania after their deaths. No trial - no chance of inconvenient details emerging. Just a thought.

4 comments:

  1. WitteringsfromWitneyOctober 20, 2011 at 5:00 PM

    Helen, you cynic! Join the club.........

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you, but do I want to be member of a club that accepts me and even invites me? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't subscribe to this notion current among the chatterati that doing away with Gaddafi has robbed them of the truth about Lockerbie, Yvonne Fletcher, semtex etc. The idea that the despotic ranter was suddenly going to start spilling the beans calmly and rationally is bizarre. For sure his ex-henchmen might have worried that he might make allegations, but who would believe he would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? He didn't even know where all the bodies were buried, as there were so many of them - he didn't strike me as a detail man. On the whole we're better off without him.

    And no, I'm not labelling you as a member of the chattering classes, Helen. Now there's a club I'm sure you wouldn't want to be thought a member of.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Certainly not, John. ;-) I, on the other hand, do not subscribe to the theory that Gaddafi was in any way insane or unbalanced. His actions were carefully calculated, including the times when he appeared to rant. He lost in the end and so have many other people. Whether he would have told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is irrelevant. He would have told enough to embarrass many of the people who are hoping to step into his shoes or some other shoes discarded around his. Remember the leaders so far are all people who have worked in Gaddafi's government in the past. What's the betting they already have or soon will raid some of the secret police archives to destroy documents about themselves? Not that I care about him being dead, I just think this is awfully convenient for some people and very different from the way the Americans behaved when they found Saddam in a drain or something similar.

    ReplyDelete