Libya

The capture of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi on Saturday has created a knotty set of political and judicial issues. Aljazeera English has video: Saif was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. At one time the most reform-minded of Qaddafi’s sons, Saif faced a moral test from February 17 when the protest movement took […]

Herman Cain more or less admits that he has no idea what he would have done about the Libyan Revolution and no idea whether his criticisms of Obama on the conduct of the Libya War are well grounded or not. Cain keeps saying he’d have others do an assessment for him, but our experience with […]

I asked a Libyan scholar about the silly urban legend going around that an “al-Qaeda” flag flew from a government building in Benghazi recently. Here is what he said: ” I looked up the mentioned flag, it appears to be a black flag with the shahada [Muslim profession of faith] in it. A black flag […]

The final weeks of Muammar Qaddafi’s violent and coercive life reminded me vividly of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple Cult. It was obvious from late last August that Qaddafi had lost. The people in his own capital of Tripoli rose up against him in all but a few small neighborhoods, courageously defying his murderous […]

Reuters reports that Libyan troops of the new government have taken the airport of the southern desert city of Sabha, a key site on the route down to Niger. Sabha is one of four small cities of about 120,000 each that are still held by pro-Qaddafi forces. AP reports that the Transitional National Council fighters […]