1:43pm UK, Saturday July 02, 2011
The gloves are off. Colonel Gaddafi is not only vowing to stay in power - he's threatening attacks on Europe if military intervention in Libya doesn't stop.
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It is an amazingly buoyant and menacing threat. He is after all the man former US President Ronald Reagan dubbed 'Mad Dog' back in the eighties.
It was a name that stuck, and is being resurrected by those who fear Colonel Gaddafi may just be the man who will try to turn threat into reality.
After all he has form. The pages of recent Libyan/British history show a complex relationship.
Libya was a sponsor of international terrorism in the seventies and eighties.
Lisa HollandLibya's reinvention of itself as a friend of the west was remarkable. It's decision to give up its nuclear weapons programme and get into bed with Tony Blair was incredible.
It aided Palestinian groups and the IRA; it bombed a Berlin disco frequented by American service personnel and then of course there was the Lockerbie bomb.
Two hundred and seventy people died when Pam Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie in 1988.
Libya never admitted guilt but said it 'took responsibility' for the incident, though that was simply to bring an end to seven painful years of sanctions.
Spring has turned to summer here in Tripoli and NATO probably didn't really think when it began military intervention in March that Gaddafi would still be in power now.
Thousands of Gaddafi supporters in Tripoli
It wanted to dish out a short sharp shock.
But Colonel Gaddafi is not only still in power - albeit in hiding somewhere in Tripoli - but with his back against the wall he is fighting all the way to the endgame.
Libya's reinvention of itself as a friend of the west was remarkable. It's decision to give up its nuclear weapons programme and get into bed with Tony Blair was incredible.
But it seems Libya is now bitterly regretting placing its father in its new found best friend - Britain and the West.
In his sprawling Tripoli compound Gaddafi won't take NATO's air strikes lying down.
There's every chance he will go running into the arms of countries like Iran and North Korea.
And that makes his threats of attacks against European families, homes and businesses all the more dangerous.
Article Source KBG Test Blog (http://rc.kbg.me)
