So, what’s up with Moammar?
This … what should we call it … civilized, pro-Western attitude of his of the last decade or so. He’s all cooperative, and voluntarily WMD-less, and civil, and willing to be a helpful intermediary between The West and The Arab World. And how’s his “Safest car in the world” coming along anyway?
Look, my first impression of the guy was that he was a jerk and got the snot bombed out of him (well, killed a kid or two of his anyway). By the USA (unilateral action IIRC, by the way, with no NATO complaints). About 10 years later when I was working in Military Intelligence for the Army, he was still regarded as a target, low priority, perhaps, but someone who needed to be gotten rid of–I guess because his was not a pro-Egyptian regime among other things. And from what I know of Arabs, you don’t kill their kids and then anticipate *ever *seeing peacful relations. I know he’s a bit to the western edge, but he is still of Arab culture, isn’t he? What gives? It’s getting creepy–like the school bully turning apple-polisher.
From what I think I know of the man, I’m totally expecting a “sucker punch, out in a blaze of glory” exit from him within 5 years that will make Sept 11 look like a car wreck.
But I might just be prejudiced. What do y’all think? Has he turned over a new leaf, swallowed his pride and transformed himself into a patient & positive influence who’s primary concern is a peaceful future of Lybia? Or is he a scorpion in our underwear drawer?
Isn’t that the country just to the left of Libya? 
Foreign Affairs ran an interesting article on him a couple years back that shed some light on the situation. Khaddafi has been relatively cooperative for the past several years, and there’s not much reason to believe he’s going to suddenly lash out and do something.
His main concern, apparently, is securing power for his sons and it seems that the only way he believes he can do that is with a stable, prosperous Libya. And a stable, prosperous Libya means that they need to be on relatively good terms with the West. This may mean you may see more reforms go on, or maybe just the pretense of reforms. But I don’t think he’s going to be a threat to the United States ever again.
In some languages, French for instance, Lybia is the correct spelling. And since French is the de facto international diplomatic language (check the inside of your US passport if you don’t believe me), I see no problem with Lybia.
I’d rather talk about Labia.
I was reading something about Qaddafi (is that an accepted variant?) recently - he tried to posture himself as a power among other OPEC nations, but he couldn’t pull it off, so he decided to position himself closer to home. He’s become more involved in African politics, plus he’s making nice with Italy a lot lately.
There was the accusation recently that he was behind a plot to assassinate a Saudi prince, but that story seemed to fizzle rather quickly. My personal feelings are that he’s going to do what he must to be taken seriously in the world again. And I think that’s going to require playing nice, especially now that sanctions on his oil are being lifted and US companies are wanting back in to their old refineries. At $50 a barrel, that’s a lotta cash that could be coming his way, and I seem to recall reading that north Africa has some really good quality crude oil.
He bears watching, but I suppose he could have gotten over himself…