THUS SHOULD DIE ALL TYRANTS...

He won't be missed...save by his friends

The news that the Libyan ex-leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after fleeing an assault on his home town of Sirte will I suspect lead to the shedding of few tears for his passing. He may be missed by members of his family and his friends but by few other people. There will be more tears from the relatives of his victims and their surviving family members. Gaddafi may not have dodged the NATO bullets but he has successfully avoided a day in court at the Hague on War Crimes charges. Hopefully the National Transition Council will once its fully in-charge will publish any recovered paperwork relating to the supply or arms to the previous regime and hopefully have a full and public investigation into just who supplied the Libyan dictator with his weapons over the long and brutal years of his rule.

INTERESTING TIMES

We live in interesting and fast moving times - today the Con Dem Foreign Secretary, William Hague said the UK will recognise the Libyan rebel council as the "sole governmental authority", and then promptly expelled all the Gaddafi-regimes diplomats. The Libyan charge d'affaires was summoned to the Foreign Office beforehand and told that he and other diplomats must leave.

The UK has rightly (in my opinion) asked the National Transitional Council to appoint a new diplomatic envoy. Recognition followed similar earlier moves by the US and France. Oddly enough the UK Government had previously stated that it recognised "countries not governments".

So now we have two Libya's and two Libyan governments. We have come along way very fast (diplomatically) not that long ago the former PM Tony Blair and other Western Leaders were busy snuggling up the repressive Libyan leader and his spawn.

Here's hoping that what we are seeing here is Western recognition of the wind of change that's blowing through the Arab world. And here's hoping that Gaddafi (and his ilk) and the rest of the repressive bunch end up in Court and after due process spend a seriously long time in goal answering for their crimes.

When Saddam went far too much was swept under the carpet (the Kurds amongst many others never did get their day in court) and we never did find out which Western Governments (and the rest) and which companies had been quietly breaking the sanctions because after all he was 'our boy'.

Heaven forbid that the current Libyan crisis drags on and Gaddafi continues to cling on to power in and around Tripoli. No doubt there may be calls for an arms embargo which would harm any prospects of an outright opposition success as with Bosnia. I mean like Gaddafi does not have enough stock piled already, no doubt previously sold to him at cost by British Arms dealers (under New Labour and the Con Dems)...oops..

And if it's not asking too much while we are at it lets have a long hard impartial look at just who's been profitably tooling up the forces of repression around the globe and shine some light on the UK's at times dubious foreign policy and exactly what decisions have been and are being made on our name?