Mad Dog & An Englishman

...Osama, there's hope for you yet!

My flabber was well and truly gasted by Tony Blair's statement of praise regarding Libya's, Muammar 'Mad Dog' Gaddafi. To cite him as a man of courage for abandoning his WMD project was, in the least, an insensitive and heinous insult to the relatives of his multiple murder victims.

Naturally, the stunt will be paraded as a token payoff in the war on terror and a point on the board for democracy in the Middle East. However, whilst I'm as pleased as the next man to see the globe's stockpile of WMD slightly reduced, I do not see it as a reason to disregard Gaddafi's barbaric past: The senseless, cowardly assassination of Yvonne Fletcher, the bloodbath caused aboard Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie and the supply of aid and weapons to the Provisional IRA. Have these atrocities now paled into insignificance just because, on the surface, the mad dog appears to be chillin' in his old age? Perhaps Osama bin Laden will mellow as he enters his senior years, recognise the error of his ways and be welcomed back in to the diplomatic fold. It would appear that anything is possible.

The reality of it is, Gadaffi still has no respect for human rights. Only this month Amnesty International have identified areas of serious concern in Libya. Claudio Cordone, the leader of the AI investigation said:

"We have people imprisoned solely for the peaceful expression of their views. We have a wide practice of holding people for years without being given access to their families and lawyers, with facilities of torture used often. We have the death penalty for a variety of offenses."

My opinion is that Gadaffi is just playing a calculated game of chess. His WMD stockpile amounted to a couple of grains in the rice bowl of global weaponry and would have been little use against the might of the West; as he would have witnessed during the 'shock and awe' tactics of the Iraq conflict. By giving them up, he's opened the doors of trade with the West, been promoted from pariah to 'good egg' overnight and secured himself financial investment, arms supplies and military training from the UK.

Of course, Tony Blair can see this as plainly as the nose on his face but his incentive to indulge the eccentric dictator is driven by the economic benefits that will exist for UK business in Libya. Major fuel companies have been labeling Libya as prime hunting ground for the last few years and are already clamouring to get their tenders in, now the bar has been lifted.

So, that's alright then, isn't it? After all, several hundred murders, decades of brutal dictatorshipship and the blatant disregard for human rights can easily be overlooked, so long as the figures stack up!