No illusions with the Son of Mad Dog

[jazkiljok]

in this interesting interview we learn that Qaddafi's son is a pure cynic who doesn't have any illusions on how business gets done in the world. The b.s. he describes with such frankness is so deep that one does wonder how europe and the u.s. didn't eventually work a deal with Saddam in the same way as Qaddafi. i find the part about halliburton's brit subsidiary doing biz with libya during the sanctions era particular enlightening given that blair couldn't wait to sip tea with the mad-dog.

In a front-page commentary, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé waxed ironic about “our new friend Muammar Kadaffi,” who has “remade himself as a virgin. He’s no longer a terrorist at all. Pardoned: the attack on the [Pan Am 103] Boeing over Lockerbie and on a [French] DC-10 blown up over the desert of Ténéré. Forgotten: the attempts to make weapons of mass destruction, notably nuclear ones. Ended: the status as a refuge for criminals and terrorists that gave Tripoli its charm. Even from the psychiatric point of view, things are going better: the dangerous paranoid, the angry wild-man has become a delectable companion who’s perfectly urbane. To take tea with him is pure happiness.”

In the end, not surprisingly, it all comes down to money. But Saif al-Islam must have learned that lesson even as a kid. After the Reagan administration tried its best to kill his father and, for that matter, him and the rest of his family in a bombing raid on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986, Saif al-Islam remembers that they all hated the United States. Then came the years of sanctions led by Washington after Libya was implicated in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Yet all that time, a British subsidiary of Halliburton was building public-works projects in Libya worth billions of dollars. Dick Cheney, who was running the company back then, was quoted by colleagues as saying he had some qualms about that deal. But, then again, he had a fiduciary obligation to his stockholders. And the paychecks just kept coming.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20079136/site/newsweek/