Muammar Qaddafi
Colonel Muammar Qaddafi (born 1942) has been the tyrannical dictator of Libya since 1969, when he seized power in a military coup against King Idriss. Once he became dictator, he renamed all the months in the calendar and published the Green Book, which was a series of pamphlets on democracy, economics, and sociology.
President Ronald Reagan was a frequent target of Qaddafi's rants. Reagan responded with this assessment:[1]
- "I find he's not only a barbarian, but he's flaky. ... I just think that the man is a zealot."
Reportedly Qaddafi supported terrorism, and may have ordered Lybian agents to bomb Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people from 21 countries, including 189 Americans. [2]
Due largely to his fear of becoming a target in the American War on Terror, Qaddafi decided to change his ways, giving up his WMD programs and renouncing terrorism; this marked one of the clear successes of the war, as it brought a measure of stability to North Africa without a single shot being fired. Full diplomatic relations with the United States were restored in 2006, and the Qaddafi regime's turnaround has been heralded by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a model for others to follow.
