Taki: My main gripe with Gaddafi is the quality of his cocaine

 New York

Libyans are among the most civilised people on earth. When a Russian hooker (I assume) killed a Libyan Air Force officer, a mob stormed the Russian embassy seeking revenge. They failed, but not for lack of trying. This time last year, another mob murdered the American ambassador and three others in a similar attack, although no Yankee gal had harmed any Libyan flier. The civilised Libyans also did democracy proud when they captured Gaddafi. They shot him up the bum with an AK47, dispensing with a boring trial. The bad guy that got away is Hannibal Gaddafi, who with wifey used to beat up and torture Filipino servants and intimidate the Swiss government by kidnapping Swiss citizens working in Libya and holding them on charges unknown. He slipped over to Algeria where his ill-gotten moolah is welcome. My friend Saif Gaddafi wasn’t as lucky. He was ‘detained’ while fleeing the country and is held by some nice guys south of Tripoli. I call him my friend because we were introduced in New York four years ago and I mistook him for a coke dealer and politely asked if he had anything good. Yes, folks, war is in the air all over the Middle East and no use saying that war has always been with us and always will be. War in the Middle East has been endemic since the 7th century, and if you don’t know why, ask George W. Bush, who went to war without knowing the difference between Shiite and Sunni. (He thought the former were terrible shits and the latter nice and sunny. It’s the other way round.) W will go down in history as a modern Alexander the Great. Like the Greek, he stirred things up down south two years into his presidency. Iraq is now the most violent place on earth, competing with Syria for numbers killed and exiled.