Muammar Gaddafi killed

[Video Link]

Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed today when rebel fighters battling what was left of his regime took over his hometown of Surt.

Since no-one has created a "Hitler Finds Out Gaddafi is Dead" video yet, I dug up the strangest thing I could find: this raw footage of the despot relaxing at home at peace with his family; a simple experience his military prevented many thousands of innocent citizens from having.

The colonel and a few of his men are said to have run through a stand of trees and hid in two drainage pipes before they were killed. There are questions about the exact circumstances of his death—Al Jazeera has broadcast footage indicating he was alive when captured.

NYT, Reuters, Washington Post, Al Jazeera.

UPDATE: Hitler finds out Gaddafi has been killed.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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http://twitter.com/simeonstar Simeon Weinraub

In other news: Condoleezza Rice has become despondent, upon learn the news that her last chance for love is dead.
Navin_Johnson

Dead men tell no tales.
http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson

It’s weird – he’s been a boogeyman almost as long as I’ve been alive, and some of my earliest memories of news reports are about him. He was unlike anything else in the world – an utter lunatic, with enough followers to indulge his every whim for decades. Tried (badly) to become a major player in the world stage, and ended up shot by his own populace.

He will be entertaining historians for quite some time, I feel – there are very few historical characters as… colorful.
Brainspore

This video only seems “strange” because we aren’t used to thinking of violent despots acting like regular people. Which is what they do, most of the time.

It’s a good reminder that most of history’s greatest monsters (even the “colorful” ones) loved their kids, had favorite foods, lived with hopes and disappointments and health issues and all the other stuff that comes with being a human being. If you spend all your time keeping an eye out for openly sadistic fire-spitting cannibals you might end up electing the next dictator without noticing until it’s too late.
- Navin_Johnson
  
  You could easily put up a video of a U.S. Potus having a family moment while drones blow up a wedding party in Yemen or wherever…
  
  The monsters are lovable if it’s in Western business interests. Gaddafi pushed back against oil interests a little too hard…
- Lobster
  
  Diminishing our enemies to monsters is an insult to our soldiers. It’s easy to kill a monster, emotionally and morally. It’s not easy to kill a human, even one who has done monstrous things.
Guest

Yet another former puppet of America, turned Enemy, is found in the end, erm… underground.
tp1024

Bring out the guillotines, the 18th century must be right around the corner. It’s disgusting.
http://tp1024.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/bloody-murder/
hassan-i-sabbah

But who will wear the mantle of the worlds most stylish dictator?
- goldenmansacks
  
  My vote goes to Kim Jong-il.
Lobster

Wasn’t long ago at all that Gaddafi was our buddy. Remember when he gave up one of his nuclear weapons programs?

While we celebrate the death of a bastard, let’s not be too quick to forget that this could have happened long ago if we hadn’t supported him.
tp1024

Whatever happened to that quaint old idea of arresting people and putting them to trial?
- Navin_Johnson
  
  Or to pasture for that matter.
  
  Srsly though, a trial could be very embarrassing for some folks.
- Talia
  
  Has that ever even been a thing in Libya? Keep in mind he was killed by his own rebelling populace, not U.S. forces, least per the articles.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Whatever happened to that quaint old idea of arresting people and putting them to trial?
  
  You do know that Hillary Clinton made a surprise visit to Libya two days ago and said that she hoped that Gaddafi would be “captured or killed” soon.
  - Lobster
    
    Are you saying Hillary Clinton is an assassin?
- Mister44
  
  Trial, trial, trial. It’s a freaking revolution. There is no law – it has been replaced and is in transition. Furthermore – his people know WTF he’s done. Its in Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia if you don’t. Why is a trial really necessary? What would that accomplish? By all accounts, shooting the bastard was kind compared to what he would have done had the roles been reversed.
  
  If you people were George Lucas you would have had Palpatine standing trial and the Death Star occupied by the rebels on the new Blueray discs.
  - Lobster
    
    A trial would add legitimacy to the revolution.
    
    You’re right, his people DO know WTF he’s done. Should make the trial really quick and really damning.
    
    Why are you afraid to put a man on trial if he’s obviously guilty? And what makes you think the rebels wouldn’t have absolutely LOVED to have taken over the Death Star?
Navin_Johnson

Same old story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/conflict-in-libya-us-oil-companies-sit-on-sidelines-as-gaddafi-maintains-hold/2011/06/03/AGJq2QPH_story.html

Meanwhile in Bahrain…..
http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

What happened to all the love of the Arab spring and people fighting for their independence? All I see is cynicism about how this all a giant conspiracy caused by our quest for more oil.
- nox
  
  His trial would have been embarrassing for many powerful entities.
  
  They murdered a POW in cold blood, something we’re more used to seeing from corrupt governments than idealistic rebels. From our comfortable safe homes we condemn them, barely knowing the truth of their lives, let alone understanding it.
  
  They have lost the moral high ground. It was an inside job.
Marko Raos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwuB5WPbRhc
is a much better tribute imo
tp1024

Moderators may have the ability to unpublish comments. But my opinion stands:

No US secretary of state has the right to define their own human rights. No US president either.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  tp1024,
  
  You’re shrieking like a howler monkey. The fact that you chose to interpret my comment as supporting Clinton indicates that you have lost the capacity for rational thought. Take a break.
BarBarSeven

He was a complete sonofabitch, but I still feel bad he died this way and is not alive to stand trial for his crimes. And if he had seen the writing on the wall during the “Arab Spring” then he wouldn’t have had to face a “Vindictive Autumn.” He asked for what he got.

And he died the way he lived: Crazily. Cornered in a hole with two gold guns and a guy in a Yankees cap taking him out? Whoa. That’s nuts.
Palomino

What I did notice was what appears to be Gaddafi telling a woman to stop carrying a 7 year old boy around. She set’s him down and he reaches for her like he’s standing on hot coals, and she picks him back up.

Weird.
http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski

There’s no problem a Kalashnikov won’t solve!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  There’s no problem a Kalashnikov won’t solve!
  
  Actually, there is one problem.
  - juepucta
    
    Funny, i had no idea (re: your link). Odd thing is, the general mentioned in the article’s last name is Makarov – like the pistols. I bet the Alex Jones crowd already has a cuckoo bananas theory about gun manufacturing elites trying to outmanoeuvre each other.
Aaron Gunn

Hey remember when BoingBoing was antiwar? LOL
- Lobster
  
  This is a significant world event and BoingBoing’s reporting of it seems fairly neutral. Maybe a little flippant, with the Hitler parody thing.
  
  One can be anti-war without pretending there is no such thing as war.
GoGo Vicmorrow

So are these the grand kids of his we killed a couple months ago?

He wasn’t a great guy and maybe a downright bad when a few decades ago, but he did take the countries oil wealth and move huge Libyan populations into houses with running water, electricty, and satellite t.v. (though i doubt anything good was on). They have a high literacy rate and Africa’s highest GDP.
This was an American backed operation, wasn’t his own population. Why didn’t we back Iran’s people? Is help granted not by the need of the people, but by how easy it is to topple the country into the hands of rebels?
http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

He was a horrible, megalomaniacal tyrant, and both the Libyan rebels and the U.S. made numerous offers about a peaceful transition, with Gaddafi living out his winter years in exile somewhere nice, no doubt with billions in stolen oil money.

But he refused exile, and ironically exile would have afforded him far more dignity than going out like a bitch, begging (I hear) his former aide of 30+ years to spare his life.

At least Saddam went out proper like, stoic and defiant to the last.
- Lobster
  
  It’s easy to say a man should die with dignity when you’re not that man.
scallywag

For the longest time, much of Libya’s population was seething from the hips about the difficulties subjected to them courtesy of Mr Gaddafi’s rule and now that he is finally gone they don’t know how to proceed. Which in some way all makes sense as Mr Gaddafi had spent 40 years dictating policy and agenda for his countrymen, and in his absence his fellow countrymen are at a kind of loss what to do. It’s as if their lives all these years had been motivated with how to make the best of Mr Gaddafi’s embittered rule, how to overthrow him and now how to exactly begin to live without him…

http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2011/10/muamar-gaddafis-body-put-on-public-display-in-shopping-center-meat-locker-freezer/