Our good buddy Moammar Kadafi mourns Saddam's death:

There's one aspect of this Saddam execution story that keeps coming up that I haven't heard anyone address. Moammar Kadafi, the man former British Foreign Minister Jack Straw once called a "statesman," is going to erect a statue to Saddam Hussein to stand next to Omar al-Mukhtar, a hero of the Libyan colonial resistance to the Italians. [UPI] When the death of Saddam was spread around the world, Kadafi announced three days of national mourning and canceled the observance of the Eid festival. (This guy is an ally in the WOT?)

Isn't this the same Kadafi regime that the U.S. State Department just took off the list of nations that promote terrorism? Isn't this the same Kadafi regime that the neocons are now holding up as an example of a Bush administration foreign policy success? Why isn't Victor David Hanson saying the "Libya model" could work with Iran, I wonder?

So listen up Mamoud Ahmandinejad, all you have to do is give up your 300 centrifuges and spout some lip service about the fight against terrorism and you, too, can get away with murder.

In justifying the execution of Saddam, another neocon wacko Claudia Rosett ("Hussein deserved it" Inquirer, Jan. 4) wrote that the death of Saddam sent a "vital message" to "terror-wielding fascists who . . . threaten the basic fabric of the civilized world order."

Apparently, Moammar hasn't gotten the message.

Just ask the Bulgarian government, which is in a diplomatic struggle with Kadafi to release 5 nurses who have spent 7 years in a Libyan jail on trumped-up charges of giving AIDs to hundreds of Libyan children.

A Libyan court recently sentenced the nurses and Palestinian doctor to death. But, I guess, as Rosett writes, "What we regard as a noble and sensitive discussion" about capital punishment the likes of "Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Osama Bin Laden . . . will read, correctly, as weakness -- a sign that the free world has no stomach for this fight."

We haven't got time to worry about "our private preoccupations with the universe . . . in a dangerous world, it does no service."

It may be all well and fine for the Vatican to talk about the sanctity of life and decry the execution of Saddam, but we've got an ideological war to win! And just let those wine drinking, pasta eating Italians try and get the world to go along with a universal moratorium on capital punishment.

Because, Ban Ki Moon, the new U.N. Secretary General, is no Koffi Annan. There will be no more of this namby-pamby coddling of terror-wielding Islamo-fascists that went on during Annan's tenure.

Commenting on the killing of Saddam, Ban said: "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide." While opposition to the capital punishment is still officially the policy of the U.N., Ban's spokesperson said "there are some countries that do recognize the death penalty. He would just like to leave it open to the countries." Ban's opinion on the subject is more of a "nuance on the situation ... we should think first of the victims and the need for justice." [WaPo]

So, I guess, Ban would be fine with the Bulgarians being put to death. The Libyans say these children deserve justice, after all. The fact that the trial was less than fair and the kids were actually infected before the nurses even arrived in Libya, we should defer to the sovereign nation of Libya and its blood drenched leader, killer Kadafi.

The families of the victims of Moammar Kadafi's bombing of Pan Am flight 103 didn't get any justice, just a couple billion petro-dollars, but Moammar is now playing ball in the war on terror. Those who are going to cry over something that happened in the past don't appreciate the nuances of the situation. Kadafi may be a bad guy, but in a dangerous world we need him to open up his oil and gas fields to Exxon/Mobil and BP. We can't spread God's message of freedom and democracy to the world on wind power alone, after all! Geez!