So he's besieged by rats and cockroaches

What is it about narcissistic, psychopathic despots that they are unable to make a few concise points and get on with it?

Gaddafi’s rambling on television this evening put me in mind of Dom Mintoff, going on and on, taking off at different tangents, not making sense, and using a thousand words where three would suffice.

Had you listened over the radio to his performance in parliament in the summer of 1998, when he decided he was going to bring down Alfred Sant’s government by voting against it?

But as one of my Libyan friends told me, “You thought Mintoff was bad, but just look at Gaddafi.”

You can’t say that Gaddafi has lost it, after that television performance, because it doesn’t seem he ever had it in the first place. As another one of my Libyan friends said, this one old enough to remember his glorious revolution, “Gaddafi was always mad and now it’s become obvious to the world.” He didn’t mean ‘mad’ as in ‘you don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps’. He meant mad as in certifiable.

Gaddafi described the people fighting against him as cockroaches and rats. He said that they were under the influence of alcohol (there was a big poster at Tripoli airport, the last time I went there, warning of the Satanic evils of drink). He said that they had been fed hallucinogens by foreigners – and I don’t know why, but this really brought Anglu Farrugia to mind.

Gaddafi said that the “young men” would be rounded up and that they would be killed in line with the rules of his Green Book, that all those who rise up against Libya or Libyans will face the death penalty.

Except him, of course. He told us that he will die a martyr on Libyan soil. If only somebody would oblige, and the sooner the better.

The rebellion against him was passed off as the actions of a small group paid by unspecified persons who stayed home and let others do their bidding (and again I was reminded of the thinking of our own Labour Party which describes its harshest critics as the paid mercenaries of politicians who hide their hand).

His speech had been billed as a description of how he would devolve power to the people. There were no such details, unless you count his call to The People to run oil resources through municipal committees that he would set up. That must have thrilled the waiting world, and given the oil companies some shivers.

But really, who was he kidding. There is no way he can go back to running the country as he did before. His cover – that he is Libya’s strongman and beloved by his people – has been blown for good. That myth was his leverage with the world which thought that he was there because Libyans wanted it that way.

Now we know how much they hate and despise him, because we have seen them spitting on his image in their thousands, grinding it underfoot, burning his green flag and screaming in frustration after 40 years of fearful silence.

The crazy bastard – if he stays on I will not be able to return to Libya, but who gives a damn at this stage – called on The People to “liberate and purify” Benghazi, which is now in the hands of those who threw him off. In an allusion to Ben Ali and Mubarak, he said that he could not resign because he is not a president, but a revolutionary leader and part of The People. He has his gun, he said, and would use it to fight for Libya

And then came the terrible part. Or perhaps that should be the ‘more terrible part’. From tomorrow, he said, the police and army would crack down on protestors and impose security – because if they do not do this, the cockroaches – who represent no one but themselves – will take over and Libya will slide into darkness and “lose its oil”.

His enemies must be chased and the terrorist cockroaches must be hanged. Those who take up arms against Libya will be executed. Those who wage war against Libya will be put to death. Those who let the enemy into Libya will be killed.

And those who use force against the people will be executed too – but that doesn’t include him, it seems, in his bunker. Citing Waco in the United States, the USSR attempted coup and the student rebellion in Tiananmen Square in China, he said that the use of tanks to quell uprisings is good because unity is more important than anything.

He ended on a note of unintended irony: that it would be unacceptable for Libya to be handed over to crazy people.

An hour after he began speaking, he finally stopped, and an army officer stepped into view and hugged him. I thought it was a way of saying that look, unlike Tunisia and Egypt, here in Libya the army is with Gaddafi.

But now somebody has written in to say that the army officer is his son.