Libya

As a young woman, Peon "distinguished" herself by reading books on obscure countries--Angola, Mozambique, Uganda, Namibia, and other countries most Americans couldn't find on a map. One of the countries she read up on was Libya. She believed that if our government was going to bomb a country, she should know something about it. (This resulted, in 1991, in the reading of a 700-page tome on Iraq, but that's another war.)

Anyway, her reading on the subject of Libya led her to the conclusion that it was unlikely that Col. Khadafy would be deposed anytime soon. While Peon hasn't updated her knowledge for, oh, about 20 years, it appears that things haven't changed there. Indeed Peon was distressed to discover that one of the rebel groups, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, is a retread from the battles of the 1980s. It has a lot of problems. It was formed as a front for the CIA. It devoted itself to knocking off various Libyan diplomats in assorted European capitals. It was incompetent. Indeed, so incompetent that the CIA shut it down in the early 1990s.

The group distinguished itself in two ways. First, it attempted an invasion of Libya. Now that shouldn't be too difficult. Look at the length of the Libyan border. But they got caught before they'd made it 10 feet inside Libya. Then they iced the cake, so to speak, by shooting, and seriously wounding, the 11-year-old son of Libya's then second-in-command, Abdul Salam Jalloud. On purpose, because they couldn't mount a campaign against an adult. Even the CIA couldn't countenance that, and shut the organization down. Now they're BAACK.

it should also be noted that the US hasn't updated it's other practices in the meantime. In 1986 the US bombed Khadafy's home, killing his 16-month-old daughter. This time NATO killed another of his children, as well as three of his grandchildren. Obama really does admire Reagan.