Qaddafi UN speech: Six highlights - or lowlights?

Muammar Qaddafi's speech to the UN was a 1-1/2 hour rant. Here are six can't-miss moments.

Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi’s rambling, 1-1/2 hour speech to the United Nations is proof that the man desperately needs a Twitter account.

Speaking directly after President Obama, President Qaddafi far exceeded his allotted 15 minutes and in the process seemed to be on a personal mission to wrest the crown of World’s Foremost Fount of Political Inanity from front-runners Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

In a speech cobbled together from pages of hand-written notes, he fulminated on topics as diverse as JFK’s assassination and swine flu. One blogger has already christened the speech the lowest point in the history of the United Nations.

Here are the high points:

1. ‘Our son’ Obama

Qaddafi extended his congratulations to “our son Obama” on the occasion of his first speech at UN.

“Obama is a glimpse in the darkness after four or eight years,” Qaddafi said. “We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as president of the United States."

2. UN Security Council Terror Council

“We are not committed to obeying or adhering to resolutions by the Security Council in its composition right now,” Qaddafi said. "It should not be called the Security Council, it should be called the 'terror council.' ”

3. Swine Flu: The capitalists made it

“The swine virus may have gotten out in the open after escaping from a laboratory. It may have been put together in a lab by the military…. We do sometimes make viruses in a laboratory and then they make viruses for capitalist companies who will make vaccinations and make money.”

4. Iraq war the ‘mother of all evils’

“Sixty-five aggressive wars took place without any collective action by the United Nations to prevent them,” Qaddafi said. He noted the Iraq war, in particular, as being “the mother of all evils.”

5. JFK killed because he wanted to investigate Israelis

“Why did this Israeli kill the killer of Jack Kennedy?” Qaddafi asked, after noting that Jack Ruby, "an Israeli," killed Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. “The whole world should know that Kennedy wanted to investigate the nuclear reactor of the Israeli demon," Qaddafi said.

Qaddafi also called for a reinvestigation into the assassination of the Martin Luther King Jr. "His killing was a plot, and we should know why he was killed and who killed him," Qaddafi said.

6. UN should relocate to Libya

“You will thank me for not having to travel for 20 hours to this place.”

The White House on Qaddafi

"I think it was Qaddafi being Qaddafi," Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, as though Qaddafi was now a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills.

In response to Qaddafi’s suggestion that Obama should rule the US forever, Gibbs deadpanned: “Leaving aside the amendments to the Constitution that the president agrees with wholeheartedly, it would be an interesting concept to continue being president beyond one’s natural-born life.”

-----

Until the Colonel gets his own account, follow us on Twitter.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
QR Code to Qaddafi UN speech: Six highlights - or lowlights?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2009/0923/qaddafi-un-speech-six-highlights-or-lowlights
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe