| Description |
1 online resource (streaming video file) (26 min. 50 sec.) ; 162109875 bytes |
| Summary |
One former US president called him the Mad Dog of the Middle East. His fingerprints are all over a catalogue of despicable acts including terrorism. So why did the West welcome Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi back into the mainstream? As he digs in against a potent uprising and now facing a United Nations air patrol, this is the inside story of how powerful governments shrugged off his heinous acts and made Gaddafi richer and more powerful than ever before.A bomb explodes in a Berlin nightclub killing two US soldiers. A suitcase is secreted aboard a 747 at London's Heathrow airport and the bomb it holds explodes over the Scottish countryside killing 270 people. A rudimentary nuclear program is thought to be underway and weapons of mass destruction are suspected to be in his reach.Muammar Gaddafi, erratic, impetuous, impossibly vain, ruthless and of course brutal was at times considered to be one of the world's most dangerous threats. But the Libyan dictator was not about to suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein. Instead he actually was welcomed back in from the cold, befriended by America, Britain and other powerful governments, stroked by oil and gas companies. He even partied with Silvio Berlusconi.Now as Muammar Gaddafi takes on a widespread rebellion and vows to kill those who've mobilised against him those governments now have to contend with a monster they helped to remake."After the Libyan people began this uprising and my feelings towards them changed. I began to see us all as victims. They were victimised too. And I thought to myself, yes we all hate him. We all hate Gaddafi and we are all victims of Gaddafi." - Susan Cohen - Mother of Lockerbie victimIn this special Foreign Correspondent investigation, Mary Ann Jolley takes us inside the backrooms where the pressure was brought and the deals were done to 'rehabilitate' Gaddafi's image and transform a terrorist and a brutal oppressor into an acceptable political figure ready to do business with the world."After the UN sanctions were lifted we immediately received a visit from a senior executive of one of the oil companies, and he said, are you going to lift sanctions? And we said, no, not yet. And he actually started to cry. We had to give him a Kleenex box." - Gwyneth Todd, Former advisor to US President Clinton |
| Event |
Broadcast 2011-03-22 at 20:00:00 |
| Notes |
Classification: NC |
| Subject |
Civil war.
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Dictators.
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Government, Resistance to.
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International relations -- Political aspects.
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Qaddafi, Muammar.
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Representative government and representation.
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Libya.
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| Form |
Streaming video
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| Author |
Ann Jolley, Mary, reporter
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Aujali, Ali, contributor
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Barber, Benjamin, contributor
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Cohen, Susan, contributor
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Elkikhia, Mansour, contributor
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Hudomi, Randa Fahmey, contributor
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Todd, Gwenyth, contributor
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Vandewalle, Dirk, contributor
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