Gaddafi's Speech - Quotes

UPDATE, October 20, 2011: Gaddafi Killed
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Libyan leader and terrorist Muammar Gaddafi delivered his first ever address to the United Nations General Assembly today.

He had a 15-minute time limit. He went long.

(Note: Gaddafi = Gadhafi = Qaddafi)

From the New York Times:

In the first third of a speech that lasted more than 90 minutes, Colonel Qaddafi focused on what he called the inherent unfairness of the United Nations, which gives the five permanent members of the Security Council far more authority than the nations only in the General Assembly. This, Mr. Qaddafi said, was dictatorship, not democracy and, as such, “was terrorism itself.”

“We are not committed to obeying or adhering to resolutions by the Security Council in its composition right now,” he said, adding that the Security Council should be renamed the “Terror Council.” At one point, he even tore the edge of the founding charter of the United Nations he held in his hand, saying he agreed with the document’s preamble but nothing else.

He said the organization’s power dynamic should be reversed — to make the Security Council an instrument designed to “implement the will of the General Assembly.”

...Ali Abdussalam Treki, the Libyan diplomat who now holds the rotating presidency of the General Assembly, introduced him as the “leader of the revolution, president of the African Union, King of Kings of Africa.”

An hour into his address, Colonel Qaddafi began calling for investigations into each of the major wars since the United Nations was founded: the Korean War, the war over the Suez Canal, the Vietnam War and the ongoing war in Iraq, which he called “the mother of all evils.”

The Afghan war, too, he said, should be investigated for possible prosecution. At times, Colonel Qaddafi veered into conspiracy, saying, for example, that the H1N1 influenza virus, also called swine flu, might be a military or corporate weapon that got out of a lab, and he intimated that an Israeli hand was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, should be solved by the creation of a single state, which Mr. Qaddafi called Isratine, but Mr. Qaddafi stressed it was wrong to infer that Arabs hate the Jews. “You are the ones who burned them, not us. You expelled them,” he said, referring apparently to European nations.

For Mr. Obama personally, however, he had only warm words, calling on the collected nations to welcome “our son” on the occasion of his first United Nations appearance. “We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as the president of America,” he said, and added that he feared America would return to its old ways after the end of Mr. Obama’s term.

Here's more, from Bloomberg:

In a rambling speech that lasted more than 90 minutes, Qaddafi tried to rip in two a pocket-sized copy of the UN Charter, charging that the council’s existence violated the provision that all UN members be treated equally. He called for power to go to the General Assembly, whose rotating presidency this year is held by Libyan diplomat Ali Treki.

“The Security Council since its establishment did not provide us with security but on the contrary provides us with terror and sanctions,” he said. “It was used against us. It should not be called a security council, it should be called a terror council.”

... “Sixty-five wars broke out after the establishment of the UN and the Security Council, and the victims are millions more than the victims of World War II,” he said. “Were these wars in the interest of all of us? No, they were in the interest of one country or three countries or four countries.”

Turning to the heads of state gathered in the assembly chamber, Qaddafi said, “You are just like speakers on Hyde Park Corner” in London. “You make a speech and then disappear.”

... “The General Assembly is the parliament of the world, the master of the world, and no one should object,” he said.

...The Libyan leader said he is proud of Barack Obama’s election to the U.S. presidency as a “son of Africa” and called him “a glimmer in the dark.” He praised Obama’s call for a reduction in nuclear weapons.

...Turning to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, just days after Obama urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to build two states living side-by-side in peace, Qaddafi said a two-state solution was “not practicable.”

“The solution is an Arab state without religious fanaticism,” he said. “Look at Palestinian youth, look at Israeli youth -- they want peace and want to live in one state.”

...At one point, Qaddafi noted that many world leaders appeared to have dozed off during his speech, and complained that holding UN sessions in New York caused jet lag. He said he had woken up at 4 a.m. because of the change in time zones.

More quotes, from the Wall Street Journal:

At another point, Mr. Gadhafi asked why the U.N. is situated in the U.S. and questioned whether it would be better to move the headquarters elsewhere.

"Everyone here today came across the Atlantic or the Pacific, and I ask you, why?" he said. "Is this Jerusalem, or Mecca? All of you have jetlag and are physically tired. Many of you are very tired because your biological mind should be asleep right now. Think about it, why should we continue to meet here in America?"

"We should not have to come to New York," he said.

But Mr. Gadhafi softened his tone when referring to Mr. Obama, saying, "We are happy and proud that a son of Africa is president of the U.S. in a place where blacks could not go in a bus where whites go." He said Mr. Obama was "the beginning of a change."

"Obama is a glimpse in the dark, and I am afraid that we may go back to square one. Can you guarantee how America will governed after Obama?" he asked, looking back at U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon. "As far as I'm concerned he can stay president of America forever."

Mr. Gadhafi later turned this attention to Iraq.

"The Iraqi war was the mother of all evils," he said. "Why did we invade? This should be investigated. It was a violation of the U.N. charter, without any justification."

He asked why prisoners of war were tried, including Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein. "How is the member of a government and president of a country be sentenced to hang? Who were these people in masks that did this? Did they have the right to do it?"

He said some believed that the executioners were Americans. "We don't the identify of these people. The U.N. has the duty to answer these questions, who implemented the death sentence."

Mr. Gadhafi then rambled further afield, even touching on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He asked who killed the U.S. president and why this hasn't been answered yet. "We know that the Israeli Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald, who had killed the president," he said. "And then this Israeli died. … We have to know how and why this happened, so such things will not be repeated."

Touching on the subject of piracy, Mr. Gadhafi said he had met with pirates in Somalia who have made headlines in the past year for dozens of hijackings of cargo ships.

"These men are not pirates," he said. "We are the pirates. We are all pirates. We went there to their territorial waters, and they are just protecting the food of their children. The solution does not lie in sending military ships to Somalia."

If I were Obama I wouldn't be too pleased with Gaddafi's words of praise.

It's not good to be embraced by a terrorist and conspiracy nut like Gaddafi.