Despite his insistence (in English) in an interview with ABC that his people really “love me,” a Russian political source has told a reporter that Gaddafi is a “political corpse” and should step down:
A Kremlin source on Tuesday called Muammar Gaddafi a “living political corpse”, and said the Libyan leader should step down, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.
Russia rarely criticises authoritarian leaders, but President Dmitry Medvedev last week condemned Gaddafi’s use of violence against protesters calling for his overthrow and said continued bloodshed would be a crime under international law.
The Kremlin source said it was time for Gaddafi to step down, calling him “a living political corpse who has no place in the modern civilised world.”
It’s not a good career move when you have the United States and Russia solidly against you, and demonstrators pouring into the streets chanting slogans that don’t reflect either love or tough love but a desire to have you leave or vanish from the face of the earth. Or BE vanished.
Increasingly, this seems to be Gaddafi’s theme song:
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UPDATE: What happens to Libya after Gaddafi? CNN reports:
UPDATE II: A U.S. official piles on:
Gadhafi’s remarks were met with derision in Washington. “It sounds, just frankly, delusional,” said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice. She added that Gadhafi’s behavior, including laughing on camera in TV interviews amid the chaos, “underscores how unfit he is to lead and how disconnected he is from reality.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.