Harvard for Tyrants - How Muammar al-Qaddafi taught a generation of bad guys

foreignpolicy.com ^ | MARCH 4, 2011 | DOUGLAS FARAH

[Tailgunner Joe]

Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his powers.

Nor are his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua -- both of whom are busy trampling their constitutions and moving toward dictatorship -- well understood. And the fact that all three governments support the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a terrorist group that produces more than half of the world's cocaine and two-thirds of the cocaine entering the United States, is usually ignored. ....

The Libyan relationship with Chávez and the FARC dates at least to 2000. A series of email exchanges among FARC commander Raúl Reyes, Qaddafi, and Ortega show how deep that relationship remained in the recent past....

After Reyes was killed in 2008, his computer hard drives were captured by the Colombian police. They contain a trove of correspondence, including a Sept. 4, 2000, letter from the FARC high command to "Comrade Colonel Gaddafi, Great Leader of the World Mathaba." The missive thanked Qaddafi for recently hosting senior FARC commanders in Libya. The FARC went on to request "a loan of $100 million, repayable in five years. . . . One of our primary needs is the purchase of surface-to-air missiles to repel and shoot down the combat aircraft." The aircraft in question were supplied to the Colombian military by the United States.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Tailgunner Joe.

Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi...more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya... vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe... his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua... all three governments support the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a terrorist group that produces more than half of the world's cocaine and two-thirds of the cocaine entering the United States, is usually ignored.