Qaddafi Promises "Fight to the Last Man"
The New York Times reports:
Amid new reports of fighting between his security forces and rebels seeking his ouster, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi took time out today to deliver a meandering, disjointed three-hour speech mixing a combination of giveaways to the public, promises of reform, and vows of retaliation in an apparent bid to quell the growing unrest here.
His speech bore little apparent relation to reality. Addressing the Libyan Peoples General Congress on the 34th anniversary of the founding of Libya’s distinctive “rule by the masses” nonconstitutional government, Colonel Qaddafi repeated his recent denials in the face of all evidence that any demonstrations against his government had taken place recently.
When he entered the room, a cheering crowd mobbed the desk when he was to speak, trampling and breaking an arrangement of flower pots placed on the floor. He was by turns soft-spoken and pugnacious. He turned pages as he read from a long prepared speech, but then veered off into lengthy, improvised digressions.
At times he adopted the tone of an absent-minded uncle, asking his audience to remind him of the names of newspapers or to return to a certain subject before he left (the audience did). But at other times his tone would turn bellicose, as he urged his supporters to fight on with him “to the last man and the last woman.”
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