Some views of life in Libya under the dictator whom some of you admire:

"Veteran BBC foreign correspondent Kate Adie remembers her visits to Libya.
"You heard whispers, you heard rumours.
Years ago, the Italian ambassador told me he had complained of the
screams they could hear overnight. He said that they found rubbish skips
with limbs in them in the morning. That's the kind of place it was."

A fleeing Croatian mercenary gives an account of his experiences fighting for Gaddafi in Time, some excerpts:

"My men were mainly from the south [of Libya] and Chad, and there were a few others from countries south of Libya," said Mario, who spoke on condition that his last name not be published. A veteran of the wars of the former Yugoslavia, he had been hired by the Gaddafi regime to help fight the rebels and, later, NATO. "Discipline was bad, and they were too stupid to learn anything. But things were O.K. until the air strikes commenced. The other side was equally bad, if not worse. [Muammar] Gaddafi would have smashed the rebels had the West not intervened."

"Away from the front, at the heart of the regime, mistrust and excess further undermined Gaddafi's hold on power, Mario said. "Life in [Gaddafi's] compound and shelters was so surreal, with partying, women, alcohol and drugs," said Mario, 41. "One of the relatives of Gaddafi took me to one of his villas where they offered me anything I wanted. I heard stories about people being shot for fun and forced to play Russian roulette while spectators were making bets, like in the movies."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2090205,00.html