America tried once to kill him... perhaps its time to try again...
(Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi vowed to "crush any enemy" on Friday, addressing supporters in central Tripoli as Libya's popular uprising closed in around him and Western powers set about punishing him for attacks on his own people.
"We will fight if they want," the 68-year-old leader declared after a day of clashes in parts of the capital between security forces and crowds of protesters, which Gaddafi's opponents said had left some districts in their hands.
With eastern Libya firmly under opposition control after a week of unrest, protesters held the center of Zawiyah, west of the capital, a witness said, and laid makeshift defenses to fend off government forces after successive fierce attacks.
Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, talking to foreign journalists flown to Tripoli under escort, acknowledged his forces had "a problem" there and in the city of Misrata, 200 km (120 miles) east of Tripoli. But everywhere else was calm, he said, and talk of state brutality merely "lies" put about by hostile media.
Residents of the capital took a different view. "There have been gunshots non-stop," one woman said, who spoke of a friend seeing people shot down by security forces in the Souk al-Jumaa neighborhood. "She saw them shoot straight at the protesters."
The United States, which in recent years had a rapprochement with Gaddafi, was preparing sanctions and would not rule out military action. "His legitimacy has been reduced to zero in the eyes of his people," said President Barack Obama's spokesman.
The U.N. Security Council also drafted possible sanctions including an arms embargo, travel bans and freezing top officials' assets, and threatened the Libyan leadership with indictments for crimes against humanity.
Western powers, with whom Gaddafi has exploited Libya's oil after years of diplomatic isolation, have struggled to keep up with the pace of protests that have swept away Western-backed strongmen in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia already this year.
Gaddafi's own people seemed close to forcing him from power, although it is hard to assess the relative strengths of forces, which include irregular, tribal loyalists and militias backing Gaddafi and regular army units now gone over to the rebels.
DEFIANCE
Other towns were reported by residents to have fallen to the opposition, although Gaddafi retained the defiance he has often displayed against the West over more than four decades.
"Get ready to fight for Libya, get ready to fight for dignity, get ready to fight for petroleum!" he urged the crowd of thousands in Tripoli's central Green Square, threatening to open military arsenals to his supporters and tribesmen.
"We can crush any enemy. We can crush it with the people's will," he said, shouting and waving his fists.
Residents said parts of Tripoli, apparently the last major stronghold of the man who took over Libya as a young colonel in a 1969 military coup, were already beyond his control.
"I think Tripoli is in uprising," said one man in the city center. "When you go to Green Square you find it full of Gaddafi
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/ ... supporters. In the other areas, they went out after Friday prayers and they are demonstrating against Gaddafi."
that made me chuckle, mr V...