New York Times Admits: Qaddafi Was Right

January 21, 2013 • 10:41AM

Almost two years too late, the New York Times, surveying the rising power of jihadis, warlords, and gangsters in North Africa, grudgingly acknowledges that Qaddafi's warnings about what would follow, if he were overthrown, were "prescient." The Times story, on the "Grim side of the Arab Spring," begins: "As the uprising closed in around him, the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi warned that if he fell, chaos and holy war would overtake North Africa. 'Bin Laden's people would come to impose ransoms by land and sea, he told reporters. We will go back to the time of Redbeard, of pirates, of Ottomans imposing ransoms on boats.' And a caption under a photo of Qaddafi states: "His warnings before his 2011 ouster and death sounded melodramatic, but proved prescient as the area has become easier for jihadists to operate in."

The Times story itself is written around the theme that "the euphoric toppling of dictators in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt has come at a price, and, in the words of Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group, that the uprising has been "a real boon to jihadists. Those particularly cited, are Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who reportedly led the attack on the Algerian gas field, and Abdelhamid Abu Zeid, a leader of Al Qaedas North African branch.

The Times should have thought of this, before they repeatedly called for political and military support for the terrorist-ridden "opposition" who were out to overthrow — and then murder — Qaddafi.