April 15, 2011. Qaddafi's forces have now taken to using cluster bombs and ground-to-ground rockets against civilians, unleashing the sort of "building by building" and "person by person" violence that he promised in his infamous February rant. Here is the Zenga Zenga video again, this time with appropriate English subtitles.

As an antidote to partisan Republican mutterings that hope to confuse the Obama administration's current commitment to a limited American military action in Libya with the grievous mistakes of Little Bushie's protracted land war in Iraq, please consult this short list from Professor Juan Cole's Informed Comment site.

Here are the differences between George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the current United Nations action in Libya:

1. The action in Libya was authorized by the United Nations Security Council. That in Iraq was not. By the UN Charter, military action after 1945 should either come as self-defense or with UNSC authorization. Most countries in the world are signatories to the charter and bound by its provisions.

2. The Libyan people had risen up and thrown off the Qaddafi regime, with some 80-90 percent of the country having gone out of his hands before he started having tank commanders fire shells into peaceful crowds. It was this vast majority of the Libyan people that demanded the UN no-fly zone. In 2002-3 there was no similar popular movement against Saddam Hussein.

from New York Magazine: Israeli Journalist's YouTube Mockery of Qadaffi Rant Goes Viral in Libya.

from the New York Times: Arabs Embrace Israeli’s YouTube Spoof of Qaddafi

Noy Alooshe, 31, an Israeli journalist, musician and Internet buff, said he saw Colonel Qaddafi’s televised speech last Tuesday in which the Libyan leader vowed to hunt down protesters “inch by inch, house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway,” and immediately identified it as a “classic hit.”