Moussa Koussa Busted Loussa*
This is very good news.
BREGA, Libya — As rebel forces in Libya began a cautious regrouping after a panicked retreat, Britain on Thursday offered new details about the defection of Libya’s foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, insisting that there had been no deal to lure him in return for immunity from prosecution.
[...]
Mr. Koussa flew into a noncommercial British airfield at Farnborough southwest of London aboard an executive jet on Wednesday and, according to a statement released by the British authorities, said that he was resigning his post.In a speech in London on Thursday, Foreign Secretary William Hague said Mr. Koussa, a former intelligence chief in the Libyan regime, had fled to London “of his own free will.”
“Moussa Koussa is not being offered any immunity from British or international justice,” Mr. Hague said. “He is voluntarily talking to British officials, including members of the British Embassy in Tripoli now based in London, and our ambassador, Richard Northern.”
It would be very nice if Koussa, whose name will go down in history with those of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Abdullah Abdullah, and Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga among the roster of men who rose to positions of great wealth and power despite a name that you can’t actually say without chucking, started talking to some military intelligence folks as well. I’ll wager he knows most of Muammar Gadaffi’s comings and goings and could provide more than enough information to allow a team of very hard men with very accurate weapons to get in very close to the soon-to-be-late tyrant and snuff him out.
That assumes, of course, that killing Gadaffi is on the to-do list of this improvised military operation. One never knows, just by listening to the President and various people around the administration, what that to-do list contains. I hope the word “win” appears on it rather prominently, but we really can’t be sure, can we?
Oh well. At least we have Moussa Koussa and that’s something, right? I mean, if nothing else, the Kousster can give some rather bracing testimony at Gadaffi’s trial in The Hague in a decade or so, when all the bureaucratic wrangling has run its course.
*Alternate post titles:
- Moussa Koussa On the Loussa
- Moussa Koussa, He Vamoussa
- Thus Spake Moussa Koussa
Other Posts of Interest:
- An Exit Strategy That’s Not an Exit Strategy for A War That’s Not A War
- The Telework War, Day 3: Wherein President Obama Finally Notifies Congress
- After the President’s Libya Speech, I Still Have Questions
Category: No More Tyrants
