Free Republic

The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was taken by surprise as she read the news of Col Muammar Gaddafi's capture on her phone.

A bloodied and beaten Moammar Gadhafi asked the fighters who captured him "Do you know right from wrong?" in what could well have been the final words of the ousted Libyan dictator. New video footage emerged Friday showing the former strongman apparently in his last moments, surrounded and pleading for his life, repeatedly telling the mob swarming around him, "What you are doing is forbidden in Islamic law." One of the group is heard responding, "Shut up you dog," as the armed fighters fired celebratory bullets in the air. The footage ends with Gadhafi telling them, "What you are doing...

Anti-Gadhafi fighters carry their wounded comrade during fighting at the frontline, in the north of the besieged city of Bani Walid on Friday. BANI WALID, Libya — Moammar Gadhafi's fighters beat back an attempt by Libya's new government Friday to crush remnants of the old regime, forcing revolutionary troops into retreat in the mountains and turning Gadhafi's seaside hometown into an urban battlefield of snipers firing from mosques and heavy weapons rattling main boulevards. The tough defense of the holdout towns of Sirte and Bani Walid displayed the firepower and resolve of the Gadhafi followers and suggested Libya's new rulers...

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Hundreds of Islamist militants were among the prisoners freed from a notorious Tripoli prison this week, according to a former Libyan jihadist. The freed militants had been imprisoned in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison by Moammar Gadhafi's regime during the height of the insurgency in Iraq, according to Noman Benotman, once a senior figure in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Benotman said he believes as many as 600 militants may have been among the prison population at Abu Salim. -snip- Gadhafi's regime imprisoned thousands of suspected pro-al Qaeda militants after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq stoked...

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Thursday he was against NATO intervention in Libya but had to go along with it, an admission that exposed the fragility of the alliance trying to unseat Muammar Gaddafi. NATO warplanes have been bombing Libya under a U.N. mandate, but the alliance is under mounting strain because of the cost of the operation and the failure, after more than three months, to produce a decisive outcome. "I was against this measure," Berlusconi said. "I had my hands tied by the vote of the parliament of my country. But I was against and I...