Dr. Saif Gaddafi and Mustafa Zarti

The Libyan Army are amateurs as well. With over 2,000 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles, 375 fighter aircraft, and 50,000 soldiers, it is still unable to wipe out a ragtag resistance with only light firepower and some captured RPGs. Forty-two years in power and 42 years of threatening the West, and the pox-ridden, phony-medaled Gaddafi can only posture. (In the UK, over 100 of his cops are still being trained as I write.) Some of you may remember that two weeks ago, Dr. Taki suggested that the protesters would prevail only with Western help: not boots on the ground, but with stealth US air power. Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have made any overt intervention impossible. So much for the Bush and Blair Doctrines. I’ll take Nero and Caligula over those two incompetents any day.

Speaking of incompetence, I just finished a biography of P. K. van der Byl, the Rhodesian Minister of Defence under the great Ian Smith. P. K. was reviled by the British and Western press like no other. (Christopher Hitchens hit a new low at the time by making fun of Ian Smith’s facial scars, acquired fighting as an RAF pilot in World War II.) Douglas Hurd to this day refuses to admit deliberately helping to bring the most radical government possible into power in Rhodesia. The book’s author is Hannes Wessels, who paints a sympathetic portrait of a statesman I always admired, one who knew what sort of murder, evil, and corruption Mugabe would unleash once in power. Yet Mugabe is allowed to visit Rome and Brussels, and his bodyguards beat up gay protesters with impunity. The only thing left to do is for the LSE to award the murderer a Ph.D.

Which brings me to the last time I missed a Spectator column. I had a hell of a streak going, never having missed a column in decades, when one was spiked by the then-deputy editor—not my fiancée—for describing a certain Jeffrey Epstein as a child molester and sexual pervert. This must have been just as Epstein was being investigated four or five years ago. I knew all about Epstein. He started out as a bum-boy for someone very rich whose name I won’t mention, as he’s married and not a bad sort. Epstein was his catamite but picked up business tricks in no time. We know the rest ad nauseam. What makes me laugh about the media is how original they are. Every time they mention Prince Andrew they follow up with, “There is no suggestion that the Prince—” Whom do they think they’re kidding? The libel lawyers, actually. Ghislaine Maxwell, who bats for the other side, pimped for Epstein since day one, and Bill Clinton and others of his ilk put pressure on a small-town judge not to throw the book at him. He should have gotten ten years but did little over a year in actual custody. It’s awful, almost as awful as Dr. Taki’s—as I then was not—column being spiked for calling a child molester a pervert. If only my fiancée had been deputy editor then, I’d still have my record intact.