Time Magazine in 2006: "Gaddafi's Now a Good Guy"

There are times where you no longer know what to say.  Time Magazine, well known to have a clear liberal bias, announced in May of 2006 that Maummar Gaddafi is "now a good guy."

Sure, he rules with an iron fist.  Sure, he's a dictator.  Sure, President Ronald Reagan called him a "mad dog."  But, as Time quotes him:

"Bush is saying that America is fighting for the triumph of freedom," Gaddafi said between sips of tea. "When we were supporting liberation movements in the world, we were arguing that it was for the victory of freedom. We both agree. We were fighting for the cause of freedom."

Yes, assuredly Gaddafi is fighting for freedom.  That's why he guns down civilians in the street and slobbers in an underground bunker, declaring that he will "die a martyr."

A "good guy" according to Time

Even worse, even in 2006 Gaddafi was in no way a "good guy" by any stretch of the imagination.  Foreign relations with him had improved since the '80s, but they could not be described much better than "icy."  Oh, and just as importantly, Gaddafi was still an iron-fisted ruler that disallowed freedoms and killed those he disliked.

But as Time describes in an almost ludicrously quick way:

It wasn't too long ago when Gaddafi, not Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, was the enemy Washington loved to hate. The U.S. bombed Tripoli 20 years ago last month, in what amounted to an aerial assassination attempt on Gaddafi himself after President Reagan dubbed Gaddafi the "mad dog" of the Middle East. The Tripoli blitz came amid suspected Libyan involvement in a Berlin terrorist attack that killed two American servicemen. 

Gaddafi's international isolation only grew two years later, after Libya was accused in the Lockerbie disaster. Two decades later, Saddam is gone from power, facing trial and possible execution for oppressing his own people, while Gaddafi is back in the good graces of the White House.

Nice work, Time.

Update:  And just in case they scrub the article, here's a quick screen shot of it:

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