France has never forgotten Rwanda and the ?how many? people hacked to death while waiting for Western intervention which only came after the damage was done.

And Rwanda begat Congo, where we started to see really serious body counts.

Qaddafi is a dictator, and while Egypt is lying supine and whining, there is no "Arab" nation capable of reining in him. So we can wait and watch CNN showing us the bodies of Libyan "rebels" hacked to death by Qaddafi's mercenaries, or we use a bit of that military might.

Russia and China are at the old Cold War games of showing how nice they are to people that do not particularly like the US, NATO and anyone else who dares to call a dictator a dictator.

The media will always give air time to people who disagree; nothing more boring to the listeners and viewers than a procession of pundits agreeing with whatever the Government is doing.

While so so many people and Nations use the current scenario to jockey for political influence, access to Libyan petrodollars and the warm glow of media spotlights, just remember what happened when there was a disaster that nobody wanted to be first to fix. You think Qaddafi's mercenaries were going to line up the population of Benghazi and Tobruk and tell them they had been naughty boys and girls but now Uncle Muammar has forgiven them?

Pardon me while I go outside and vomit.