Seif speaks

With over 250 protesters killed and thousands injured, Libya today lurched closer to the point of complete collapse. In a show of force, the government began the unusual practice of strafing it's people from military aircrafts. Oil production has been halted by worker strikes, which is a problem for a country with no other source of income except for tourism, and tourism is as dead as the soldiers who have been dismembered for refusing to fire on the people. And Guide of the Revolution Muammar Gadaffi appears to have left the building.   "To be perfectly honest about it, Dad really needed a vacation," said the strongman's son Seif al-Islam Gadaffi. Saif holds absolutely no position of authority in Libya, and yet there he was, addressing the people on state television.   "I thought it would be a good idea," he said later. "I just kind of figured the people would appreciate hearing from a Gadaffi, even if it wasn't the one they were expecting. Apparently I don't have the rhetorical talents of my father, because after I finished speaking, the people went wild in the streets, which really wasn't what I had intended."   "It started off well enough," Seif continued. "I told the people that I was going to give them some straight talk, and you know how the people like that. I mean, I acknowledge that the country was going though a little bit of strife, and I told them we were going to give them some real reform, which is what I thought they wanted. Maybe they were confused by the 'we', since my Dad is a monomaniacal tyrant, after all. In hindsight, I guess I can see why they might think of those as empty words."   "Still, I did the best I could. I even explained that the only reason that the army and police had been shooting them was that they had never received training in dispersal of demonstrations and that kind of put them in a difficult psychological situation. I wish that I had used a studio audience, because that would have given me an indication that things were going south, and I certainly wouldn't have told them that we would fight to our very last man, woman, and bullet. No way I would have gone there."   "Well, what's done is done, as Dad always said," Seif concluded wistfully. "I suppose Libya will be in complete chaos now, and we'll probably have an endless civil war... You know, I guess the one good thing about not having an official government position is that at least you don't have to worry about being deposed."