Bad Ass Women

I was thinking of doing a post about the divergent paths of Sara Jane Olson, Charles Manson, and Muammar Qaddafi (formerly known as that-freakin'- terrorist-who-blew-up-a-Pan Am-flight-plane-over-Scotland-in-1988 but now head of the Arab League...go figure!) but I just couldn't bring myself to write it...too much death and negativity.

Instead, in reading about the craziness of Qaddafi, who seems to embrace the bizarreness of Michael Jackson combined with an ego the size of Ali's (no slight intended), I came across a tidbit that I found pretty interesting.

All of Qaddafi's bodyguards are women.

There's a Russian video on YouTube about the guards. This is supposed to be the translation of the narration but who knows...

Narrator: When the leader sleeps, the soldier stays awake, and it's the women who do the fighting.

Qaddafi trusts his security to ladies only. The head of the Libyan Jamahiriya has a total of 300-400 women on his security detail. According to the official story, all of them are virgins [not true apparently]. Selection is done by Gaddafi himself.

This whim has an explanation for it: In ancient times, they believed that the best guards were either virgins or lesbians, the underlying belief being that they could sense threats, the so-called wind of death. The girls were even sterilized to make them more aggressive toward men. There can be different views on these stories, but it was the women with Kalashnikovs who saved Qaddafi's life several times.

During the assassination, they shielded him from gunfire and grenades. One died, two others were wounded. The bodyguards are with Qaddafi day and night. Each of them can handle several strong men. According to some sources, most of the women are Cuban.

Back to that ego thing.

At the recent Arab League summit Qaddafi snapped at the Qatari emir stating "I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level."

Got that?