Comment: Why Gaddafi will survive our attacks

Defence Secretary Liam Fox got into a dust up with Chief of Defence Staff General Sir David Richards over whether or not it was legal to target Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi for death. The moral question may be irrelevant as if there is a plan to assassinate Gaddafi it is bound to fail.

Why? Because despotic lunatics seem to be immune from assassination. Hitler survived Von Stauffenberg's briefcase bomb with injuries not even severe enough to prevent him orchestrating revenge on his well intentioned murderers (the lucky ones escaped with just the firing squad.) Hitler cheated the executioner but at least had the decency to expire prematurely, unlike those other premier league harbingers of massive megadeaths Mao and Stalin, who died peacefully in their beds of a stroke and a heart attack.

Gaddafi isn't in their league, being more on a par with Saddam, who was also targeted by bombing in Gulf War One. Inevitably he survived unscathed. Look up the FBI's Most Wanted website and you'll see Bin Laden staring back at you, still hanging in there despite the best efforts of satellite guided special-forces and daisy-cutter, bunker busting bombs. By contrast Pakistani minorities minister Shabaz Bhatti was killed this March by gunmen who scattered leaflets describing him as a 'Christian Infidel' and were signed off 'Taliban, al-Qaida.' He was murdered for attempting to reform Pakistan's primitive and cruel blasphemy laws and for being Christian.

In fact inspiring leaders like Lincoln, JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Gandhi are bullet magnets (Jesus was marked for death the moment he was immaculately conceived.) In fact there seems to be a direct correlation between the morality of a leader and the likelihood of a violent death. Burmese Prime Minister and independence hero General Aung San died alongside six cabinet members, including his brother when a gang of paramilitaries opened fire, whereas there seems to be no possibility that someone will massacre the despotic military junta that currently rule Burma. Rulers who are only mildly evil like Ronald Regan or Richard Nixon either get shot and survive or escape unscathed due to the ineptitude of their would-be assailants.

Gaddafi is not just being protected by the ungodly law that bestows immunity on evil men, he's being guarded by 40 lipstick wearing, high healed, gun packing virgins. An article on AOL News describes these Amazonian protectors as follows: '...they are dubbed "revolutionary nuns," never marry and dedicate their lives to the idea of Gaddafi's 1969 revolution. They're banned from having sex and swear an oath to protect the Libyan leader until death, if need be. In 1998, a bodyguard named Aisha threw herself on top of Gaddafi when Islamic militants ambushed his motorcade. A barrage of bullets killed her and injured two others, but Gaddafi escaped unharmed.' Bulletproof, unlike his son Khamis, 27, who is alleged to have been killed when the pilot flying his plane Kamikazed it into the ground in a successful bid to eliminate his despicable passenger. A chip off the old block, Khamis commanded his own brigade that was responsible for atrocities against Libyan pro-democracy campaigners.

To grasp power and hold it for 42 years requires super human survival skills and so don't bet on Gaddafi's imminent death but the fact that the world has finally turned against a despotic leader responsible for the Lockerbie bombing and countless other deaths must be good. It's just a shame a long list of world leaders including another immortal, Tony Blair, spent so long cosying up to him.