The Muammar Gaddafi story - BBC News

This time it was turned on whole towns and cities where people had dared to tear down his posters and call for his downfall. Regular troops and mercenaries nearly overwhelmed the rag-tag rebels, consisting of military deserters and ill-trained militiamen brought together under the banner of the National Transitional Council (NTC). The colonel could afford to dismiss them as wayward 17-year-olds, "given pills at night, hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee, their Nescafe".

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