Qaddafi's Condoleezza Rice Photo Album

The hunt is on for Muammar Qaddafi and other high-level members of his regime who fled after the rebels stormed Tripoli. For now, there are the spoils in his compound — including an album full of photos of Condoleezza Rice.

The murderous dictator’s admiration for the former secretary of state was well-known. They had dinner three years ago, after U.S.-Libya relations briefly relaxed. In 2007, Qaddafi had told Al-Jazeera, “I support my darling black African woman. I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders … Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. … I love her very much. I admire her and I’m proud of her because she’s a black woman of African origin.”

(Bizarrely, the account of the 2008 dinner also includes an anonymous reporter exclaiming, apparently of Qaddafi, “He’s so hot. I can’t believe it, he’s so hot.”).

Rice couldn’t have asked for better timing: Her publisher announced today that her memoir of her time in the Bush administration would be released in November, which might well have details of that dinner with the dictator, since the warming of relations with Libya was considered a diplomatic coup at the time. (Whoops). Still, Dick Cheney beat her in one respect: The Times already has details of his memoir, which calls Rice “naive” in her dealings with North Korea. He also said that she eventually came around to his position that George W. Bush had no reason to apologize for including false and misleading information about the justification for the war in Iraq in his State of the Union speech. “She came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk and tearfully admitted I had been right,” he wrote. Ladies: So softhearted, yet so seductive.

In The Ruins Of Gadhafi’s Lair, Rebels Find Album Filled With Photos Of His ‘Darling’ Condoleezza Rice [MSNBC]
Condoleezza Rice To Tell Her Side Of The Story [Politico]
Cheney Says He Urged Bush To Bomb Syria In 2007 [NYT]