FRIENDS: With a reserved but historic handshake, Blair ended Gaddafi's decades as a pariah
Muammar Gaddafi was the Saddam Hussein of his day; America's Public Enemy No. 1. Ronald Reagan sent jets to bomb his compound in 1986 after Libyan agents blew up a Berlin disco popular with U.S. soldiers. Gaddafi's regime sold arms to the I.R.A., brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, killed an unarmed policewoman with a blast of machine gun fire from its London embassy, and still supports Robert Mugabe's despotism in Zimbabwe. So seeing Tony Blair shake Gaddafi's hand last week in a ceremonial tent near Tripoli was a head-snapping diplomatic moment....
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