Previewing Mad Dog: Inside the Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi

Long before Kim Jung Un there was Mammar Gaddafi who set the bar fairly high for modern despots. Dressed like Michael Jackson in concert, the billion dollars of oil his country produced per week allowed him every extravagancy he could think of. A cruise ship with a shark tank for his son? Done. Dubbed the Mad Dog of the Middle East by Ronald Reagan (who was good at coining things in the eighties as he also turned the Soviet Union into the Evil Empire) Gaddafi had school children here in the United States calling for Libya to be blown off the map.

Regan did show some restraint by not blowing the nation state off the map instead imposing severe sanctions that kept the dictator out of the public consciousness here until the “rehabilitated” ruler was all but forgiven for his crimes by George W. Bush and Tony Blair to the point he was even taking pictures with Barack Obama. But just at the time he was being accepted by the West, the Arab Spring happened and he was one of the early causalities.

Even though we saw the Arab Spring live on cable television, there was still plenty unknown about Muammar Gaddafi that the general public did not know even back when he was the world’s public enemy number one. Mad Dog: Inside the Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi, premiering Friday at 9:00 0n Showtime, uncovers the hidden atrocities he committed during his decade long run in power, even when he was being embraced by the west.

The documentary talks with poison dealers who did deals with the country as well as others still wanted by the FBI as well as one of his former female guards. There are also interviewed with CIA counter-proliferation operative Valerie Plame (yes that Valerie Plame) and those actually tortured by the man countrymen were forced to call Brother Leader. The tales told are bigger than the previous one, from hosting a terrorist Woodstock to keeping his enemies on ice so he can occasionally see his conquests. Mad Dog is a harrowing tale which shows what happens when mad men gain too much power.

Mad Dog: Inside the Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi premieres Friday at 9:00 on Showtime.