Lying punks

I recently cited a quote from Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, which appeared to suggest support for a shift to democracy. In his new column, Michael Totten says Seif is nothing but a lying punk, and he makes a compelling argument to back up that assertion.

Children of dictators are raised in places where absolute power and absolute privilege reside. That is the reason I suspect that they are, if anything, likely to be worse than their fathers. Just last week the Boston Globe opined that in Syria "Bashar Assad, has earned a reputation for reckless behavior, the antithesis of his father Hafez Assad's careful, calculating statecraft." Kim Jong-il is certainly no better than his father. And Odai and Qusay were at least as brutal as Saddam.

Thus, in addition to the reasons Totten offered for skepticism, I suspect that his instincts about Seif el-Islam are correct.