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Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi delivered another meandering speech on Wednesday in Tripoli as his forces launch their most ambitious counteroffensive against rebels in the east and the U.S. orders warships to the Mediterranean.



In a speech to honor the 34th anniversary of Qaddafi declaring Libya a "Jamahiriya"--or state ruled directly by the people--the Libyan leader asserted that reports of deaths in the Libyan uprising have been exaggerated and that no more than 150 people have been killed. A day after the United Nations General Assembly suspended Libya from its Human Rights Council, Qaddafi challenged the U.N. and NATO to send a fact-finding mission to the country to verify his side of the story. Qaddafi traced the origins of the unrest to Al Qaeda sleeper cells, called protesters "terrorists," and vowed to "fight until the last man, the last woman" and to not "abandon Libyan soil."

On the topic of intervention by the international community, Qaddafi warned that if the U.S. or NATO entered Libya, they would "set foot in hell--worse than Afghanistan," and thousands of people would die. "I hope that Obama will pursue a normal policy--he is not a colonialist yankee. Obama can steer us and Europe away from another Vietnam," he said.