9. "Making war on his own people."

Gadhafi the monster, like his fellow monster Saddam Hussein, is "making war on his own people." That's bad. But if you're putting down a rebellion who else are you going to make war on? There's nobody else. That's who Abraham Lincoln made war on. The angels Satan talked into trying to take over Heaven were God's own people. They're all in the same category.

So if you're making a list of things to hold against Muammar Gadhafi you shouldn't put this on it?

Not if you want your items to have the most force. Call a bad guy a name that applies equally to good guys and you haven't hit him very hard. It's a missed punch that exposes you. You're a slap puncher.

How should Gadhafi be punched?

With words that refer to his particular faults. So that a reader or listener can go down your list and say, "Yeah, he really did this and it's really bad." Executing without trial, denying of civil rights, policing secretly — a dictator is going to present you with a ton of bad stuff. Hit him with it, right in the kidneys. Why throw fluff?

But if a reader or listener doesn't know it's fluff, and can't tell a slap puncher from a solid puncher, it doesn't matter. The writer scores. Not every reader is going to go down the list examining items the way you picture readers doing. The payoff is in the crowd, not in the ring.

I stand corrected. I shouldn't question slaps without asking who the writer's or speaker's audience is and what he wants them to do. If he wants them to back a war on the dictator, and they're not examiners, he just slaps away. If they're examiners he zeroes in.

And if he needs a coalition?

I guess he throws in enough slaps to gain more from the first group than he loses from the second. Tough calculation, though, because it's hard to know how successful the teachers of examination have been.