CAIRO – Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi vowed to fight on to his "last drop of blood" and roared at his supporters to take to the streets against protesters demanding his ouster, shouting and pounding his fist in a furious speech Tuesday after two nights of a bloody crackdown in the capital trying to crush the uprising that has fragmented his regime.
It was the second time Gadhafi has appeared during the week of upheaval across his country. Swathed in brown robes and a turban, he spoke on state TV from behind a podium in the entrance of his bombed-out Tripoli residence hit by U.S. airstrikes in the 1980s and left unrepaired as a monument of defiance.
At times the camera panned back to show a towering monument of a gold-colored fist crushing an American fighter jet, outside the building. But at the same time, the view gave a surreal image of the Libyan leader, shouting and waving his arms wildly all alone in a broken-down lobby with no audience, surrounded by broken tiles dangling from the ceiling, shattered conrete pillars and bare plumbing pipes.
"Libya wants glory, Libya wants to be at the pinnacle, at the pinnacle of the world," he proclaimed, pounding his fist on the podium. "I am a fighter, a revolutionary from tents ... I will die as a martyr at the end," he said, vowing to fight "to my last drop of blood."
Gadhafi depicted the protesters as misguided youths, who had been given drugs and money by a "small, sick group" to attack police and government buildings. He called on supporters to take to the streets immediately to reimpose control and to attack the protest leaders.
"You men and women who love Gadhafi ... get out of your homes and fill the streets," he said. "Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs. They are taking your children and getting them drunk and sending them to death. For what? To destroy Libya, burn Libya."
"The police cordons will be lifted, go out and fight them," he said, urging youth to form local committees across the country "for the defense of the revolution and the defense of Gadhafi," even asking them to wear green armbands.
"Let us show them what the popular revolution is like," he said. "Go out from your homes starting now."