kaddaffi, quaddafi kadafee salt water taffy?? & colonel?

[tom d. friedman]

ok....... spelling bee time!!! how do you spell his name correctly?? all tv & news media use different spellings!! which one is official & correct?? and another question....... if he is the leader of libya why is he ranked as a colonel & not a general, or supreme commander, grand poobah, or # 1 nutso!! as the head of the nation of libya for 40 years he definetely deserves a promotion beyond the rank of colonel!!

[shrike]

ok....... spelling bee time!!! how do you spell his name correctly?? all tv & news media use different spellings!! which one is official & correct?? and another question....... if he is the leader of libya why is he ranked as a colonel & not a general, or supreme commander, grand poobah, or # 1 nutso!! as the head of the nation of libya for 40 years he definetely deserves a promotion beyond the rank of colonel!!

Transliteration from Arabic (or whatever mush-mouth tribal dialect he actually speaks) is difficult at best.
Stalin was easier to say than Jughashvili, and Nutcase is easier to spell than Quadaffy.

I think the 'Colonel' is an honorific, much like the CAF. He was a Captain when he came to power, so he DID skip Major and light on the way.

[The Inspector]

I thought I read somewhere recently that there are over 50 different ways to spell and pronounce his name. When he took over the nation through revolution, he appointed himself as 'Colonel' and decreed that there would be no other, higher military rankings in the Libyan military. So, I guess a really noisy, sloppy, loud sneeze could be interpreted as a way to pronounce his name............... or a really big, long burrito backfire could too 'move your wallet and speak up'

[rreis]

Thirty-five years ago when I knew him, Qaddafi was a young gun and very full of himself, but the sense I always had was that he knew it was all for show and he didn’t really take himself too seriously. I asked him one time, for example, how to spell his name. After all we’ve seen it in print with a G and a K and a Q: which did he prefer? “Spell it any way you like, ” he said (in pretty fair English, by the way — something else that seems to have strategically disappeared over the years). “All that matters is spelling it correctly in Arabic.”

quoted from http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/major-jolloud/

hope it helps