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Khadafy’s mad, mad world

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Moammar Khadafy was the longest-reigning, most unpredictable and craziest of all the world’s leaders.

For 42 years, he seemed like a cartoon version of a dictator, surrounding himself with a claque of female bodyguards — a virgin-only team of heavily armed “gun girls” — as well as a bevy of blond Ukrainian nurses.

But he was also one of the world’s most dangerous men, bank-rolling terrorists in several countries, starting border wars and trying to become a nuclear power — while claiming the megalomaniacal title “King of Kings of Africa and Imam of all Muslims.”

PHOTOS: MOAMMAR KHADAFY

VIDEO: KHADAFY’S CAPTURE

President Ronald Reagan called him the “mad dog of the Middle East.” Even Khadafy ally Fidel Castro regarded him as“reckless.”

Yet, after claiming to renounce terrorism, Khadafy was greeted by European leaders like a long-lost friend and was allowed to address the UN General Assembly in a 90-minute rant.

Born in a dirt-poor Libyan town 69 years ago and raised in a Bedouin tent, Khadafy rose as several Arab and African leaders did, through the armed forces.

Three years after Khadafy graduated from Libya’s national military academy in 1966, he led a small group of junior officers that ousted Libya’s weak pro-Western king.

Khadafy quickly consolidated his power under the title “Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution.” He crushed dissent by enlisting tens of thousands of Libyans as government informers, drove foreigners out of the country, nationalized businesses, and milked billions of dollars out of Western countries dependent on Libya’s oil fields.

He also survived several assassination attempts and coups and created his own ideology, based on the theory that Libya had become a “Jamahiriya,” a word he coined to mean a “republic of the masses.”

Khadafy elaborated on his philosophy in his “Green Book,” which he made a virtual national bible, and renamed his country “The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.”

Khadafy created a new personal style for deranged dictators, a kind of maniac-in-chief chic. He wore safari suits and Louis Vuitton sunglasses, and even eyeliner, as well as purple and red suits and light blue military uniforms with pounds of medals pinned to his chest.

He had seven children from his second marriage to a former nurse. The family became notorious for its opulent lifestyle, including private concerts by Mariah Carey, Beyoncé and Lionel Richie.

When he traveled abroad, he would demand being allowed to set up house in a Bedouin tent, surrounded by his female guards.

“There are no men in the Arab world,” he explained.

A 2009 US diplomatic cable released by the Web site WikiLeaks revealed his idiosyncracies, including a hatred of staying on upper floors of buildings, an aversion to flying over water, and a taste for horse racing and flamenco dancing.

As he aged, Khadafy increasingly imposed his bizarre imprint on Libya. He ordered that his citizens paint all storefront doors green because that was the emblematic color of his regime. He created his own calendar, renaming January “Ayn al-Nar” — which means “Where is the fire” in Arabic.

On one occasion, when he decided that Libya didn’t have enough doctors, he ordered Tripoli’s main medical school to take 2,000 new students regardless of qualifications, well beyond its 150-student capacity.

On the international stage, he collected a grotesque assortment of allies, including Muslim-hating Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, US-bashing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and Irish, Filipino and German terrorists.

He funneled aid to the Irish Republican Army, the Black September fighters who tried to overthrow Jordan’s King Hussein, and various other fringe groups.

Late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, a onetime friend, called him a “vicious criminal” and revealed how Khadafy tried to destroy the QEII cruise ship with a torpedo in 1973 while it was carrying a boat-load of Jewish passengers headed to Israel. Sadat wrote in his diary that Khadafy was “mentally sick.”

Yet Khadafy managed to shed his horrific reputation by making gestures to atone for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. By 2009, he was being warmly greeted by European leaders such as Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi.

Readmitted to the world of civilized leaders, he used his 2009 address to the UN General Assembly to denounce jet lag and push his bizarre plans, including the reunion of Israel and the Palestinian territories into a country he called “Isratine.” He also tore up a copy of the UN charter and compared the Security Council to al Qaeda, saying it “should be named the terrorism council.”

The honeymoon with the rest of the world didn’t last. A week after his fellow dictator Hosni Mubarak was ousted in Egypt last February, Khadafy’s dreaded security forces tried to crush human-rights protests in Benghazi by firing on crowds and killing at least 20.

Four days later, he made the first of several TV speeches, declaring he would never leave Libya and would “die as a martyr.”

With Post Wire Services