Quackdaffy said he was going to fight to the last bullet, and it looks like he means it: (Daily Mail) — As Libya teeters on the brink of full-scale civil war Colonel Gaddafi today said there was a conspiracy to get of Libyan oil as he again pledged to fight to the last. The dictator’s troops today launched a fight-back at dawn to reclaim land captured by protestors in the desert oil town of Brega. 

Although it was seized by forces a fierce fight back was later launched by militants. Reports tonight suggested all the Gaddafi troops had been forced to retreat — possibly because they had run out of ammunition.

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The veteran ruler twinned the attack with a fiery propaganda broadside against the rebels, playing on both nationalist opinion and Western jitters by saying much blood would be shed in ‘another Vietnam’ if foreign powers intervened in the crisis.

‘There is a conspiracy to control the Libyan oil and to control the Libyan land, to colonise Libya once again,’ he said in a televised speech before a loyal audience.

‘This is impossible, impossible. We will fight until the last man and last woman to defend Libya from east to west, north to south,’ Gaddafi told his supporters who punctuated the address with cheers of support and declarations of loyalty.

The Libyan leader said he was willing to discuss constitutional and legal change without arms or chaos and was ready to talk with Al Qaeda — who he blamed for the turmoil — if they had demands.

Gaddafi, 68, said there were no protests against his rule in Libya and that ‘underground groups’” were whipping people up and reports by the media to the contrary were wrong. There were no political prisoners in Libya, he said.  The speech came as his troops unleashed the most brutal attacks yet on protesters and army defectors in a string of towns and cities that have been lost in the uprisings since February 15.

Witnesses near the eastern town of Ajdabiyah claim two warplanes bombed the area 500 miles from Tripoli.  (more)