"Fatalistic" Aisha Qaddafi grants rare interview

While Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi has mostly avoided speaking with foreign media since the uprising in his country began, his sons have largely become the public face of the dictator's attempt to stay in power against mounting international pressure.

Now, however, Aisha Qaddafi, the only female among Qaddafi's eight children, has granted a rare interview to The New York Times. It may be her first interview with Western media since she spoke to the British newspaper The Telegraph last October.

In a preview of the interview, reporter David D. Kirkpatrick said he was surprised by Aisha's tone.

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"It was more fatalistic," Kirkpatrick said. She talked about "how much the West would regret driving her father from power," as if it had already happened.

Aisha predicted dire consequences for Qaddafi's ouster, including a mass exodus of illegal immigrants to Europe, a terrorist foothold on the Mediterranean, and chaos within Libya itself.

Aisha, a trained lawyer, once volunteered to defend Saddam Hussein, and said she drew parallels between Hussein and her father -- although she  predicted Libya after her father would be worse than post-invasion Iraq.

Kirkpatrick also said Aisha claims to tell her children bedtime stories about the afterlife because she fears that a bomb could kill them at any moment. Aisha apparently gave the interview to Kirkpatrick shortly before a NATO bomb was dropped on the family's Tripoli compound, destroying some non-military targets.