Qaddafi was, quite simply, a man who knew too much. Taken alive, he would have almost certainly have been handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had indicted him — along with his son, Saif al-Islam, and brother-in-law and military intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi (whereabouts unknown) — for crimes against humanity in late June. Imagine the stir he would have made in The Hague. There, along with any number of fantasies and false accusations, he would almost certainly have revealed the extent of his intimate relations with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the details of his government’s collaboration with Western intelligence services in counterterrorism, with the European Union in limiting migration from Libyan shores, and in the granting of major contracts to big Western oil and construction firms…

Many outside observers were convinced even at the time that NATO was in fact desperately hoping to kill Qaddafi since it was clear by then — especially during a period when the tide seemed to shift back and forth between Qaddafi’s forces and the rebels — that he would not relinquish power, no matter what offers were made to him in exchange for doing so. Their suspicions were confirmed when a member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Mike Turner (R-Ohio), revealed that he had been told by Admiral Samuel Locklear, the U.S. officer commanding NATO’s Joint Operations Command in Naples, Italy, that NATO forces actually were actively targeting Qaddafi.

Qaddafi’s death in such a strike would have offered a neat ending then for the West and for the Libyan insurgency, many of whose leaders, it should be remembered, served Qaddafi long and faithfully, enjoying his favors for much of their careers. Qaddafi certainly knew enough about their sins to make the prospect of what he might say during a trial before the ICC a cause for anxiety. His death, coming as it seems to have done, at the hands of Libyans rather than NATO, makes an even neater ending now.