I’m not sure we needed the reminder, but ABC brings it to us anyway, along with a reminder of what happens when unstable dictators face utter defeat.  They don’t usually go quietly or slink off to posh exile with their stolen loot, as Baby Doc Duvalier did for a few decades until the cash ran low.  The true megalomaniacs get depressed and then decide that life is no longer worth living … for anyone. Hitler wanted to go out like Wotan in Valhalla by setting the entire world on fire, and the former #2 in Libya’s delegation to the UN thinks Moammar Gaddafi will try to go out the same way — and he even has the bunkers already built for it:

Psychological analysts in the CIA spend a lot of time and effort trying to get inside the mind of someone like Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, whose well-documented quirks leave little doubt that it’s a strange place.

But according to a former CIA analyst and a Libyan diplomat, suspicion over his own security and devastating allied bombing may have driven the “mad dog of the Middle East” into a new, potentially dangerous depression.

“We know he is unstable,” former deputy Libyan ambassador to the U.N. Ibrahim Dabbashi told ABC News. “I think he will kill as much as he can and he will destroy as much as he can.”

Word is that Gaddafi’s even lost confidence in his crack squad of female bodyguards, which makes sense, since it’s usually the palace guard that takes out the insane despot. Caligula found that out the hard way, and the Roman tyrant was neither the first nor the last. Having had a defector conduct a kamikaze mission with his plane into the command and control center that reportedly killed Gaddafi’s son won’t do anything to clear his state of mind, either.

Even if the rebels somehow manage to regain the initiative and push Gaddafi from power, it looks like they’d better hope he’s suicidal. Gaddafi has prepared for a long siege in Tripoli and elsewhere in the country, as Al Jazeera discovered. The lengthy system of tunnels and bunkers would give Libya’s supreme leader better accommodations than those enjoyed by Saddam Hussein the last few months of his freedom.  From there, Gaddafi could conduct a long insurgency campaign against whoever attempts to succeed him as leader of Libya, taking the country to failed-state status quickly and for a long time.