Over-compensation. Duh. Insecure people think that owning something that looks expensive and flashy is an expression of their awesomeness, instead of a desperate cry for attention to which they feel entitled. In the case of Third World dictators, it's a way for them to make themselves feel highly successful and civilized even though everyone knows that they're presiding over failed states that would collapse if not for aid money and/or oil. You know, "Look, I'm running such an awesome country that my bodyguards and special forces carry gold-plated assault rifles - even though I had to skim $1 million from my latest IMF loan to have the guns customized."

And this is Qaddafi we're talking about - a guy who was always desperate to be taken seriously in the international community, even though everyone saw him as a huge joke (including other Arab leaders, who were hardly paragons of competent governance themselves). When Qaddafi's regime started to collapse, I remember thinking that they were going to discover lots of golden guns at his residence(s), just like Saddam's. It seemed natural to expect from a man whose insecurities came out every time he opened his mouth in public.

To borrow a phrase from "Fight Club", I think the yardstick of civilization is whether your country's leader has gold-plated firearms.

Uh, it's called BLING. And feeling civilized has nothing to do with it. I know of inner city thugs who sport bright nickel guns with gold highlights, and even gold plated guns (Desert eagle used to offer gold plated versions of their guns though I haven't seen one in a store for a long time). It's the thug mentality of bright shiny objects.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/a...-0000l-001.jpg

:p

Oh, yes because the F-22 is nothing more than a screwed product of the military industrial complex and has no relevance in the current global security scheme of things. :D

Don't get me wrong, I love the F-22, I'm kind of just teasing the fact that it has no use whatsoever in any war we're involved in at the moment. But compare that to the AF's small arms inventory...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...AFSecurity.jpg
(I'd hotlink the image itself, but it's GIANT)

...which consists of a single designation referring to a hodgepodge of M16 carbines with components that, in some cases, date back to the early 1960s. :D