Heh.

In American cities, it's tough for the U.S. to have a friendly conversation with street protesters demanding an end to their corrupt regimes. Inevitably, the protesters point out that the regime is our longtime friend and financial client. What do you tell people when they just got nailed by a tear gas canister that literally says "Made in the USA"?

Gadhafi's death is fueling revolution in Syria... THANK YOU, PRESIDENT OBAMA!!

Gadhafi had famously promised to hunt down protesters against his rule "street by street, house by house, alley by alley," and he almost made good on that threat when his forces besieged Misrata.

But when his forces were driven away, it was the Misrata rebels who moved into a neighboring town accused of supporting Gadhafi, and destroyed it completely. Street by street, house by house, alley by alley.

Months after the war, tens of thousands of people remain homeless, with an uncertain future. The refugees are overwhelmingly black, referred to by their tormentors as "slaves."

Misrata's attacks on the people of Tawargha are so severe that the United Nations has labeled them "war crimes."

it's tough for the U.S. to have a friendly conversation with street protesters demanding an end to their corrupt regimes. Inevitably, the protesters point out that the regime is our longtime friend and weapons client. What do you tell people when they just got nailed by a tear gas canister that literally says "Made in the USA"?

Asked if those neighbors should be allowed to return, he says: "Not in my lifetime, I don't think. And this is coming from somebody who is very moderate, I would say."

There's one more fact about the town that was destroyed. In this overwhelmingly Arab nation, most of Tawargha's population was black.

And Misrata residents have made an explosive charge: that this city of some 30,000 black people rose up as one, marched into Misrata and raped Misrata women.

Though the U.N. Human Rights Council has found little evidence of this claim, it was used to justify the destruction of a town.

It's all because of Reagan.

That the Middle East got so fucked up in the first place? You may be right.

We visited Yusuf bin Yusuf, the head of Misrata's newly elected city council, and asked about the possibility of reconciliation.

Reconcilation, he answered, can happen between people who fought over materialistic things. It cannot happen between people who killed families or violated honor, he says.

He adds that he doubts Tawarghans had the rights to their land anyway. An old story says the Tawarghans came here long ago as escaped slaves.

They were mad that we were doing anything in Libya. They also were mad that we weren't taking the lead, we simply were giving support to the Libyan rebels.

How can you be mad about both?

Especially when it ended up as it did?

Down the hall from the kids' soccer game, we met Nurdeen Ramadan, a father of eight. He says his entire city did not commit atrocities, and also, incidentally, they're not all descendants of slaves.

"Actually, we are Libyans; we came here before everybody else," he says.

He says there were black people in Tawargha because this is Africa, connected for centuries to trade routes in the south.

Ramadan acknowledges that some of his neighbors supported Gadhafi. Gadhafi's troops passed out rifles to civilians who joined the assault on Misrata.

"In that time, you know, some people did foolish things. That's why now they think all Tawarghan people did so," he says. "Actually, we didn't do that."

Ramadan was a geologist for a state-owned oil company, though he now spends all his days in this camp. He says it's not safe to go back to work.

"If I go through the airports, they catch me, Misrata people catch me, any Tawarghan people," he says. "We are very easy to recognize because I am black. They catch any black people and they say, 'Who are you?' "

Once the refugees staged a protest march outside this camp, and refugees contend gunmen opened fire on them.

On other streets, graffiti is spray-painted in Arabic: "Don't buy a slave unless you also buy a stick."

[The people of Misrata] "are slave-masters of Tawargha."

"Bye-bye slaves of Tawargha."

On the road back to Misrata, we spotted another bit of graffiti in English, apparently left over from the war, when the people besieged in Misrata were seen as heroes before the world.

That graffiti reads, "We want freedom and justice. Nothing more."