Karim Kadim / AP

Two Iraqis watch a TV broadcast on the death of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi Friday in Baghdad, Iraq.

By Robert Windrem, NBC News' senior investigative producer

Some have written that Libya had a "Ceausescu moment" on Thursday, when former dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s body was paraded through the streets of Misrata. But while photos of the corpses of former Romanian Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were widely distributed after they had were executed on Christmas Day, 1989, their  bodies were quickly buried without any public display. 

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Nicolae Ceausecu

But history provides several more-apt comparisons of deceased leaders being publicly dishonored, including:

Najibullah, the one-named, Soviet-backed dictator of Afghanistan, who was holed up at the U.N. compound in Kabul when Taliban soldiers came for him on Sept.  27, 1996. He had believed, incorrectly, that his presence at the U.N. compound would offer him protection and that the Taliban would not kill him. They did more than that.

The Taliban fighters first castrated him, then broke his fingers. Finally, they dragged him to death behind a truck through the streets of Kabul. After Taliban fighters were persuaded he was dead, his body was hung from a traffic light. His brother, who was with him at the compound, faced a less public fate. He was shot to death.

The body of Saddam Hussein, following his execution on Dec. 30, 2006, (which was recorded on a prison guard's cell phone), was taken from prison and brought to a "viewing party" at an Iraqi government official's home before being buried, according to some published accounts. There was no public parading of the body, but pieces of the hangman's rope were distributed as souvenirs to those present at the hanging.

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A poor choice of footwear tripped up former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Said also met an ignominious and pubic end.  After King Faisal II and his family were assassinated at the royal palace on July 14, 1958, Said fled and went into hiding. But he was discovered by supporters of the coup led by two Iraqi colonels as he sought to flee the country disguised as a woman. His fatal mistake: He was wearing men's shoes.  He was shot dead and buried, but his body was disinterred, dragged through the streets of Baghdad, where it was hung up in a public plaza, burned, and mutilated.

The closest comparison to Gadhafi’s end may be that of Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist leader who was killed April 28, 1945. 

In the final days of World War II, Mussolini was trying to escape to Spain through Switzerland, where his Fascist ally, Francisco Franco of Spain, had a plane waiting for him.   

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Italian dictactor Benito Mussolini is shown wearing ministerial garb in a 1926 file photo.

Mussolini and an entourage, including his mistress, Carla Petacci, were moving along the shoreline of Lake Como toward the border when they were stopped by partisans who recognized "Il Duce" even though he was dressed in a German military uniform.

He was taken to a house where the commander of the Communist partisans told him he was there to rescue him. The partisans put the group on a truck, but after a short ride the commander ordered Mussolini to get off and he was shot twice in the chest and killed.  Shortly afterward, the others, mostly ministers from Mussolini's government, were executed by a firing squad.

The next morning, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci and the others were trucked south in a moving van to a plaza in Milan, where partisans had recently been publicly executed. After being dumped at 3 a.m., word spread of their arrival. Soon, all were hung upside down on meat hooks from the roof of a gas station, where they were stoned by passing Italians. 

After he was buried in an unmarked grave, Mussolini's body was dug up by loyalists and moved around Italy until authorities recovered it months later.  But it was not buried in the Mussolini family plot for another 10 years. 

By Robert Windrem, NBC News investigative producer

Western intelligence agencies believe there is a "treasure trove" of material in Libyan intelligence archives, and they may have already prepared to exploit it once Moammar Gadhafi's regime finally falls.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials point to the possibilities of what could be found in the files, among them:

• The intelligence service's (and Gadhafi's own) role in the 1988 bombing of PanAm 103 and UTA 772 months later, which killed 430 people in the air and on the ground, as well as their role in the 1986 LaBelle Disco bombing in Berlin, which killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded 79 others.

• Support for various terrorist groups, including Palestinian groups, the Irish Republican Army, the El Rukns street gang in Chicago and individual terrorists like Carlos the Jackal and Abu Nidal.

• A purported 1981 assassination plot against U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

• Gadhafi's financial support for the Pakistani nuclear weapons program in the 1980s and the relationship between Libya and Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan a decade later, as well as Western countries that supported Gadhafi's chemical and biological weapons programs.

Obama promises to support Libyan transition

There may also be materials on U.S. intelligence operations against al-Qaida, which began under President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A steady stream of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials visited Libya over the last decade as relations between the two countries got better.  

U.S. officials say Gadhafi has one major intelligence service but that there are also "security elements around him" who carry out intelligence and security operations and whose files Western intelligence agencies would also like to exploit.

One former official suspects there may already be planning for that exploitation. He noted that Musa Kusa, the former head of Libyan intelligence and one of Gadhafi's most loyal aides, had defected. 

By Robert Windrem
NBC News investigative producer for special projects

It’s a short YouTube clip from the Libyan war -- a three-minute piece culled from an Al Jazeera report on a group of rebel fighters. The group, dressed in fatigues and carrying AK-47s, are listening to recordings coming from a speaker in the back of a camouflaged pickup. 

The recordings playing in the background were produced by al-Qaida and the conversations around the truck suggest that these particular Libyan rebels are driven by a radical agenda and religious fervor rather than a desire for democracy. 

How significant was this scene in the Libyan desert? Not very, the commander of NATO forces and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday. There are concerns about the makeup of the rebel forces, they acknowledged, but not significant ones so far. The problem is, very little is known about the rebels. 

U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander, testified before a U.S. Senate committee about “flickers” of radical Islamic al-Qaida sympathizers in Libya.  

 “We are examining very closely the content, composition, the personalities, who are the leaders of these opposition forces," he said.

Stavridis said that while the opposition's leadership appeared to be "responsible men and women," there were "flickers in the intelligence of potential al-Qaida (and) Hezbollah (presence among the rebels). We've seen different things…But at this point I don't have detail sufficient to say there is a significant al-Qaida presence or any other terrorist presence.”

Clinton went further at a London press briefing, saying after a meeting with allies on future actions in Libya that there is no specific information that al-Qaida is involved in the opposition to Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s government.

Responding to a question about Stavridis’ testimony, she said, “We do not have any specific information about specific individuals from any organization who are part of this, but of course we are still getting to know those who are leading the transitional national council.”  The Interim Transitional National Council is the rebels’ umbrella group -- or at least the organization the U.S. is dealing with at this point.

Other U.S. officials told NBC News that they believe al-Qaida has a very small presence  in Libya, and that there is no indication that the rebels are being led by al-Qaida or that a majority of the rebels are affiliated with the either the terrorist group’s central command in Pakistan or its North Africa affiliate, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

U.S. officials have long been concerned that a radical Islamic movement could develop in Libya, but have focused less on al-Qaida than a local group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). Some of the latter group’s top figures, including one time leader Abu Faraj al Libi, joined al-Qaida in the early 2000s. He eventually rose to No. 3 in al-Qaida before being captured in Pakistan in 2005. He is currently imprisoned at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba.

Another Libyan, Abu Yahya al Libi,   is currently al-Qaida’s ideological chief. He released a 30-minute video earlier this month encouraging the rebels in their battle against Gadhafi. (Both names are noms de guerre.)

But the LIFG leadership could never recruit the rank-and-file into al-Qaida and a plan to merge the two groups failed, according to U.S. intelligence. That’s because the Libyan group wanted to pursue local goals rather than worldwide jihad. It even renounced violence last year.

As tensions rose in Libya last month, the government released more than 100 members of the LIFG, some of whom had been serving life sentences.  Although the stated reason was to free the last of Libya’s political prisoners, U.S. officials believe it was actually an effort by Gadhafi to signal that radical Islamists could seize power if his regime fell, in an effort to force Western nations to back off in supporting the rebels.

Whatever the reason, U.S. officials say, Gadhafi’s regime almost instantly regretted the move, since the LIFG’s internal discipline and experience has benefited the rag-tag rebel forces.

These officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said al-Qaida will likely try to subvert the Libyan rebellion to achieve its own ends, but they don’t believe it currently has the capability to co-opt the revolt.