Gettin while the gettin' is good

The New York Times has a news alert:

The wife and three children of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi fled to Algeria on Monday, the Algerian Foreign Ministry said. It was the first official news on the whereabouts of any members of the Qaddafi family since he was routed from his Tripoli fortress by rebel forces a week ago, which was a decisive turn in the Libyan conflict. In a brief announcement carried by Algeria’s official news agency APS, the ministry said Colonel Qaddafi’s wife Safiya, daughter Aisha, and sons Hannibal and Mohammed, accompanied by their children, “entered Algeria at 08:45 a.m. through the Algeria-Libyan border.” The announcement gave no further details. The whereabouts of Colonel Qaddafi himself remain unknown, along with those of his other sons, most notably Seif al-Islam, his second-in-command; Khamis, head of an elite paramilitary brigade; or Muatassim, a militia commander and Colonel Qaddafi’s national security adviser.

Rico says it'll be interesting to see where the Rat shows up, but he suspects that Muatassim's job of 'national security adviser' is no longer functioning. (And, okay, okay, so it's a groundhog, not technically a rat, but he is armed...)