Reply #11: Nope, you are not correct. We bombed Libya. [View All]

[Tom Rinaldo]

The Washington Monthly, October 2006

The Tyrant Who Came In
From the Cold

Gadhafi gave up his WMDs not because we scared him,
but because we talked to him.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0610.suskind.html

"...In the 1980s, Gadhafi was looking to be a player on the world stage, and terror was his means. By the mid-’80s, Ronald Reagan was calling Gadhafi the most dangerous man in the world. The United States bombed Libya in 1986—an attack that killed Gadhafi’s daughter and injured two of his sons—in retaliation for his having bombed a nightclub in Germany. Onerous unilateral sanctions were placed on the country.

Then, in December 1988, the United States suffered one of the worst acts of terrorism it would experience prior to 9/11: the explosion of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. The attack killed 270 people, mostly Americans—including 35 students from Syracuse University. Among the planners of the attack had been one of Bonk’s fellow Spartans: Musa Kousa.

That, at least, was the consensus of every significant intelligence agency in the West. The Lockerbie flight had taken place in an era when Kousa was deputy head of Libyan intelligence. And Kousa was soon implicated by the French and British intelligence in yet another disaster: the blowing up of a French airliner, UTA 772, over Niger in 1989. The death toll was 170.

By the end of the 1980s, Gadhafi had destroyed Libya’s relations with much of the world, and the isolation had seemed to be irreversible. But things changed by the end of the following decade. In 1998, George Tenet, just a year into his directorship of the CIA, and John McLaughlin, his deputy director for intelligence, had flown to Jiddah to meet with Bandar. In the ambassador’s sprawling home, which McLaughlin compares to “Disney World, with flying monkeys and giant TV screens,” Bandar mentioned he’d chatted recently with Gadhafi. “I think he might want to talk,” Bandar said. “He’s tired of being alone.”..."

Bill Clinton also launched cruise missiles into Sudan, and Afghanistan, with no intention then to invade or occupy either nation.

But the most important precedent wasn't an over American act. It was when Israel attacked Saddam Hussein's one nuclear power plant:


BBC - On This Day
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/newsid_3014000/3014623.stm

1981: Israel bombs Baghdad nuclear reactor
The Israelis have bombed a French-built nuclear plant near Iraq's capital, Baghdad, saying they believed it was designed to make nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.
It is the world's first air strike against a nuclear plant.

An undisclosed number of F-15 interceptors and F-16 fighter bombers destroyed the Osirak reactor 18 miles south of Baghdad, on the orders of Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

The army command said all the Israeli planes returned safely.