Word: libyans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When I called on Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent last year, he was at pains to explain how he and President Bush were on the same wavelength. In all his years as a bad boy in the eyes of the West, he said, Libya was simply doing what Bush did when he invaded Iraq. "Bush is saying that America is fighting for the triumph of freedom," Gaddafi said between sips of tea. "When we were supporting liberation movements in the world, we were arguing that it was for the victory of freedom. We both agree. We were...
...time, it may have sounded like the typical ramblings of the Libyan leader. But now, a year later, Gaddafi and Bush do apparently see eye to eye. On Monday, Gaddafi accomplished one of history's great diplomatic turnarounds when Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice announced that the U.S. was restoring full diplomatic relations with Libya and held up the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya as "a model" for others to follow. Rice attributed the ending of the U.S.'s long break in diplomatic relations to Gaddafi's historic decision in 2003 to dismantle weapons of mass destruction...
...much as the Bush Administration would like to believe it, Gaddafi's decision to come in from the cold was not simply a response to the war on terror and the U.S.'s toppling of Saddam and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan before that. In TIME interviews with key Libyan players, including three with Gaddafi going back before 9/11, it was clear that other important factors were also at work. Foremost among them was the collapse of the Soviet empire, which brought down Gaddafi's once-powerful friends in capitals like Moscow, Prague and Bucharest. Another important factor...
...lobbying hard from the mid 1990s for a rehabilitation of Libya, in order to be there first in the upgrading of its aging oil infrastructure. As American and international sanctions were taking their toll and the stagnation was slowly killing Gadfhafi's regime, he offered a major gesture, turning Libyan intelligence agents over for trial in the downing of of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland...
...Osama bin Laden, was the enemy Washington loved to hate. The U.S. bombed Tripoli 20 years ago last month, in what amounted to an aerial assassination attempt on Gaddafi himself after President Reagan dubbed Gaddafi the "mad dog" of the Middle East. The Tripoli blitz came amid suspected Libyan involvement in a Berlin terrorist attack that killed two American servicemen. Gaddafi's international isolation only grew two years later, after Libya was accused in the Lockerbie disaster. Two decades later, Saddam is gone from power, facing trial and possible execution for oppressing his own people, while Gaddafi is back...