Word: sidra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Despite years of agonized Western debate about combatting terrorism, months of mostly fruitless diplomatic maneuvering, weeks of U.S. warnings and finally days of ominous public silence, the world still seemed unprepared when the bombers struck. Although Libya had felt the sting of the Sixth Fleet over the Gulf of Sidra just three weeks before, the principal buildings and the minarets of the central mosque in Tripoli were bathed by floodlights, providing a beacon for U.S. pilots. Under cover of darkness, 13 F-111 fighter-bombers flying out of Britain, joined by twelve A-6 attack planes launched off carriers...
...Administration had exhausted every other alternative for taming Gaddafi. Said President Reagan, addressing a meeting of lawyers on Wednesday: "We tried quiet diplomacy. We tried public condemnation. We tried economic sanctions. And, yes, we tried a show of military might (the Sixth Fleet's skirmish in the Gulf of Sidra with Libyan patrol boats and missile batteries last month). But Gaddafi intensified his terrorist war, sending his agents around the world to murder and maim innocents...
...President has been preoccupied with the problem of terrorism since his early days in office. Two events in Reagan's first year helped to fix his thoughts on Gaddafi as a symbol of virtually everything he hates. One was a Libyan attack on U.S. jets in the Gulf of Sidra that resulted in the shooting down of two of Gaddafi's Soviet-built Su-22 fighter planes. Later in 1981 U.S. intelligence picked up information that Libya was sending hit squads to the U.S. to assassinate Reagan and some of his close aides. No such attacks occurred, but the scare...
Several other examples of global unilateralism look, in retrospect, like dress rehearsals for this latest, most spectacular and most controversial military clash in the Reagan era. In 1981 the U.S. Navy made quick work of Gaddafi's air force over the Gulf of Sidra, and late last month the U.S. bloodied those waters again. There were also the 1983 invasion of Grenada and last year's interception of an Egyptian airliner with the Achille Lauro hijackers aboard...
These policies--whether quick-and-dirty one-shot actions such as Sidra I, II and III or long-term strategies such as the Reagan Doctrine and Star Wars --have evoked mixed reactions abroad. Denis Healey, the British Labor Party's most prominent spokesman on foreign policy, has continually protested global unilateralism in so many words. Last week Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, sensing a new buzz word in the Esperanto of Uncle Sam bashing, denounced the U.S. for "neoglobalism." At the same time, public remonstrations from the chancelleries of Europe and elsewhere have often been modulated with whispered encouragement...