Word: sidra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Sunday morning they were back on station in the central Mediterranean north of Libya: the carriers America and Coral Sea, 14 escort warships and two other support vessels. Once again, as in the clashes around the Gulf of Sidra three weeks ago, the flattops were prepared to launch their 160 fighters and bombers against targets in the desert country of Dictator Muammar Gaddafi. But this time there was no pretext that the exercise was to assert the right of free passage in international waters...
...began with American officials pointing a menacing finger of suspicion at Libya as instigator of the bombing of a West Berlin disco that left an American serviceman and a Turkish woman dead. Then the Pentagon cryptically noted that the Sixth Fleet, which had scattered after the Gulf of Sidra battle, was steaming back toward Libya. Almost simultaneously, President Reagan at his Wednesday-night news conference called Gaddafi "this mad dog of the Middle East" and proclaimed that the U.S. would "respond" whenever the perpetrator of a specific terrorist act could be identified. Why had the U.S. once again targeted Gaddafi...
...other service members might be killed carrying out bombing runs of the scale being contemplated. Even severe military damage might not cow Gaddafi into calling off or slowing down terrorist attacks. On the contrary, he might intensify them, as he seems to have done after the Gulf of Sidra battle. Might Gaddafi carry out terrorist attacks inside the U.S., as he has often threatened to do? "We certainly do not overlook that possibility," said a grim-faced Ronald Reagan during his news conference...
...high official declared, "Without the President's unshakable faith that we can still do the job in space we would have been destroyed by now." Off in the Mediterranean on board ships and carriers of the Sixth Fleet, the words spoken by Reagan during last month's Gulf of Sidra incident were like a surge of adrenaline. Talking of the fleet's commander, Vice Admiral Frank Kelso, the President said, "The man knows what he's doing. Let's let him do the job." The admiral and his men did just that, and a Pentagon officer added, "They...
...turn is linked to Palestinian renegade Abu Nidal, probably the world's most wanted terrorist. The caller said the bombing was in retaliation for U.S. missile attacks on Libyan targets last month during the showdown over the right of foreign ships to use the waters of the Gulf of Sidra. A four-page handwritten statement repeating this claim and promising further attacks against U.S. targets "across the world" was later delivered to Beirut newspapers. Qassam was slain by the British during a revolt in Palestine in 1936. His name has frequently been used by terrorist factions linked to Abu Nidal...