Word: sidra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Once again, U.S. naval power was massed in the Mediterranean and poised to cross the imaginary "line of death" proclaimed by Libya's Muammar Gaddafi as marking his nation's territorial waters in the Gulf of Sidra. Once again, a senior U.S. Navy official insisted that "it is not provocative to assert internationally accepted rights" at sea. And once again no one took seriously the pro forma U.S. assertions that the naval exercises were routine. "Tommyrot!" scoffed a Pentagon source. "Of course we're aching for a go at Gaddafi." Agreed a senior White House aide: "If he sticks...
...disarmingly simple: the Navy, U.S. officials said, was engaged in "a show of resolve" that it would not be deterred from operating in international waters. But the show was certainly impressive. The aircraft carriers Coral Sea and Saratoga, carrying about 100 supersonic aircraft, cruised toward the Gulf of Sidra off the coast of Libya. Sailing protectively with them were at least 23 auxiliary vessels from the U.S. Sixth Fleet. The jet fighters blasted off the carriers on patrols that seemed to edge ever closer to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's Soviet-armed nation...
...after a pair of Navy F-14s blasted two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra, the jolt of home-team pride was strong, and the taking of tiny Grenada last year prompted more V-G-day celebrating than seemed strictly appropriate. Jesse Jackson's presidential candidacy, despite the antagonisms it sometimes stirred, was a salutary symbol of black progress. The Democrats' historic nomination of a woman for Vice President added to the political selfesteem. The high spirits surrounding the Olympic Games struck some observers as jingoistic and ungracious. But with American athletes winning nearly everything in sight...
Nevertheless, Reagan is unusually comfortable in the exercise of military power. His first summer in office, he told elements of the Navy's Sixth Fleet to steam into the Gulf of Sidra, which Muammar Gaddafi claims as Libyan territorial waters, and two of the fleet's F-14s promptly shot down a pair of attacking Libyan Su-22s. The rash, Soviet-supplied Libyan leader is a bête noire to the Administration: last February when Gaddafi was suspected of fomenting a coup against the pro-U.S. Sudanese regime, Washington sent four AWACS to neighboring Egypt...
With characteristic bluster, Gaddafi vowed that his air force would "destroy" the Eisenhower if it entered the Gulf of Sidra, which Libya claims. Although the U.S. and most other nations-including the Soviet Union-do not honor any Libyan claim beyond the usual twelve-mile limit, the Eisenhower remained just outside the Gulf of Sidra. Nonetheless, two F-14 jets from the carrier drove off a pair of Libyan MiG-23 jets that they encountered on patrol. Neither side opened fire. In a similar incident two years ago, a pair of U.S. F-14s shot down two Libyan...