Word: sidra
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...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...
...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...