Word: tripolis
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This absurdity was most in evidence during and after the April 1986 U.S. bombing of the military barracks in Tripoli, Libya. That was when Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was the villain of the month. Although Gaddafi and his family were known to be living in the barracks and although the attack killed many soldiers and some civilians -- including, Gaddafi claimed, his 18-month-old adopted daughter -- American officials were at pains to insist that they did not intend to kill Gaddafi himself. President Reagan said, "We weren't . . . dropping these tons of bombs hoping to blow that man up" -- although...
...last week's drumbeat of new troubles gave them no consolation. Eight days after United Airlines Flight 232 crash-landed in Sioux City, Iowa, killing 111 of its 286 passengers and crew, a Korean Air Lines DC- 10 carrying 199 people plowed into an olive grove near Tripoli, Libya. As was the case in Sioux City, a majority of those aboard the KAL flight survived, but as many as 80 were killed. The same day in Los Angeles a United DC-10 had another close call: though the pilot reported a hydraulic leak, he managed to bring in his plane...
...Tripoli crash may not have been caused by a mechanical malfunction. Flight 803 left Seoul and made trouble-free stops in Thailand and Saudi Arabia. Approaching Tripoli's airport in a dense morning fog, the pilot decided to land, even though only an hour earlier an arriving Soviet Aeroflot jet had prudently detoured to Malta. The KAL plane missed the runway by more than a mile, cartwheeled and slammed into two cars and two farmhouses...
Gaddafi, who put $10 million in trust to fund the award, had no say in choosing the winner. Swiss Socialist Deputy Jean Ziegler, a member of the jury that selected Mandela, said "ironclad guarantees" assured that Tripoli's influence would not be felt in Geneva. Nonetheless, human rights activists were clearly worried about the new philanthropist. Said an official of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: "If the jury would consider people like Salman Rushdie, it would give more credibility to its independence...
Early in 1984, he says, the Libyan government offered him a consultancy, and in June he signed a five-year contract with the energy ministry. His salary was $200,000 a year, plus periodic raises, bonuses and a commodious house in Tripoli. "I am working 365 days for them, any time they need me," he says. "And I have to make this Rabta project. I saw it as a nice object, very clean, a big one. And I say, 'Why not?' And I start planning with them the technology center." What Barbouti may not have known was that the Libyans...