Quote:
Originally Posted by Toughy
He was in power 42 years. The US bombed him for 36 of those 42 through Republican and Democratic Presidents.....well we bombed him except for that 10 years W Bush was the pResident....W said he was a 'reformed terrorist'.
The people are rising up all over the world and winning. It gives me hope we can win in the 'free democratic country' called the USA. It's a good day.
Occupy Wall Street all over the US and the world.
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I can't find where we bombed Libya for 36 years. I did several searches trying to find where we were bombing Libya for 36 years and could find nothing. I found several incidents over the period between 1970 and 2006 but nothing that would suggest that we were bombing him pretty much continuously over that time.
The incidents I found were:
Gulf of Sidra incident #1 in 1981-- dogfight between US Navy fighters and Libyan air force. No civilian casualties. President Reagan.
Action in Sidra gulf March 1986 -- US Navy conducting exercises in international waters near Libya. Libyans fire missiles at US ships. US ships fire back at Libyans. No civilian casualties. President Reagan.
Bombing of Tripoli April 1986 -- US aircraft bomb Tripoli in retaliation for bombing of a nightclub in Germany frequented by US military personnel. President Reagan
Gulf of Sidra incident #2 in 1989 -- another dogfight between US Navy fighters and Libyan air force. President Bush the Elder
I can find nothing earlier than 1981, nothing later than 1989 until we get to the present. So nothing under Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton or Bush the Younger. I can find only one actual air strike against Libya and that's the 1986 incident. The other three incidents all seem to be acts of aggression started by the Libyans. Gaddafi had claimed the entire Gulf of Sidra was Libyan territorial waters. The recognized territorial limit is 12 nautical miles. Libya claimed that their territory extended out 60 nautical miles. The Libyan military attacked the US Navy in international waters. By all rights of international law and convention, even our military is allowed to defend itself when attacked.
Now, I was in the military for three of those working crypto at the NSA at Ft Meade for the 1986 and 1989 actions. The bombing was an act of retaliation, the two dogfights were acts of aggression on the part of the Libyans.
Now, one more point lest someone claim that we had no business being in waters anywhere *near* Libya. This was the 1980s. The Cold War was still on. We *know* that one Russian war plan called for starving NATO for oil by closing off the Persian Gulf and seizing all the nations surrounding them if allied with the West. It would have been an act of military negligence for us *not* to hold exercises in an area we were going to have to try to keep the Russians out of. (NATO without oil wouldn't last a week against what the Red Army had planned for Western Europe.) At any rate, if we had incurred into their territory that would be one thing but they attacked our ships in international waters.
I understand (but disagree with) the rush to think that if there's someone more culpable for an international incident that it *must* be either the United States or some other Western nation if the US can't be blamed but that's simply not always the case.
Cheers
Aj