Libya's Pre-1996 History Revisited: Part 12

A Wall Street Journal editorial recently proposed that the Democratic Obama-Clinton Administration consider the option of some kind of “humanitarian military intervention” in Libya in 2011 in response to the recent deadly attacks on demonstrators inside Libya by the current Libyan regime’s security forces. Yet most people in the United States know very little about the hidden history of Libya. Guy Arnold’s 1996 book, The Maverick State: Gaddafi and the New World Order, for example, observed:

“…The United States gave notice on 26 March [1986] that it planned to conduct exercises from 23 March to 1 April in an area of the Mediterranean which included the Gulf of Sidra…Americans fired a number of missiles at Libyan radar installations on land on the grounds that they were a threat to US planes while US planes and ships attacked Libyan missile-armed ships `that were deemed to threaten the U.S. fleet’ and two of the Libyan ships were sunk. On 27 March the Pentagon announced that the exercise was to be concluded. The US ships remained in the central Mediterranean…

“…On 14-15 April [1986], US military planes from bases in Britain and the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in a raid that was in retaliation for Libya’s alleged responsibility for terrorist activities in Europe. Casualties amounted to 130 including Gaddafi’s adopted daughter…

“…The United States claimed that the bombing had been precise, on military targets; in fact it was imprecise and killed civilians…

“…The story of the US raid on Libya, both before when it had to be justified and afterwards when it had to be explained, is a sorry tale of lies, half-truths, misinformation and dishonesty in pursuit of a vendetta more suitable to a Sicilian bandit than an American President…”