Moammar Gadhafi on national television Tuesday
Relations with the United States fell to an all-time low during the eighties when Ronald Reagan was president. He called Colonel Gadhafi "the mad dog of the Middle East."
Author Bruce St John points to two events from that time. In December of nineteen eighty-five, terrorists attacked the Rome and Vienna airports. And in April of nineteen eighty-six, a bomb exploded at a West Berlin discotheque popular with American troops. Two soldiers died.
BRUCE ST JOHN: “Gadhafi and his regime -- the evidence was somewhat murky -- but the United States government believed that they were involved in both of those instances. And it was particularly the La Belle discotheque incident that led the Reagan administration to take a decision to punish the Gadhafi regime and put it on notice that we no longer tolerate that kind of activity.”
American planes attacked targets in Benghazi and Tripoli. Many people were killed, including the adopted daughter of Colonel Gadhafi.
In nineteen eighty-eight, a bomb blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Two hundred seventy people died, including many Americans. Another bombing took place the following year on a French plane over Niger.
Libya refused to surrender suspects in the two bombings. Libya faced years of United Nations sanctions until it finally surrendered the two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing.
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2013-11-25
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2013-11-25