Libya gave up it's nuclear program.                                           Back

The United States bombed Tripoli and Benghazi on April 14, 1986. One hundred people were killed during that air raid, including Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qadhafi's adopted daughter.

The bombing of Libya was justified by the Ronald Reagan administration as retribution for Libya's supposed bombing of the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin which killed one of the U.S. military personnel who frequented the nightclub.

Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on 21 December, 1988 killing 270 people.

The UN placed economic sanctions on Libya in 1992 for its refusal to extradite two Libyan citizens charged with the 1988 bombings.

Muammar Qadhafi has been negotiating for several years to have the embargo lifted. Maybe he did get scared but remember we never threatened him, never told him he was next. Why if he wanted a nuclear weapon wouldn't he just wait till we confronted him? He knew that we wouldn't use a sneak attack. He knew that he could give up those materials at anytime & if he waited till it was his turn he might have been able to negotiate for better relationships with the west.

He gained nothing from volunteering his materials except to have the embargo lifted. Could it be that that's what he wanted all along & that the timing was only coincidental? After all that's the Europeans are saying.

Maybe it was our war in Iraq, maybe it wasn't. I for one don't think we'll ever know, but it's is a good talking point for George Bush. He's much smarter then me, so maybe he's right but I really don't feel he knows for sure either. Non of our intelligence agencies have come out with proof of the administrations claim.

I mean the Republican party takes full credit for the fall of the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan did that, right? It had nothing to do with their war in Afghanistan, or the fact that the internet had come to the Soviet Union, if only underground, & the people started to see the freedoms that the west enjoyed. It had nothing to do with Poland's pulling out of the Union under Lech Walesa or that other countries started to do the same.

It had nothing to do with the fact that some of the most educated people in the Soviet Union had to live in one room apartments with their families. Or that food was scarce. The people were seeing that Communism wasn't working.

It had nothing to do with the Vietnam war. (Then why did we fight it?) It had nothing to do with John F. Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis resolution, the cost of the space race, Richard Nixon's pulling apart their close ties with China, or any of the many other things.

The only reason it fell was that Ronald Reagan stood in Berlin & said "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall."

Lets start using our common sense.