TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/86/86capts.7

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                                                                                April 28, 1986

WORLD

Hitting the Source


U.S. bombers strike at Libya's author of terrorism, dividing
Europe and threatening a rash of retaliations


The blow, when it finally fell, was unexpectedly jarring.
Despite years of agonized Western debate about combatting
terrorism, months of mostly fruitless diplomatic maneuvering,
weeks of U.S. warnings and finally days of ominous public
silence, the world still seemed unprepared when the bombers
struck. Although Libya had felt the sting of the Sixth Fleet
over the Gulf of Sidra just three weeks before, the principal
buildings and the minarets of the central mosque in Tripoli were
bathed by floodlights, providing a beacon for U.S. pilots.
Under cover of darkness, 13 F-111 fighter-bombers flying out of
Britain, joined by twelve A-6 attack planes launched off
carriers in the Mediterranean, blasted military and
intelligence targets in and around Tripoli and the coastal city
of Benghazi. Going to the source of Libyan fanaticism, four
F-111s aimed 16 bombs, each weighing 2,000 lbs., at the Bab al
Azizia barracks: the living quarters and command and
communications center from which Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had
incited, planned or supported terrorist murders throughout the
world.

The raid began around 7 p.m. Monday Washington time (2 a.m.
Tuesday in Libya) and was over in time for a White House
announcement to catch evening TV news shows. But no one
ventured to label it an 11 1/2-min. war; neither the Reagan
Administration nor anyone else harbored illusions that anything
definitive had been settled during the few moments that the
bombs were falling. Rather, there was a sense in Washington and
around the world that the U.S. had crossed a fateful line in the
intensifying battle between civilized society and terrorism,
with consequences that no one could truly predict.

The U.S. launched its bombers out of a grim conviction that
ruthless attacks on Americans and the citizens of many other
countries will never let up until terrorists and the states that
sponsor them are made to pay a price in kind. In his televised
address following the raid, the President asserted that the air
strike "will not only diminish Colonel Gaddafi's capacity to
export terror, it will provide him with incentives and reasons
to alter his criminal behavior." That argument won the support
of only three U.S. allies: Britain, which gave permission for
the F-111s to use English bases, Canada and Israel. All the
others at minimum counseled against a raid; France and Spain
went further, vexing U.S. opinion by refusing to let the F-111s
fly over their territory. That forced the bombers to take a
circuitous route that added 2,400 nautical miles to their
5,600-mile round trip.

The great fear in Europe was that the attack would trigger a
cycle of new vengeful terrorist assaults followed by more U.S.
reprisals. Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi expressed the
concerns of European governments and public opinion alike: the
U.S. action, he said, was likely to unleash "explosions of
fanaticism and of criminal and suicide missions."

The Administration did not dismiss that possibility. The
President told a business group the day after the raid,
"Yesterday the United States won but a single engagement in a
long battle against terrorism." But as that battle proceeds,
Reagan has made his intentions clear. "We have done what we had
to do," he said in his televised address. "If necessary, we
shall do it again."

If the bombs had fallen differently, the U.S. might have
eliminated one of its principal adversaries in that long battle.
Despite the tonnage dropped on the barracks where Gaddafi
lives, Administration officials insisted they were not trying
to kill him. "He was not a direct target," said Secretary of
State George Shultz. Pentagon Spokesman Robert Sims elaborated:
"The nerve center was the target, not the individual."
Privately, though, Reagan's aides left no doubt that, to put it
mildly, they would not have been unhappy if Gaddafi just
happened to die in the raid. The distinction appeared to be
largely legalistic; a long-standing U.S. Executive Order
forbids attempts to assassinate foreign heads of state, and it
would be an extremely fine point whether that includes targeting
one in a bombing raid.

In any case, Gaddafi survived the attack, apparently because he
was not in his personal residence but, said close associate,
"underground"--presumably in a bunker where he often sleeps.
His family was less fortunate: an 18-month-old girl, reportedly
his adopted daughter Hana, was said to have been one of at least
37 civilian casualties of the raid. The dictator's two young
sons, Saif al Arab, 4, and Hamis, 3, were injured and his wife
Safia shell-shocked when bombs blew off the front walls of
their living quarters.

There was some speculation that Gaddafi had at least lost some
political power. Washington was wondering how far to trust
intelligence reports indicating that the U.S. attack had touched
off an attempted military coup against the Libyan leader during
which he had been wounded in the left shoulder. If there was
an attempt at a coup--and journalists in Libya could detect no
more than some mysterious firing--Gaddafi survived that too and
appeared to be no more than momentarily subdued. No wounds were
visible when he began making appearances on Libyan TV at
midweek, apparently to reassure his countrymen that the U.S.
attack was over and he was still in command.

Gaddafi raged at Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher as "child murderers" and announced to the Western world
that "we will not kill your children. We are not like you."
This comment overlooked the fact that in December, Gaddafi
praised and perhaps assisted the terrorists who opened fire on
passengers in the Rome and Vienna airports, killing 20 people,
including an eleven-year-old American, Natasha Simpson.
Overall, White House Spokesman Larry Speakes was quick to
contrast the casualties of the Libya raid with the 938 people
he said had died last year in terrorist attacks around the
world, though American officials admitted they had difficulty
breaking down how many of these could be called direct or
indirect victims of Gaddafi. For once, Gaddafi in his Wednesday
talk made no threats of new attacks. But by week's end Radio
Tripoli was calling for bloody vengeance. His followers and
allies by then had already begun a wave of reprisal attacks.
Among them:

--In Lebanon, gunmen dumped the corpses of three Western hostages
on a road in the Chouf Mountains east of Beirut. The victims
were identified as American University Librarian Peter Kilburn,
60, who had disappeared in Beirut in December 1984; and Leigh
Douglas, 34, and Philip Padfield, 40, two British teachers who
had been abducted three weeks before their murder. The men were
among 18 British, French, U.S. and other hostages being held in
Lebanon. A stenciled statement found near the bloodstained
bodies said they had been killed in retaliation for the U.S. air
strike against Libya. The statement was signed by the "Arab
Revolutionary Cells," a group believed to be linked to the
notorious terrorist Abu Nidal, who reportedly is in Libya.

--In Khartoum, William Cokals, a communications officer in the
U.S. embassy to the Sudan, was shot in the head and partly
paralyzed as he drove home Tuesday night. Street mobs marched
on the embassy, and at week's end, the U.S. ordered the
evacuation from Sudan of 200 to 250 embassy employees and their
families.

--In London, a major tragedy was averted at Heathrow Airport
Thursday morning when security guards for El Al, the Israeli
airline, found a bomb in the luggage of a pregnant Irishwoman
who was attempting to board a flight from New York City. The
bomb was timed to go off when the flight would have been back
in the air winging toward Tel Aviv. Said George
Churchill-Coleman, head of Scotland Yard's antiterrorist branch:
"It is highly likely that an explosion from a device of this
type would have resulted in the loss of the aircraft, a 757
jumbo, and the 400 passengers and crew." British police believe
the pregnant woman might have been duped into unknowingly
carrying the bomb by her lover, Nezar Hindawi, 35, who was
arrested Friday evening by Scotland Yard.

In the short run it seemed likely that the ere would be more
such attacks, although U.S. officials hoped that the bombing
raid would eventually diminish the taste for murders, hijackings
and other outrages, not only by Gaddafi but among terrorist
groups that he sponsors and trains. Meanwhile the diplomatic
and political fallout from the bombing raid has damaged the U.S.
position in Europe. Government leaders, who had been pressed
hard by the U.S. since the December airport attacks to impose
diplomatic and economic sanctions on Libya, were careful to
balance criticisms of the American raid with strong
condemnations of Libya and terrorism. Opposition politicians,
especially those on the left, were less circumspect. In the
Netherlands, for example, Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek
observed in fairly mild terms that "we seriously doubt if
terrorism can be actually erased this way," but Klaas de Vries,
parliamentary spokesman for the Labor Party, thundered that the
strikes "made fools of all European ministers who had urged
restraint."

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, disapproving of the raid,
warned that it might provoke outbursts of "primitive
anti-Americanism." Indeed, demonstrators marched and shouted
Saturday in Rome, West Berlin and even London, where Prime
Minister Thatcher came under scathing attack from critics who
accused her of exposing her countrymen to terrorist vengeance.

The Soviets, as might be expected, pulled out all the
propaganda stops. Less than 90 min. after the first word of the
attack, the news agency TASS flashed some vintage vituperation
by Analyst Vladimir Goncharov. The U.S., he said, "has started
speaking in its true tongue: the tongue of bombs, flames and
death." The next day, Moscow called off a mid-May visit to
Washington by Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. He had been
scheduled to confer with Shultz about preparations for the
summit meeting between Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhail
Gorbachev that is supposed to take place in the U.S. this year.

The Soviets also promised last week, in a letter from Gorbachev
to Gaddafi, to "fulfill obligations" to strengthen Libya's
defense capability, presumably by replacing planes, spare parts
and other weapons that had been destroyed by the U.S. bombing.
But the Kremlin has been wary about getting too close to the
unpredictable Libyan; it seemed scarcely conceivable that Moscow
would risk a clash with the U.S. to defend him.

In Washington, officials dismissed the postponement of the
Shevardnadze-Shultz summit-planning meeting (it was not
canceled, merely declared to be "impossible...at this time") as
the minimal gesture the Soviets could make against a nation that
had just clobbered a client of the Kremlin. The U.S. still
believes that Gorbachev will come to a second meeting this year,
and the Soviet leader, according to the Associated Press on
Sunday, hinted that he would. He was still prepared to meet
Reagan, he told newsmen, despite recent U.S. actions that were
"poisoning the atmosphere." Earlier, in a speech in East Berlin,
Gorbachev had charged that the raid on Libya had brought the
world closer to the brink of nuclear war and made a new proposal
to reduce Soviet and NATO conventional forces and tactical
nuclear weapons across "the territory of all of Europe, from the
Atlantic to the Urals."

In any case, the Reagan Administration had decided to go ahead
with the raid whatever the cost in relations with the allies and
the Soviets--and, for that matter, at whatever price in an
immediate spasm of fresh terrorism. Why?  Of all people,
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who had long been
publicly dubious about military reprisals against terrorism, put
the rationale most succinctly. Terrorism, Weinberger declared
in a Boston speech, "is now a state- practiced activity, a
method of waging war" planned and organized by governments
convinced of their impunity. It will get steadily worse unless
the U.S. convinces them otherwise, he said. Shultz, who for
years had argued what was originally a lonely case in favor of
antiterrorist strikes, developed the rationale still further.
Whatever the immediate effects of U.S. action, said the
Secretary of State, "if you raise the costs [of inciting
terrorism], you do something that should, eventually, act as a
deterrent."

Besides,there was a growing feeling that the Administration had
exhausted every other alternative for taming Gaddafi. Said
President Reagan, addressing a meeting of lawyers on Wednesday:
"We tried quiet diplomacy. We tried public condemnation. We
tried economic sanctions. And, yes, we tried a show of military
might [the Sixth Fleet's skirmish in the Gulf of Sidra with
Libyan patrol boats and missile batteries last month]. But
Gaddafi intensified his terrorist war, sending his agents around
the world to murder and maim innocents."

The Administration's case drew vigorous agreement across almost
the full spectrum of American political opinion. House Speaker
Tip O'Neill, usually a leader of opposition to what his fellow
Democrats see as an overly adventurous Reagan foreign policy,
declared that "we just can't let this madman of terrorism
[Gaddafi] keep threatening." Indeed, said O'Neill, if Libya
continues to foment terrorism, "I think the American people
would demand that we go in again." The New York Times and
Washington Post, whose editorial writers are often skeptical
about military action overseas, voiced approval of the raid.
The most notable dissenter was former President Jimmy Carter,
who predicted that the raid would make Gaddafi "a hero" in the
Arab world and a worse menace than ever. But, Carter
acknowledged, "mine is one of the lonely voices."

It certainly seemed to be; polls indicated that the military
strike against Libya was about as popular with the American
public as any action Reagan has ever taken. An overwhelming 71%
of 1,007 adults polled for TIME by Yankelovich/Clancy, Shulman
last week approved the strike, vs. only 20% who disapproved and
9% who were not sure. Some 60% went further to agree with the
statement that the raids "made me feel proud to be an American."

Something more than jingoistic pride seemed to be involved in
the public's attitude. Many respondents approved the strike
despite a sober appreciation of the dangers involved. Three out
of five declared themselves to be "afraid of what will happen
in the future," and 48% agreed that "the bombing will only make
the situation with Libya worse, not better." But the majority
looked for eventual gains; 56% agreed that "in the long run, the
bombing will help stop terrorists attacks on Americans.

The Reagan Administration's attitude toward an air strike had
been years in the making. The President has been preoccupied
with the problem of terrorism since his early days in office.
Two events in Reagan's first year helped to fix his thoughts
on Gaddafi as a symbol of virtually everything he hates. One
was a Libyan attack on U.S. jets in the Gulf of Sidra that
resulted in the shooting down of two of Gaddafi's Soviet-built
Su-22 fighter planes. Later in 1981 U.S. intelligence picked
up information that Libya was sending hit squads to the U.S. to
assassinate Reagan and some of his close aides. No such attacks
occurred, but the scare contributed to Reagan's revulsion toward
the Libyan dictator, which has been fueled since by Gaddafi's
long series of boasts, taunts and public threats against
Americans and open encouragement of terrorism around the world.

Yet even after Shultz began his open advocacy of military
reprisals in 1983, Reagan continued to express caution. Then
late last year several factors combined to push him to a more
militant view. Terrorism seemed to be accelerating, exemplified
by the massacres at the Rome and Vienna airports. Nonmilitary
means of countering the outrages seemed maddeningly ineffective.
Evidence for the airport massacres appeared to point to Syria
as well as Libya, and when Deputy Secretary of State John
Whitehead toured Europe early this year trying to organize a
political and economic boycott of Libya, he come home
empty-handed.

Another decisive event for the President had been the U.S.
capture in October of the four Arab terrorists who had hijacked
the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered an American
passenger, Leon Klinghoffer. The seizure gave the President new
confidence that U.S. military forces could indeed strike
effectively against terrorists. When John Poindexter, then
deputy assistant for national security, met with the President
the morning after the hijackers had been seized, Reagan leaped
from his chair in the Oval Office and exclaimed, "I salute the
Navy!"

Still, Reagan had laid down and stuck to an all-important
precondition for any outright reprisal attack: it had to be
directed against a target that could be proved responsible for
a specific terrorist attack. And for all his open support of
terrorism, Gaddafi had always been skillful at covering his
tracks in actual incidents. But then the U.S. broke the Libyan
diplomatic code and intercepted messages between Tripoli and
Libyan "people's bureaus" (as the country calls its embassies).
The messages proved, to Washington's satisfaction and
eventually to the satisfaction of initial skeptics like West
German Chancellor Kohl, that the bureau in East Berlin had
dispatched terrorists to place a bomb in a West Berlin disco
packed with American servicemen. The bomb exploded early in the
morning of April 5, killing U.S. Army Sergeant Kenneth Ford and
a Turkish woman and injuring 230 people, 79 of them Americans."

The U.S. claimed further that intercepted messages disclosed
orders by Gaddafi to Libyan agents and Libyan-sponsored
terrorists to carry out attacks against more than 30 American
targets around the world. White House Spokesman Speakes asserted
that one plot was for Libyan agents to hurl grenades and open
fire with machine guns at lines of people waiting at the U.S.
visa office in Paris. This intelligence enabled the
Administration to claim that it has struck Libya not only to
punish Gaddafi for the Berlin disco bombing but in
self-defense, to forestall a new wave of bloodshed.

That argument appeared to be crucial in winning the support of
the British government. In private communications to
Washington, Thatcher insisted that any U.S. action had to be
justified as one taken under the inherent right of self-defense
recognized in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Whether
the strike against Libya really met that condition is at best
questionable; Article 51 refers to self-defense "if an armed
attack occurs." Nonetheless, the U.S. got political support it
urgently needed. "What they really wanted was less the planes
than someone along with them," said one Thatcher confidant.

In Washington, once the intelligence information had been
assessed, there was never any serious debate about what the U.S.
should do. "We'd been a pretty determined bunch ever since the
Achille Lauro," said one senior Reagan official. "The only
major point of discussion was targeting." Reagan insisted that
the targets be chosen with a view toward holding down casualties
among Libyan civilians. That damage nonetheless occurred in
downtown Tripoli might indicate that a so-called surgical air
strike is much easier to plan than to achieve.

Although military action was decided on Monday, April 7, final
approval of a plan and targets did not come until the following
sunday. That allowed time for a last-minute mission by Vernon
Walters, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and a veteran
troubleshooter, to sound out European allies on their attitudes.
On Saturday, Sunday and Monday, he visited in quick succession
London, Madrid, Bonn, Paris and Rome.

Walters' mission, however, became a source of new controversy.
Several European leaders contended that Walters, while making
it clear that the U.S. was seriously considering a military
strike, put all his comments on a what-if basis. As a result,
they said, they got no impression that an attack had already
been ordered, much less that it was within days or even hours
of beginning. Added to their concern about being caught in the
middle of a cycle of military reprisal and terrorist vengeance
was a resentful feeling that the U.S. had failed to consult them
properly, and perhaps had even misled them.

France had already refused a U.S. request to permit the F-111s
to fly over her territory before Walters met with the President
Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. An
official French government statement later explained that Paris
was fearful of intensifying "the chain of violence" by abetting
the U.S. military strike. France may also have been reluctant
to become involved in any military action that it did not
initiate and could not control. Another factor: the newly
installed chirac government had just renewed efforts to win
freedom for eight French hostages in Lebanon and did not want
to endanger them--a concern that was justified by the subsequent
execution of British and American hostages.

Walters implied that Spain also had refused overflight
permission before he got to Madrid Saturday. Said the
Ambassador: "Sometimes it is better not to ask the question
when you don't think you will like the answer." But Prime
Minister Felipe Gonzales said later that during his meeting with
Walters, the Ambassador--again on a what-if basis--specifically
asked if Spain would permit overflight, or, failing that, at
least allow tanker planes taking off from Spanish bases to
refuel the F-111s in flight over the Atlantic. Whenever asked,
Gonzalez replied with a firm no.

As late as Monday, many European leaders apparently believed
they might still have time to talk the U.S. out of an attack.
Meeting in emergency session in the Hague only hours before the
strike, foreign ministers of the twelve European Community
nations went further than they ever had before toward meeting
U.S. requests for collective action. They pledged to reduce the
number of Libyan diplomats allowed into their countries, to
limit their freedom of movement and to keep them under close
surveillance. That move has some importance: Libyan "diplomats"
are believed often to pass instructions, money and weapons to
terrorists.

But besides coming too late, the move fell short of meeting
Washington' urging that the Europeans shut down the Libyan
people's bureaus entirely. Meeting again on Thursday, two full
days after the attack, the twelve tried to come up with some
further move that might satisfy the U.S. but could agree only
to wait for a committee report due this week.

It is possible that this attitude will change. While opposing
the attack, some European leaders also criticized their own
failure to propose any alternative antiterrorist program. Said
West Germany's Kohl: "Too frequently, the Europeans have been
too satisfied with mere declarations which have been politically
ineffectual while leaving the U.S. alone in its struggle against
international terrorism...If we Europeans do not want to follow
the Americans for reasons of our own, we must develop political
initiatives."

Public opinion in Europe, while predominantly against the raid,
was hardly monolithic. Polls showed an odd pattern. In
Britain, Market & Opinion Research International surveyed 1,051
people for the London Times. Two-thirds were against the air
strike, and 71% disapproved of Thatcher's permission for British
bases to be sued. But in France, which refused to participate,
a survey taken within 48 hours of the raid turned up only 49%
against vs. 39% who were in favor of it. In France also, one
notable political figure, former President Valery Giscard
d'Estaing, stated flatly, "I approve of the American action in
Libya." French-speaking Swiss polled by the Lausanne newspaper
Le Matin registered an astonishing 67.8% majority for the
attack. Opinion seemed vehemently opposed in Spain. A crowd in
Barcelona smashed windows of a McDonald's restaurant, and El
Pais, the leading daily in Madrid, published a cartoon of the
U.S. flag with skulls for stars and bones for stripes.

Very privately, the U.S. picked up some support in the Arab
world. Radical Arab states condemned the military strike in
shrill, vehement and threatening terms, conservative nations in
ritualistic tones. But their confidential comments differed
markedly from their public ones. Said one Arab government
minister: "Gaddafi has done more harm to us [by fomenting
terrorism] than to the Americans. The only problem with the
attack on Libya is that you didn't get him."

The final act before the bombs could fall was a move by the
White House to line up congressional support. The
Administration acted at about the last imaginable moment to
fulfill even theoretically the requirement of the 1973 War
Powers Act that "the President in every possible instance shall
consult with Congress before introducing United States armed
forces into hostilities." At 4 p.m.on Monday, when the already
airborne F-111s were only three hours from the attack, nine
House and Senate leaders of both parties were summoned to the
Old Executive Office Building for "consultation" with a pride of
Administration lions: Vice President George Bush, Shultz,
Weinberger, CIA Director William Casey, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chairman Admiral William Crowe. Reagan came in ten minutes
later, read briefly from typewritten notes describing the
operation, then turned the presentation over to National
Security Adviser John Poindexter, who gave a detailed rundown
of the evidence linking Libya to the Berlin disco bombing and
the wave of new terrorist acts that the Administration said was
imminent.

All the congressional leaders found the evidence sufficiently
convincing to justify the raid, but several remarked that they
were being notified, not consulted. One of the Reagan officials
replied that there was still time to call off the attack--if the
legislators objected "unanimously" and strongly. House
Republican Leader Robert Michel thought, "If I had some serious
objection, how could I make it now?"

No one objected, but no one expressed any enthusiasm either.
Michel, playing devil's advocate, asked if the Administration
had considered waiting for the next terrorist provocation.
Poindexter replied that the case against Gaddafi was so strong
that there was no point in waiting. Several legislators
ventured worried what-next questions: in effect, how ready was
the Administration to use military force against future
terrorists acts?  Democratic Senate Leader Robert Byrd of West
Virginia asked, "What are we playing, tit for tat?  Suppose the
trail leads to Syria or Iran. Are we going to send in the
bombers?" Shultz replied that the Administration would consider
the problem on a case-by-case basis, deciding on a military or
other response as the circumstances of each terrorists outburst
appeared to dictate. That did not satisfy Georgia Senator Sam
Nunn, the leading Democratic expert on defense. While
continuing to defend the Libya raid as justified, Nunn remarked
later, "I don't sense any long-range strategy in dealing with
terrorism. I think it's still ad-hocism."

Administration officials, for their part, are anything but eager
to proclaim a broad new Reagan Doctrine of repeated military
retaliation against terrorism. On the contrary, they warned
against assuming that new terrorist outrages will necessarily,
or even probably, be punished by bombs and bullets. Having
demonstrated that the U.S. really will hit back if it has
sufficient evidence and provocation, the President, they say,
will now return to emphasizing political and economic action.
Primarily, that means pushing the allies yet again to agree to
some sort of tough, coordinated action, this time with at least
the implicit argument that they can see for themselves the
unpleasant consequences if they refuse. Indeed, there was some
intention among Reagan's advisers to use the bombing to shock
the Europeans out of their timidity and inertia. The President
especially intends to press for a coordinated program next month
at the economic summit meeting in Tokyo of the non-Communist
world's seven leading industrial powers: the U.S., Canada,
Britain, France, West Germany, Italy and Japan.

Still, the question of when, how and at whom the U.S. might
strike again probably cannot be dodged for long. Even if
Gaddafi is cowed, terrorist violence undoubtedly will continue
and may even increase, as last week's incidents so frighteningly
indicated. Libya's assistance to terrorists is of two types:
Gaddafi directly plans and carries out some attacks, but he
also supplies money, weapons and training to groups that act on
their own and could carry on without him. Says Brian Jenkins,
a Rand Corp. expert on terrorism: "Quite clearly Gaddafi has
played a major role in terrorism, but he by no means exercises
control over the myriad Middle East groups who target the U.S.
and the West for a variety of reasons. Gaddafi may have a 'go'
switch for some terrorist groups, but not a 'stop' switch."

Richly as Gaddafi deserved being targeted, the U.S. has been
observing a kind of double standard in fingering him as
Terrorist Public Enemy No. 1. Less noisily, but not a bit less
lethally, Syria and at times Iran have been quite as active as
Libya in sponsoring, aiding and sheltering terrorists. To take
the most notorious example, Italian police believe that the
gunmen who carried out the Rome and Vienna airport attacks
trained in the Syrian-occupied Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. But
Syria and Iran are far more populous, and more heavily armed,
than Libya. They also are less politically isolated.

Syria maintains a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union--a
diplomatic plum Gaddafi has pleaded for but never
received--which Damascus conceivably could invoke for military
assistance against attack. Under those circumstances, if
evidence ties some future terrorist murder to Syria as
unequivocally as the intercepted messages pointed to Libya in
the Berlin disco bombing, what would the U.S. do?  Go back on
the pledge, renewed by Reagan at his news conference two weeks
ago, to "respond" whenever he has proof of responsibility for
a specific terrorist act?  Or would the U.S. take the risk of
launching a military action that could lead to a much wider
conflict?

One criterion for the use of military force, of course, is
precisely the likelihood that it will prove effective at an
acceptable cost. But in the end, the reason for last week's U.S.
air strike came not so much from a calculation of effectiveness
as from a conviction that a military blow had become inevitable.
Shultz has much merit to his argument that terrorists must be
forced to consider a cost for their attacks; given the evidence
on Gaddafi and the military strength the U.S. had against him,
it became a question of put up or shut up, now or never. The
blow established the credibility of the U.S. military threat.
But it did not solve the question of how to integrate that
threat into a global antiterrorist strategy.

--By George J. Church. Reported by David Beckwith and Barrett
Seaman/Washington and Christopher Ogden/London.


---------------------------------------------------------------
Wanting It Both Ways

There are good reasons why Administration officials played it
coy on the subject of whether they intended to kill Gaddafi with
a well- aimed bomb. For one thing, acknowledging such an
attempt could provoke a political fire storm. But more
important, the idea of killing a leader raises difficult legal
and moral issues, issues that the Administration seems unwilling
and unready to confront publicly.

If the raid was in fact a veiled execution attempt, it would pit
the Reagan Administration against a specific presidential order
and substantial legal precedent. In 1976, after public
discontent over the revelations of the CIA assassination
attempts in Chile, Guatemala and Iran, President Ford issued an
Executive Order forbidding the Government from authorizing the
assassination of world leaders. Both Presidents Carter and
Reagan have reaffirmed that ban.

In discussing whether the Administration had tacitly hoped to
kill Gaddafi, Secretary of State George Shultz seemed to be
engaged in a kind of Jesuitic legal maneuvering. "We did not
have a strategy saying we wanted to go after Gaddafi
personally," said Shultz. "We have a general stance that
opposes direct efforts of that kind." The implication is that
if the attempt was indirect and unofficial, they would be off
the hook.

But some experts suggest that the Administration need not engage
in any protective hairsplitting. They argue that Reagan's risk
in superseding Executive Order No. 12333 would be political
rather than legal. The Executive Order represents a voluntary
restraint rather than a legally imposed one. By violating it,
the President is not breaking a law but a promise. Former
Defense Secretary James Schlesinger speculates that the
President could have sidestepped any legal problems by issuing
a secret National Security directive sanctioning action against
Gaddafi.

The question prompted by an assassination attempt, say some, is
more a moral issue than a political one. Critics of the
Administration suggest that the Government's actions have
undermined American claims of moral superiority, reducing the
U.S. to the same level as the terrorists it condemns. If the
Administration did intend to get Gaddafi, notes former Carter
Legal Adviser Lloyd Cutler, it would be "the equivalent of a
terrorist attack on a foreign leader."

There are those who think that the U.S. erred on the side of
restraint, that the Administration should have had the courage
of their convictions--or their animosities. "If we genuinely
believe that Gaddafi is more than just a booking agent for
terrorism," says Robert Kupperman, a terrorism expert at
Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies,
"Then convert means of getting rid of him should be considered.
We seem to be dealing in niceties. We think we can use the
larger instruments of warfare to bring about his elimination;
but that we shouldn't use the smaller ones, such as a pistol."

Some suggest that an assassination attempt could be considered
more moral than an all-out attack. Neil Livingstone, president
of Washington's Institute for Terrorism and Subnational
Conflict, proposes that a precise covert action directed toward
a single figure may be preferable to a military raid. Says
Livingstone: "It is far more humane to get the legitimate bad
guy than his baby daughter and innocent civilians." But it seems
the Administration simply wanted to have it both ways. That is,
it wanted to send a message to terrorists in general and a
knockout punch to one in particular.


---------------------------------------------------------------
The Iron Lady Stands Alone

"A lioness in a den of Daniels", the London Times characterized
her. When British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stood before
the House of Commons last week, opposition members and even
backbenchers from her own Conservative Party hooted and jeered
her for allowing U.S. planes to take off from English air bases
for their bomb runs to Libya. The Prime Minister held her
ground. "It is inconceivable," she stated, "that [the U.S.]
should be refused the right to use American aircraft and
American pilots...to defend their own people."

The opposition was in full cry against her. Labor Foreign
Policy Spokesman Denis Healey said Thatcher's decision was "a
disastrous blunder" and proved that "when Mr. Reagan tells Mrs.
Thatcher to jump, her reply is 'How high?'" Other Laborites
vowed that if they ever returned to power, they would close down
U.S. nuclear bases. Liberal Party Leader David Steel told the
Prime Minister she had turned "the British bulldog into a Reagan
poodle." Social Democratic Party Leader David Owen was less
harsh, but maintained that Britain should have taken the Libyan
issue to the United Nations. Later in the week, after two
British hostages in Lebanon were murdered, apparently in
retaliation for Britain's cooperation with the U.S., Labor Party
Leader Neil Kinnock blamed Thatcher, saying the hostages had
been "abandoned to their fate."

Many in Thatcher's own Tory Party were equally unsympathetic,
particularly former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath,
who pointed out that he had refused President Richard Nixon's
request to use British bases for U.S. aircraft resupplying
Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Even some members of
Thatcher's Cabinet privately opposed her decision, though all
supported it publicly.

In January, Thatcher had told U.S. correspondents she could not
support a retaliatory strike against terrorists that violated
international law. But she seemed to have come to believe with
Reagan that alternatives to force in dealing with Libya had
simply failed. Last week she reminded her critics of Libya's
continuing support of the terrorist gangs in the Provisional
Irish Republican Army and of other Libyan incidents much closer
to home. Two years ago, London broke diplomatic relations with
Tripoli after Constable Yvonne Fletcher was killed by gunfire
from the Libyan "people's bureau."

Nor had Thatcher been entirely complaisant in responding to the
U.S. requests. Before permitting the use of the air bases, she
insisted that the raid be justifiable as self-defense. She was
shown what one aide said were "compelling" reports from U.S. and
British intelligence that Gaddafi had ordered the bombing of a
West Berlin discotheque and planned a wide range of other
terrorist activities. SHe also demanded promises from Reagan
that the U.S. warplanes would confine their attack to "clearly
defined targets related to terrorism" and avoid widespread
civilian casualties.

Thatcher had other reasons too for assisting the Reagan
Administration. She reminded M.P.s of the vital American
military assistance in recapturing the Falkland Islands from
Argentina four years ago: "We received splendid support from
the U.S., far beyond the call of duty." Added one Whitehall
official: "We owed Washington one."

Thatcher showed little patience for her counterparts elsewhere
in Europe who refused to aid the U.S.. Although the U.S.had
repeatedly urged its NATO allies to take tougher, nonmilitary
action against Libya, she told Parliament, results had been
"totally insufficient. She held to the view that, "if one never
took any action because of the risks involved, the alternative
would be to be totally and utterly passive and supine before
Colonel Gaddafi and anyone else who practices state-sponsored
terrorism."

Although the Prime Minister's actions set her apart from fellow
European leaders and much of British public opinion, her stance
of gritty independence was nevertheless familiar. Thatcher, as
one government official put it, "is used to being the odd person
out." That role last week, as lioness and Iron Lady, served the
U.S. well.


---------------------------------------------------------------
DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

U.S.

Do you approve or disapprove of U.S. military action against
Libya?

Approve     71%
Disapprove  20%
Not sure     9%

In the long run, will the Libyan bombing help stop terrorist
attacks on Americans?

Agree      56%
Disagree   33%
Not sure   11%

Source: Yankelovich/Clancy, Shulman.

BRITAIN

Do you think Reagan was right or wrong in ordering the bombing
of Libya?

Wrong      66%
Right      29%
No opinion  5%

Do you think the bombing will increase or decrease the
likelihood of terrorist attacks on Britain?

Increase       84%
Decrease        4%
No difference  12%

Source: Market & Opinion Research International.