WASHINGTON, June 17 (UPI) -- In 1986, President Ronald Reagan authorized a campaign of disinformation and destabilization to unseat Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, which included CIA operations to aid and abet Libyan dissidents and exiles while U.S. military forces drew up secret or perhaps not-so-secret plans to attack Libya.
Sound familiar?
Meanwhile, the Reagan administration artfully leaked stories about Gadhafi asserting that he was impotent, insane and a cross-dresser. Military option plans were also mysteriously leaked out. Publicly the administration, supported by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, filled the airways with increasingly bellicose rhetoric.
Sound familiar yet?
What the public didn't immediately know was that the Reagan administration was conducting private polls to see at what point the American people would support military action against Libya in retribution for Libya's alleged role as a training ground for terrorists.
When Gadhafi drew a line across the Bay of Sidra claiming the area as Libyan waters, a U.S. task force of 45 ships and 200 aircraft crossed the line. The Libyan's fired two missiles at the force and missed, but later U.S. forces retaliated by attacking Libyan vessels and killing 56 Libyans.
Gadhafi then "declared war on the United States" and less than a week later, 21-year-old Army Sgt. Kenneth Ford of Detroit died when a bomb blew up a popular nightclub in Berlin frequented by American GIs.
The National Security Agency connected the bombing to Libyan intelligence services, and Reagan ordered a bombing of Tripoli on April 14, 1986. The bombers were clearly targeting Gadhafi, but missed him. The bombs did kill his adopted daughter, Hana, and two American airman were lost in the raid.
In the past 60 days, a remarkably similar campaign against Saddam Hussein appears to be under way. U.S. news media quoting unnamed sources have reported that the military is forming a detailed attack plan involving some quarter of a million American troops. Bob Woodward, of The Washington Post, has reported that President George W. Bush has authorized the CIA to unseat Saddam Hussein. Eli J. Lake, State Department correspondent of United Press International, has reported that the United States is forming a virtual government that would take over when Saddam is gone. Richard Sale, UPI terrorism correspondent, has had surprisingly detailed briefings about future military action against Iraq.
What's going on? Aren't future military and CIA operations top secret?
The administration is a little transparent about these leaks. It has never complained about these stories, whereas the Bush White House has been one of the most tender about leaks they don't like.
Like the Reagan administration, Bush has kept up anti-Saddam rhetoric. The president almost never fails to remind an audience that Saddam Hussein used gas on his own people and is known to have weapons of mass destruction including biological, chemical and perhaps even nuclear weapons. The administration has never been able to establish a connection between Hussein and al Qaida, but he has labeled Iraq as a supporter of terrorists. Secretary of State Colin Powell has openly suggested Washington would like a regime other than Saddam's.
There is a pattern to all this. Every time the news media reports some new wrinkle about going after Saddam Hussein, Bush notes that "he has no war plans on his desk," which, of course, created the joke in the pressroom at the White House that it must be on the vice president's desk.
There are two constructions to this in Washington. One is that the most recent spate of Iraq war plan leaks is an effort by the more bellicose in the administration to get their plan back on track. The president first opened the door to an attack on Iraq in his State of the Union address in January. In the first months of the year, if you followed the media, you'd have thought that the troopships were heading out.
But two things got in the way: One was the violence in the Middle East, which has sidetracked the president and the key national security team. Second, and perhaps as important, was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff quietly disabused the administration of the idea that an Iraq campaign could be done on the cheap like Afghanistan. According to many military experts, even though Saddam Hussein's army and equipment is degraded since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, he still has weapons of mass destruction that could be used in a final attack to save his regime. Though there are all sorts of military plans being talked about in Washington, the coalition that attacked Saddam Hussein in 1991 was 500,000 persons strong.
"There may be a sense by the conservatives who are pushing this," asserts Joseph Cirincione, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation, "that they have to regain the initiative within the government."
The other belief is that open warfare is not the end game in this struggle, but the destabilization of Saddam and his ruling party. Though Gadhafi was not removed by Reagan's campaign, after the bombing that nearly hit his headquarters in 1986 he has been more amenable over the years. Libyan intelligence officers were tied to the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1989, but in recent years Gadhafi has been less of a danger.
Many Iraq experts don't see Saddam in the same light as Gadhafi. They point to his tough secret police and strong controls of his people and believe that he is immune to destabilization.
Cirincione doesn't believe military action will be easy or even useful, but he suggests that the constant sense of "impending doom" could drive Saddam to allow the arms inspection teams back into to preserve his regime.
