“The Bush administration cited Gaddafi’s shrewd decision to dismantle a crude nuclear weapons program and its payment of reparations to the families of the victims of Pan Am 103 to justify the opening of an American embassy in Tripoli. Neither of these empty gestures translated into a fundamental change in the nature of the Gaddafi tyranny. Gaddafi cunningly suspended the foreign terror operations but continued to terrorize the Libyan people with the confidence of a tyrant with a new lease on life. President Bush never openly condemned the repression in Libya, despite his lofty rhetoric about America’s commitment to democracy in the Middle East at the onset of the war in Iraq. The appeasement with Libya was always about petroleum, never about principle.
September 11 deepened the Bush administration’s disturbing relationship with Gaddafi. The administration secretly reached out to Libyan intelligence to cooperate in the global war on terrorism. In their memoirs, former CIA officials describe surreal meetings with Libyan intelligence chieftains whom they suspected of involvement in the destruction of Pan Am 103.
Libyan officials were only too pleased to identify, detain and torture Libyans who gravitated to Al Qaeda at the behest of the CIA. Perhaps the collaboration with Libyan intelligence seemed like a morally acceptable compromise after the slaughter of Americans on 9/11, but the secret partnership with Gaddafi served emboldened him in his secret campaign to ratchet up the repression in Libya.” —Our disturbing relationship with Gaddafi | The Great Debate
September 11 deepened the Bush administration’s disturbing relationship with Gaddafi. The administration secretly reached out to Libyan intelligence to cooperate in the global war on terrorism. In their memoirs, former CIA officials describe surreal meetings with Libyan intelligence chieftains whom they suspected of involvement in the destruction of Pan Am 103.
Libyan officials were only too pleased to identify, detain and torture Libyans who gravitated to Al Qaeda at the behest of the CIA. Perhaps the collaboration with Libyan intelligence seemed like a morally acceptable compromise after the slaughter of Americans on 9/11, but the secret partnership with Gaddafi served emboldened him in his secret campaign to ratchet up the repression in Libya.” —Our disturbing relationship with Gaddafi | The Great Debate
