The mention of Libya is funny, because I recall that Libya- a massive supporter of terrorists- backed down from diplomatic pressure and business/trade sanctions.

"diplomatic pressure" in the form of F-111 fighter bombers in Operation El Dorado Canyon, did have the efect of removing Libya from entertaining and supporting terrorism,in 1986.

To boot, Gaddafi lost a close relative I believe, his stepdaughter and lost his appetite for funding random acts of violence on the west.

Funny about that isn't it, and kh of course is still having selective memories about it .. so sad.

So as I said, people in the middle east only understand extreme violence, it's the way they live and enact "peace" on each other .. but please, do continue to blither about talking and negotiating with them, it's amusing.

Oh well doe RPG- your research skills are amazing.
It's just too bad that your chronology leaves much to be desired- because if you would look more carefully you might have noticed that the Lockerby Bombing occured AFTER that military incident you described- but it was only after the sanctions and diplomatic pressure did Qaddafi change policies, renounce terrorism and relinquish his WMDs.
(this info is coming from the CIA website).

Thus, your theory may be a little hard to prove that it was a military campaign that caused a change in policy for Libya.

kh you're right, the bombing run was a reaction to the Berlin disco bombing .. Libya was hurt by the sanctions, but maintains they had nothing to do with Lockerbie .. have they admitted it?

Let's see how sanctions do against Iran.

I suspect it will get to the stage there of someone getting worried enough to do another "run", heaven help us if they do. If I lived in Israel and had daily threats against me, maybe I'd have a different attitude.

Sanctions against the Taliban, would not work, did not work, they are a primitive society, who respond to hard men, hence all the warlords.

"Let's see how sanctions do against Iran."
For doing what though? They have not attacked anyone, their only crimes are attempting to gain access to nuclear technology, and giving weapons to their ally Syria who, in turn, themselves secretly hand them to the terrorist group Hezbolah.
They try to talk tough about Israel to gain popularity, but they aren't doing much about it.

And if memory serves me correctly, they began taking a more hardline stance ever since they were added on the "Axis of Evil"- just as North Korea resumed its nuclear aggression.
Since, we have been making every attempt to put this nation into a hostile stance.

As for the Taliban- the fact that they ARE primitives is why we are wasting our time there- they will never change, never reform, and they are NOT even needed for other terrorists to launch attacks (and I point out again that terrorists visit numerous other countries anyway- and to attack these countries will only motivate more people to become terrorists as we are presenting ourselves as an unstable aggressive force that they would be very motivated to stop.

And this reflects back on most of the terrorist attacks we have recieved so far- always against a country with a middle east presence, specifically stating a demand for withdrawal.

Staying in Afghanistan only exasperates the problem, and achieves no positives at all

Iran? Well since we find the precautionary principle just dandy for AGW, why aren't we using it here .. they might attack the west, so nuke em now, they might not, so if we nuke em now, no big loss. At the most we take out a few million Iranians, at worst if they attack the west, it could be billions. At least in Iran there are clear infrastructure targets.