Word: fleetingly
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...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...
...attack was to occur that night. Since the Post's editors did not know exactly when or where it would happen, they decided not to keep a telephone line open. Earlier that day, NBC had sent Producer Mike Silver up in a chartered plane to observe the Sixth Fleet. NBC decided that an attack was imminent and kept a phone line open beginning at 1 p.m. CBS and ABC did likewise...
Though Reagan did not order up an air strike then and there, it was clear to military planners that such an action was inevitable. The Pentagon brass was concerned, however, that it lacked the firepower to hit Gaddafi with sufficient force. Since the Sixth Fleet's skirmish only three weeks earlier with Libyan forces in the Gulf of Sidra, the fleet's strength had considerably diminished with the departure of the aircraft carrier Saratoga for its home base in Mayport, Fla. There was not sufficient time to order the flattop back to the central Mediterranean to join the carriers Coral...
Next on the hit list was the military section of the Tripoli International Airport, base of Libya's fleet of nine Il-76s, which have been used in terrorist operations for supply and transport. A third target was the Benghazi army barracks, which Gaddafi uses as an alternative command post. Then came barracks at the naval port of Sidi Bilal, near Tripoli, a commando training facility. Finally, security officials recommended a strike at the Benina airfield, where Libya's MiG-23 interceptors are based, as a precaution against counterattack...
...able to achieve total surprise in part by giving the Soviets the slip. The carrier task force managed to lose the Soviet warships that usually shadow the fleet. If the Soviets did spot the planes, at any rate, they evidently did not tip off their friends in Libya...