A war on Libya has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 20 years. Using nukes against Libya was first envisaged in 1997.  

On April 14th 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered a series of bombings directed against Libya under "Operation El Dorado Canyon", in reprisal for an alleged Libya sponsored terrorist bombing of a Berlin discotheque. The pretext was fabricated. During these air raids, which were condemned by both France and Italy, Qadhafi's residence was bombed killing his younger daughter.

Barely acknowledged by the Western media, a planned attack on Libya using nuclear weapons, had been contemplated by the Clinton Administration in 1997, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. 

The Department of Defense had developed a new generation of bunker buster tactical nuclear weapons for use in the Middle East and Central Asia: 

"Military officials and leaders of America's nuclear weapon laboratories [had] urged the US to develop a new generation of precision low-yield nuclear weapons... which could be used in conventional conflicts with third-world nations." (Federation of American Scientists, 2001, emphasis added)

The B61-11 earth-penetrating weapon with a nuclear warhead had not been tested. It was part of the B61 series, coupled with a so-called "low yield" nuclear warhead. According to US military sources: "If used in North Korea, the radioactive fallout [of the B61-11] could drift over nearby countries such as Japan." (B61-11 Earth-Penetrating Weapon, Globalsecurity.org). The B61-11 earth-penetrating version of the B61 was configured initially to have a "low" 10 kiloton yield, 66.6 percent of a Hiroshima bomb, for post-Cold War battlefield operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. 

The Pentagon's Plan to Nuke Libya

The B61-11 tactical nuclear weapon was slated by the Pentagon to be used in 1997 against the "Qadhafi regime":

"Senior Pentagon officials ignited controversy last April [1997] by suggesting that the earth-penetrating [nuclear] weapon would soon be available for possible use against a suspected underground chemical factory being built by Libya at Tarhunah. This thinly-veiled threat came just eleven days after the United States signed the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, designed to prohibit signatories from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against any other signatory, including Libya." (David Muller, Penetrator N-Bombs, International Action Center, 1997)

Tarbunah has a population of more than 200,000 people, men, women and children. It is about 60 km East of Tripoli. Had this "humanitarian bomb" (with a "yield" or explosive capacity of two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb) been launched on this "suspected" WMD facility, it would have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, not to mention the nuclear fallout...

The man behind this diabolical project to nuke Libya was Assistant Secretary of Defense Harold Palmer Smith Junior. "Even before the B61 came on line, Libya was identified as a potential target". (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - September/ October 1997, p. 27, emphasis added)

Harold Palmer Smith had been appointed by President Bill Clinton to oversee nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs with a focus on "the reduction and maintenance of the US arsenal of nuclear weapons". From the outset, his actual mandate, was not "reduce" but to "increase" the nuclear arsenal by promoting the development of a new generation of "harmless" mini-nukes for use in the Middle East war theater.

Read more here:   http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24049