Beirut, 1983

[bitterlyclingin]

(If America could have foresseen what the contents of the tea leaves were telling them when the Japanese attacked the US gunboat Panay in Chinese waters during the 30's. Pearl Harbor wouldn't have come as such a big surprise. The same with Beirut.
Then Navy Secretary John Lehmann said his first inclination, upon learning of who was behind the carnage in Beirut was to send a cruise missile through the front window of the Iranian Ambassador's home in Damascus.)


"Beirut 1983

Posted by William A. Jacobson Friday, October 28, 2011 at 10:30am

This week in 1983 Iranian backed Shiites bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 299 Marines and French soldiers.

The Marines had been sent as part of an international peacekeeping force in the wake of the Lebanese civil war. Iranian-backed Shiites who later formed Hezbollah carried out the attack:


Although no group has ever made a serious claim of responsibility for the attack, perpetrators were later fingered. The actors that carried out the deadly bombings were elements that two years later would be central and founding members of Hezbollah, a group well-known to be funded, armed and trained by Iran.

One of the central actors in the bombing, Imad Mughniyeh, was secretly indicted several years later in the United States for his role. Mughniyeh, who would later become known as an arch-terrorist of sorts, has been tied to and indicted in relation to some of the largest terror attacks on Jews and Americans carried out prior to September 11, 2001."

» Beirut 1983 - Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

 

[Baruch Menachem]

A retaliatory strike against Iran might have been in order. And since we were supporting Hussein in his war with Iran at the time, maybe that was felt to be a sensible proxy way of dealing with the issue.

 

[bitterlyclingin]

Shhhh!! Reagan felt he had bigger fish to fry than to get involved in a hot Middle Eastern War so he declined to pursue retaliation. Cowboy boots were a very loose fit for Ronnie at a time when he thought all he had to do to solve a problem was to go in and show the American Flag, Hollywood's John Wayne dogma . Nobody in the WhiteHouse had a clue before then there were some really bad guys out there willing to do anything to kill a few hundred infidels.
Couple that with Jimmy Carter's ineptness during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Carter's ineptness dealing with the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the American Surrender in Vietnam, Bill Clinton's Hell for Leather withdrawal from Somalia after "Blackhawk Down", his failure to respond to the American Embassy Bombings, Clinton's lack of response to the attack on the USS Cole and you can see why bin Laden came to the conclusion that America was a "Weak Horse" and all that you needed to take it down was to crash four planes into significant American buildings. Bin Laden was almost right, but it took eight years for America to collapse and elect Barack Hussein Obama in search of a "Benevolent master" and surrender.