Beirut, Lebanon on April 18,1983, killed 60 people, embassy staff members and United States Up to that time it was the Worse Attack against the United States but it was just the beginning- of course there was Benghazi where 3 CIA operatives and the Ambassador died. To some that is the worst attack- Of course Reagan could have sent 130,000 US troops to invade Lebanon. But he didn’t. Instead, he did something completely different: two days after the Beirut barracks bombing, Reagan sent 7,000 troops to invade Grenada, the smallest independent country in the Western Hemisphere. He claimed to be fighting communism there, and to be “rescuing” 800 American medical students studying there (because they couldn’t get into American medical schools). The Americans killed fifty-nine Cubans and forty-five Grenadans, suffered nineteen casualties and declared victory after two days. The UN voted 122-9 that the US invasion was a “flagrant violation of international law,” but it was a big hit with the American public, except for those of us on the left. But back to Lebanon-- Following the attack, the embassy was moved to a supposedly more secure location in East Beirut. However, on September 20, 1984, another car bomb exploded at this embassy annex, killing twenty Lebanese and two American soldiers. The use of suicide bombing increased following the incident. Car bombings through the rest of 1983 included attacks against the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait, the Israeli Armys headquarters in Tyre, and the extremely destructive attacks on the U.S. Marine and French Paratrooper barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983. the death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers, making this incident the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since World War IIs Battle of Iwo Jima, the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the first day of the Vietnam Wars Tet Offensive, and the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since World War IIAnother 128 Americans were wounded in the blast. Thirteen later died of their injuries, and they are numbered among the total number who died.[ Along with the Marine Barracks bombing, the 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing prompted the Inman Report, a review of overseas security for the U.S. Department of State. This in turn prompted the creation of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Diplomatic Security Service within the U.S. State Department. https://youtube/watch?v=9OtylkmiTX0
Posted on: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 11:47:25 +0000
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