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WASHINGTON, April 18, 2008 – Twenty-five years after terrorists detonated a massive car bomb, killing 52 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, President Bush urged unity in condemning terrorism he said continues to threaten the United States. President and Nancy Reagan file by the flag-draped caskets of victims of the April 18, 1983, bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon in an April 23, 1983 file photo. Photo courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Library   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The Islamic Jihad Organization, today known as the terrorist group Hizballah, launched the April 18, 1983, attack...

Facts: Occurred at about 1300 (1:00 pm Lebanon Time) on April 18th, 1983 Carried out by a terrorist driving a van, reportedly stolen from the Embassy in June 1982. The van carried a 2,000-pound load of explosives, tearing through the front portion of the seven (7) story building. Most of the victims were at lunch and were killed by the collapsing building. Killed 63 occupants of the building, 17 of whom were Americans. One Marine was killed - Corporal Robert V. McMaugh, an embassy guard.

(KUNA) -- Ambassador Robert Dillon, who served during the explosion of the US embassy in Beirut in 1983, recalled on Friday how this incident shaped US foreign policy in this embattled country 25 years ago, and indicated that Washington possessed information about the culprits. In an interview with Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), Dillon said the misinterpretation of US foreign policy towards the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982 and the "Iranian grievances" against the United States are the two main motivations behind this attack. [SNIP] He said that investigations revealed that a Shiite family and an emerging radical group from...

Orlando, Florida March 8, 1983 This is the "evil empire" speech that was so often quoted as defining my attitude toward the Soviets. At the time it was portrayed as some kind of know-nothing, archconservative statement that could only drive the Soviets to further heights of paranoia and insecurity. For too long our leaders were unable to describe the Soviet Union as it actually was. The keepers of our foreign-policy knowledge - in other words, most liberal foreign-affairs scholars, the State Department, and various columnists - found it illiberal and provocative to be so honest. I've always believed, however, that...

Although the White House is poised to back away from misguided attempts to "engage" the Iranian mullahs, don't expect the State Department to play along. Just as State has undermined the president multiple times already on matters relating to every spoke of the "axis of evil," State most likely will continue talking to the mullahs. A recent Washington Post article gave an indication that Foggy Bottom officials may grudgingly embrace a new tough-on-Iran policy—if officially handed down by the White House—noting that State "appears inclined to accept such a policy." But history suggests otherwise. The State Department's top policy official,...

Remembering the first attack on US Forces by Islamic Fascism Jennifer at Now for Something Different recalls the 1983 attack on the US Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon, which stands today as the deadliest post-WWII attack on Americans overseas, and marks perhaps the first strike in the Global War on Terror.Readers know I have much profound and deep respect for President Ronald Reagan, but as a human he was certainly not above making mistakes. That he ordered our forces withdrawn instead of counter-attacking is perhaps the single, biggest mistake of his presidency. But for then Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger setting...

HISTORY - Time line [some] Important dates in radical ISLAM VS WORLD 1263 - 1328 The 'Godfather of Islamic Fundamentalism' Who is the True Godfather of Islamic Fundamentalism? His name is Ibn Taymiyyah, or Taq ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah, and he lived from 1263 to 1328. His name by birth was Ahmad ibn Abdul-Halim ibn Abdas-Salaam. This individual could be considered as the real godfather of fundamentalism. Maududi borrowed extensively from Taymiyyah's writings. http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/index.php? id=1194248__________________1347 [The Bahmani sultans & genocide on Indians]The Muslim conquests, down to the 16th century, were for the Hindus a pure struggle of life and death....

Hopefully, I can finish writing this column today before it is OTBE. That's slang for the phrase "Over Taken By Events" On Wednesday, I had cranked out a piece for Sunday on two topics: Reaction to the Amish school murders and the nasty Mark Foley flap that has gripped the halls of power. The first part expressed outrage because members of the Westboro Baptist Church had announced they planned to protest at the funerals of the Amish girls killed Monday in Lancaster County, PA. In case you don't remember them, they're the bunch out of Kansas that pickets the funerals...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Puerto Rican police tightened security at federal buildings and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton canceled a visit to the island amid fears the killing of a Puerto Rican nationalist in an FBI shootout could lead to a resurgence of pro-independence violence. Police chief Pedro Toledo acknowledged the potential for unrest, saying the death of Filiberto Ojeda Rios had generated "rancor and rage." Ojeda Rios, 72, was shot to death Friday by FBI agents who came to arrest him at his farmhouse in southwestern Puerto Rico for the 1983 armed robbery of a Wells Fargo depot in...

MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) --The fugitive founder of a violent Puerto Rican independence group was killed in a gunfight with federal agents at a mountain farmhouse in western Puerto Rico, the FBI said Sunday. Filiberto Ojeda Rios, 72, opened fire on agents who were trying to arrest him at a house in the Hormigueros area of Puerto Rico on Friday, the FBI said. Ojeda Rios was killed, and an FBI agent was shot in the stomach and severely wounded, the agency said. Ojeda Rios was the founder and leader of Puerto Rico's radical Boricua Popular Army, which sought independence for the...

WASHINGTON - A former defense secretary for Ronald Reagan says he implored the president to put Marines serving in Beirut in a safer position before terrorists attacked them in 1983, killing 241 servicemen. "I was not persuasive enough to persuade the president that the Marines were there on an impossible mission," Caspar Weinberger says in an oral history project capturing the views of former Reagan administration officials. He said one of his greatest regrets was in failing to overcome the arguments that "'Marines don't cut and run,' and 'We can't leave because we're there'" before the devastating suicide attack on...

<p>BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed ``Chemical Ali'' by opponents of the Iraqi regime for ordering a poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, has been found dead, a British officer said Monday.</p> <p>Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had confirmed the death of the man who is also President Saddam Hussein's first cousin.</p> <p>Jackson said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra.</p>

Learn the lesson of Beirut!© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Suffering from a 101-degree fever, I was too sick and too tired to notice that as our plane entered Beirut airspace we had come under small-weapons fire from the ground. I was a young reporter sent by ABC's San Francisco news radio station to cover the horrific bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks by Islamic terrorists – 241 U.S. Service members, most of them Marines, had fallen victim to the hardened disciples of the so-called "Religion of Peace." On Oct. 23, 1983, a delivery truck had driven through the barricades surrounding the Marine...

The nomination of a veteran commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as the new defence minister has been greeted with calls for an investigation into his possible ties to the suicide bombing of the U.S. Marines compound in Beirut airport in October 1983, which killed 241 Americans. Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guards, was in command of the IRGC expeditionary force in Lebanon when on October 23, 1983, at 6:22 a.m., a suicide bomber drove a large water delivery truck to the Beirut International Airport where the Marine Barracks was located. The bomber and his accomplices...

The US Embassy paused Thursday to commemorate the death of 51 Americans and Lebanese during suicide bomb attacks against the diplomatic mission in 1983 and 1984. “Today we come to pay our respects to the American and Lebanese employees of the Beirut Embassy who died in the bombings of 1983 and 1984,” said US Ambassador Vincent Battle during a brief ceremony at the embassy in Awkar. “We come to say thank you for the tremendous sacrifice they paid for serving the US Embassy.”

His Revolutionary Guards provided TNT for suicide action killing 241 Americans The new minister of defense of Iran has direct ties to the suicide bombing in Beirut that killed 241 Marines in 1983. Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, a veteran commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was named today to the top military post by the new government. On Oct. 23, 1983, he was a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guards in charge of the expeditionary force in Lebanon. At 6:22 a.m. that morning, a suicide bomber drove a large water delivery truck to the Beirut International Airport where the U.S. Marine...

London, Aug. 14 - The nomination of a veteran commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as the new defence minister has been greeted with calls for an investigation into his possible ties to the suicide bombing of the U.S. Marines compound in Beirut airport in October 1983, which killed 241 Americans.

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

President Reagan's Speech before the National Association of Evangelicals -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- President Reagan addressed the annual convention in Orlando, Florida on March 8, 1983. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reverend Clergy all, Senator Hawkins, distinguished members of the Florida congressional delegation, and all of you: I can't tell you how you have warmed my heart with your welcome. I'm delighted to be here today. Those of you in the National Association of Evangelicals are known for you spiritual and humanitarian work. And I would be especially remiss if I didn't discharge right now one personal debt of gratitude. Thank you for your prayers. Nancy and...

BEIRUT, March 5th (Reuters) - Syria has been under intense pressure to relinquish its political and military grip on Lebanon and on President Bashar al-Assad announced a gradual Syrian troop pull back from Lebanon. Here is a factbox on Lebanese-Syrian relations. DRAWING BORDERS Britain and France carved out modern-day Syria and Lebanon from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War One, in a division never fully recognised by some Arab nationalists in both countries. The French aimed to create a state led by Christians previously under Muslim rule but expanded its borders in 1920 to include many...

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...

Beirut, BaghdadBy Fouad AjamiWall Street Journal | August 25, 2003 If the past is any guide, we may never know the name of the suicide bomber who drove the flatbed truck into the U.N. compound in Baghdad last week, for we still don't know the name of the boy who drove the Mercedes truck loaded with TNT into the Marine barracks in Beirut on the morning of Oct. 23, 1983. What we know of that seminal event two decades ago is the aftermath: the death of 241 U.S. servicemen, the proud initial assertion that Lebanon would not be left to...

Remembering Joe: 'I think about him every day, and how life would be if he were still around' Former football great a hero to many Brian Vernellis / The Times Posted on July 4, 2003 HAUGHTON, LA - Tall weeds obscure the dirt road that juts from Louisiana Highway 157. Only a silver sign indicates what lies at the end of the path. The lettering on one side is faint from years of sun and rain; the other side reads, "Hawkins Memorial Cemetery." A horseshoe of tall firs and elms protect the cemetery from the roar of semi-trucks bustling up...

SPRINGFIELD REPORT: 14th time's the charm -- ERA passes Illinois House Wednesday, May 21, 2003 By The Leader-Springfield Bureau State Rep. Lou Lang successfully passed the ERA in the Illinois House -- but no one really knows what that will mean for women's rights, if anything. SPRINGFIELD -- In a strategic move made leaving the opponents' guard down, State Representative Lou Lang (D-Skokie) called the Equal Rights Amendment for a vote today in the Illinois House and for the first time since 1982, one of Illinois' chambers passed the constitutional amendment halfway to ratification. Vote is available on line "HRJCA...

FEDS TAKE PROPERTY FOR A TRAIL; TAKE TAXPAYERS FOR A RIDE William Perry Pendley President and Chief Legal Officer   On May 22, 2002, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ordered the United States to pay J. Paul and Patricia Preseault of Burlington, Vermont, for the unconstitutional taking of their property, that is, without paying for it. The United States was ordered to pay: $234,000, plus interest from the February 5, 1986, date of the taking, for a total of $551,931.30; and $894,855.60 in attorneys' fees. The United States will be writing a check for $1,446,786.90! The United States...