Posted on 10/23/2023 1:19:01 PM PDT by DFG
A suicide bomber drives a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, 58 French soldiers were killed in their barracks two miles away in a separate suicide terrorist attack. The U.S. Marines were part of a multinational force sent to Lebanon in August 1982 to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. From its inception, the mission was plagued with problems–and a mounting body count.
In 1975, a bloody civil war erupted in Lebanon, with Palestinian and leftist Muslim guerrillas battling militias of the Christian Phalange Party, the Maronite Christian community, and other groups. During the next few years, Syrian, Israeli, and United Nations interventions failed to resolve the factional fighting, and on August 20, 1982, a multinational force including 800 U.S. Marines was ordered to Beirut to help coordinate the Palestinian withdrawal.
The Marines left Lebanese territory on September 10 but returned in strengthened numbers on September 29, following the massacre of Palestinian refugees by a Christian militia. The next day, the first U.S. Marine to die during the mission was killed while defusing a bomb. Other Marines fell prey to snipers. On April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber driving a van devastated the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. Then, on October 23, a Lebanese terrorist plowed his bomb-laden truck through three guard posts, a barbed-wire fence, and into the lobby of the Marines Corps headquarters in Beirut, where he detonated a massive bomb, killing 241 marine, navy, and army personnel. The bomb, which was made of a sophisticated explosive enhanced by gas, had an explosive power equivalent to 18,000 pounds of dynamite. The identities of the embassy and barracks bombers were not determined, but they were suspected to be Shiite terrorists associated with Iran.
After the barracks bombing, many questioned whether President Ronald Reagan had a solid policy aim in Lebanon. Serious questions also arose over the quality of security in the American sector of war-torn Beirut. The U.S. peacekeeping force occupied an exposed area near the airport, but for political reasons the marine commander had not been allowed to maintain a completely secure perimeter before the attack. In a national address on October 23, President Reagan vowed to keep the marines in Lebanon, but just four months later he announced the end of the American role in the peacekeeping force. On February 26, 1984, the main force of marines left Lebanon, leaving just a small contingent to guard the U.S. embassy in Beirut.
The Middle East is still a mess.
Something that people don’t know is that when the bomb went off, the invasion of Grenada had already started, within 47 hours of the barracks blast our Rangers were fighting on the ground.
I lost a lot of Marine friends and classmates from USNA Class of ‘77.
Cnn breaking
Video Jim Clancy Reports from Beirut on the breaking news.
October 23, 1983, two truck bombs struck buildings in Beirut, Lebanon,
https://rumble.com/viywon-cnn-1983-beirut-barracks-bombing-coverage.html
Richard: “Would you like me to lock the car?”
Hyacinth: “I think so, don’t you? We’re practically in Beirut.”
There was a published book “Confessions of an Anti-Terrorist” who led the team Reagan authorized to wipe out the barracks attackers- the leaders and all of their “crew”. These were mercs— top flight ex SAS and US SEALS (all spoke arabic/farsi). They inserted HILO from 35Kft, into Beirut area, walked into the command compound and wiped them out, and silent exfiltration. As described in the book- which have not been able to locate a hard copy- and nothing on the net.
Reagan got the job done- and we wiped them out, and they were completely surprised and suppressed forever- till the next generation.
I was in Beirut in 1968. It was a beautiful modern city equal to any clean well policed city in the US. I was in a very nice hotel room watching I “Dream Of Jeannie” with English subtitles. The food was good. I was very impressed.
Move in the Islamic extremists, and you now have what looks like a bombed out German city after WWII.
1950: Beirut is the Paris of The Middle East
2023: Paris is the Beirut of Europe
bttt
"The series explores the real-life manhunt for Imad Mughniyeh. Mughniyeh was implicated in Hezbollah attacks during the 1980s and 1990s until he died in a bomb blast in Damascus on February 12, 2008."
He was specifically accused of being the planner of the bombing of the U.S. Embassy, and Marine Barracks in Lebanon. He was linked to the PLO and other terrorist groups. He was highly praised by Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, who Trump gave the nod to eliminate in 2020. It took the CIA and Mossad 20 years to track him down so they could blow him to bits. A previous plan to capture him in France in 1986 was thwarted when French authorities refused to cooperate, despite Mughniyeh being accused of bombing French Paratroopers in the same action against the U.S. Embassy and Marine Barracks. François Mitterrand was President of France at the time.
Even Reagan was a criminally negligent dope when it came to this sort of thing.
The ranking enlisted man killed in Beirut was SGTMAJ Frederick Douglass. He was the ranking Marine for the detachment assigned to the USS JFK when I was on it back in the mid-late Seventies.
He was a big, physically imposing man. I got a faceful of him one night when we were invited to the USMC Compound in Alexandria, Egypt (on a port call) and I stuck my face where it shouldn’t have been. (He was chewing someone out just outside the head I was occupying, and in my sleepy, semi-intoxicated state, I opened the window (a little shuttered, open air window) to look. I saw that imposing face (and that of a young Marine being vigorously chewed out) turn to me and he said something like “If you don’t shut that window and mind your own business, I am going to come in there and create you a new a**hole.” Without comment, I closed the window.
Another time I saw him completely defuse a near riot (perhaps a real riot) by what seemed like a hundred men in the early morning at the Naples Fleet Landing. We had been out there standing in the pouring rain, everyone was intoxicated (it seemed) and they couldn’t run the boats because it was too rough. Things got out of hand, it was chaos, and with a single action, he shut the entire place down and restored order. (In my memory, there was a drunk sailor swinging one of those metal stanchions with ropes to guide men standing in line, and was holding off a bunch of Shore Patrol guys, swinging it wildly at them. There were individual fights breaking out, people were yelling at the guy with the stanchion to hit the Shore Patrol guys with it, and it was a wild scene. SGTMAJ Douglass in his civvies waded right in, clocked the guy with the stanchion and he went down like a sack of potatoes, and the SGTMAJ turned to the unruly crowd and bellowed “YOU MEN SHUT UP!” Could have heard a pin drop. He was quite imposing. I cannot fully remember, it has been 45 years or so, but I do think he smashed that guy in the face, didn’t just shove him to the ground.
We used to see SGTMAJ Dougalass engaging in martial arts sparring in the hangar deck with a guy in our squadron who was supposed to be quite advanced in Tai Kwan Do. He was of Korean extraction, all of about 5’3”, and his reputation had preceded him before he came to our squadron. Nobody messed with him, and seeing him spar with SGTMAJ Douglass who probably had 100 lbs and a full foot of height on him was impressive to see.
He died that day, October 23, 1983. When I read the Boston Globe article about it, they had a picture of SGTMAJ Douglass (I believe he was from the South Shore of Massachusetts) and when I saw that picture, I knew instantly who it was. I had been out of the Navy for about four years, and it had been nearly six years since I saw him, but it was hard to forget that face of his.
America’s Best. May he RIP.
Lt. Bill Summerhof, was in my TBS class, a good man. We must not forget those that died in service to our country. Pray for their souls.
Yup.
That was a sad Sunday morning if I recall
Would the president even know such a detail?
Thank you for the eulogy.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
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