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N0KFQ > TODAY 23.10.14 15:07l 69 Lines 3425 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 38595_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Oct 23
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<IR1UAW<IQ5KG<I0OJJ<VE3UIL<N0KFQ
Sent: 141023/1359Z 38595@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.60
Oct 23, 1983:
U.S. Embassy in Beirut hit by massive car bomb
On this day, a suicide bomber drives a truck filled with 2,000
pounds of explosives into a U.S. Marine Corps barracks at the
Beirut International Airport. The explosion killed 220 Marines,
18 sailors and three soldiers. A few minutes after that bomb went
off, a second bomber drove into the basement of the nearby French
paratroopers' barracks, killing 58 more people. Four months after
the bombing, American forces left Lebanon without retaliating.
The Marines in Beirut were part of a multinational peacekeeping
force that was trying to broker a truce between warring Christian
and Muslim Lebanese factions. In 1981, American troops had
supervised the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) from Beirut and then had withdrawn themselves.
They returned the next year, after Israel's Lebanese allies
slaughtered nearly 1,000 unarmed Palestinian civilian refugees.
Eighteen hundred Marine peacekeepers moved into an old Israeli
Army barracks near the airport_a fortress with two-foot-thick
walls that could, it seemed, withstand anything. Even after a van
bomb killed 46 people at the U.S. Embassy in April, the American
troops maintained their non-martial stance: their perimeter fence
remained relatively unfortified, for instance and their sentries'
weapons were unloaded.
At about 6:20 in the morning on October 23, 1983, a yellow
Mercedes truck charged through the barbed-wire fence around the
American compound and plowed past two guard stations. It drove
straight into the barracks and exploded. Eyewitnesses said that
the force of the blast caused the entire building to float up
above the ground for a moment before it pancaked down in a cloud
of pulverized concrete and human remains. FBI investigators said
that it was the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II
and certainly the most powerful car bomb ever detonated.
After the bombing, President Ronald Reagan expressed outrage at
the "despicable act" and vowed that American forces would stay in
Beirut until they could forge a lasting peace. In the meantime,
he devised a plan to bomb the Hezbollah training camp in Baalbek,
Lebanon, where intelligence agents thought the attack had been
planned. However, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the
mission, reportedly because he did not want to strain relations
with oil-producing Arab nations. The next February, American
troops withdrew from Lebanon altogether.
The first real car bomb_or, in this case, horse-drawn-wagon
bomb_exploded on September 16, 1920 outside the J.P. Morgan
Company's offices in New York City's financial district. Italian
anarchist Mario Buda had planted it there, hoping to kill Morgan
himself; as it happened, the robber baron was out of town, but 40
other people died (and about 200 were wounded) in the blast.
There were occasional car-bomb attacks after that_most notably in
Saigon in 1952, Algiers in 1962, and Palermo in 1963_but vehicle
weapons remained relatively uncommon until the 1970s and 80s,
when they became the terrifying trademark of groups like the
Irish Republican Army and Hezbollah. In 1995, right-wing
terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols used a bomb hidden
in a Ryder truck to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
in Oklahoma City.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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