Monday, October 28, 2013

30 Years Ago

It doesn't seem that long ago when the US Marines suffered their worst since Iwo Jima. 

On October 23, 1983, 241 service men (240 Marines) were killed while they slept in Beirut. 

This picture from Imgur reminded us of the Beirut attack.


Karl was finishing high school at the time, and not paying too close attention to world events.  In addition to the bombing, our other memory is of the 16-inch guns on our battleship there that sent message after message from President Reagan.  We lost a lot of good men there, and have since lost those battleships.  In fact, looking at the photo above tells us we've lost far more since then.

The truck-bomb attack, with an estimated 21,000lbs equivilent of TNT, was long ago tied to Iran.  Iran was sued in civil court.  Of course they didn't show, and they lost in default.  Iran owes the survivors and victim families over $813 million.

Wikipedia

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