Bin Ladin: We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier. He is ready to wage cold wars but unprepared to fight hot wars. This was proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after two explosions, showing they can run in less than twenty-four hours. This was then repeated in Somalia. We are ready for all occasions, we rely on God.
http://www.meforum.org/435/usama-bin...e-paper-tigers
And it gave terrorists a major victory. The bombing drove the military from its peacekeeping mission in Lebanon and provided a blueprint for attacking Americans. The retreat of U.S. forces inspired Osama bin Laden and sent an unintended message to the Arab world that enough body bags would prompt Western withdrawal, not retaliation.
"There's no question it was a major cause of 9/11," said John Lehman, the then-secretary of the Navy, who today is a member of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We told the world that terrorism succeeds."
On February 7, 1984, President Reagan ordered the withdrawal of US forces from Lebanon after some light shelling of suspected Shia positions and some brief French air attacks in the Bekaa Valley. A raid on a camp where Iranian Revolutionary Guards were believed to be training Shia jihadists was called off by President Reagan because little evidence existed at the time that Iran was involved in the bombing.
The weak responses to the bombing by the US are believed to have emboldened jihadists around the world and contributed to the rise of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed extremists in Lebanon.
http://michellemalkin.com/2012/10/23...racks-bombing/
Although
New Jersey performed her job expertly during the intervention in Lebanon some have criticized the decision to have
New Jersey shell Druze and Syrian forces. Members of this camp allege that this action forced a shift in the previously neutral U.S. forces by convincing local Lebanese Muslims that the United States had taken the Christian side;
[33][34] New Jersey's shells had killed hundreds of people, mostly Shiites and Druze.
[35] In his memoir, General
Colin Powell (at the time an assistant to
Caspar Weinberger) noted that "When the shells started falling on the Shiites, they assumed the American ‘referee’ had taken sides."
[36]
The accuracy of
New Jersey's guns was also called into question. An investigation into
New Jersey's gunfire effectiveness in Lebanon, led by
Marine Colonel Don Price, found that many of the ship's shells had missed their targets by as much as 10,000 yards (9,140 m) and therefore may have inadvertently killed civilians. Tim McNulty, a correspondent for the
Chicago Tribune based in Lebanon said, "Everybody loved the
New Jersey until she fired her guns. Once she fired, it was obvious she couldn't hit anything."
[37] The inaccuracy is believed to have resulted because the ship's main gunpowder had been remixed by the Navy, under the direction of Captain Joseph Dominick Miceli at the
Naval Weapons Support Center, and rebagged. Powder lots (an individual production of powder) burn at different rates. Therefore, remixing the powder lots could cause the guns to fire inconsistently. The problem was apparently resolved after the Navy was able to locate additional powder supplies which had not been remixed.
[38]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_New_Jersey_(BB-62)
Unknown to us at the time, the National Security Agency had made a diplomatic communications intercept on 26 September (the same date as the cease-fire ending the September War) in which the Iranian Intelligence Service provided explicit instructions to the Iranian ambassador in Damascus (a known terrorist) to attack the Marines at Beirut International Airport. The suicide attackers struck us 28 days later, with word of the intercept stuck in the intelligence pipeline until days after the attack.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/23/...ting-the-dots/
Mugniyah died in a mysterious car bombing in Damascus last year that may have been an Israeli counter-terrorist operation. He reportedly had been involved in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina, which killed 29 people, and the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center, which killed 85 people. He also may have played a role in planning Hezbollah’s July 2006 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, which provoked a 34-day war in southern Lebanon.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/23/...ting-the-dots/
