The Reagan Wars: A Constitutional Perspective on War Powers and the Presidency by David Locke Hall

Author:David Locke Hall [Hall, David Locke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000305074
Google: uAaiDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 49788638
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

On the day of the President's speech, two Marines were wounded by sniper fire. The ceasefire deteriorated through the rest of October. On October 5, two Marine Cobra helicopters were hit by ground fire. On October 8, two Marines were wounded by snipers.64 On October 13, one Marine was wounded in a grenade attack. On October 14, one Marine was killed and three were wounded by snipers. On October 15, Marine sharpshooters, responding to the October 14 attack, killed four snipers. The next day, another Marine was killed and five were wounded by sniper fire.65 On October 19, four Marines were wounded by a remotely detonated car bomb along a convoy route. But the worst was yet to come.

At 6:22 A.M. (local) on Sunday, October 23, 1983, 241 servicemen were killed and 70 were wounded when the U.S. Marine Battalion Landing Team headquarters at Beirut International Airport was bombed.66 More Marines died on October 23 than on "any single day since D-Day on Iwo Jima."67 The bomb was delivered by a Mercedes-Benz stake bed truck driven by a single terrorist through the parking lot south of the headquarters building. The truck crashed through barbed wire and concertina before penetrating the central lobby of the building and exploding. The Long Commission Report summarizes the truck bombing as follows:

Five eyewitnesses described a large, yellow Mercedes-Benz stake bed truck traveling at a speed reportedly in excess of 35 mph, moving from the public parking lot south of the BLT Headquarters building through the barbed wire and concertina fence, into the main entrance of the building, where it detonated at approximately 0622 Beirut time. . . . [The truck] was observed by the sentry on Post 6 accelerating westward and parallel to the wire barricade. The truck then abruptly turned north, ran over the wire barricade, and accelerated northward between Posts 6 and 7.

The sentry on Post 7 heard the truck as it ran over the wire, then observed it and immediately suspected it was a vehicle bomb. He inserted a magazine in his M-16 rifle, chambered a round, shouldered the weapon, and took aim but did not fire because by that time the truck had already penetrated the building.

Both sentries realized the truck was, in fact, a "car bomb" and therefore took cover within their respective bunkers. One sentry hid in the corner of his bunker and did not observe the detonation. The other sentry partially observed the detonation from behind the blast wall to the rear of the bunker. He saw the top of the building explode vertically in a V shape. He then took cover inside his bunker for protection from the falling debris.68

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