[Washington Post] David Ignatius - It is April 18, 1983, and I am visiting the American Embassy in Beirut as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. The city has been pounded by eight years of civil war, but now the U.S. has arrived as Lebanon's protector; U.S. Marines are at the airport in what the embassy calls a "presence mission." My appointment at the embassy ends around 12:30 p.m. and I go back to my hotel. At 1:03, I hear an enormous blast. The percussive force shakes my windows, nearly a mile away. I have a momentary feeling of vertigo, like fear but worse. I run back toward the embassy. When I reach the building, Marines are trying to form a perimeter. The center facade has collapsed; rooms have been sheared in half. Sixty-three people are dead, including 17 Americans. It takes many years to confirm that it was an Iranian operation, organized by operatives from the Revolutionary Guard. A new kind of war has begun.
2008-04-18 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive