In late Oct. 1983, when the US Marines in Lebanon got blown up, the chant was (after the smoke cleared)
nuke their ass & take the gas....
On the morning of Sunday, October 23, 1983, shortly after the sun rose over the Shouf Mountains of Lebanon, a Mercedes truck barreled across a parking lot that separated the Beirut airport terminal from the temporary U.S. Marine headquarters. Skirting sand-bagged bunkers and crashing through a series of barbed wire fences and gates, the truck dodged the bullets from a sentry's rifle and headed straight for the building where some 300 Marines lay sleeping. As witnesses watched in horror, the driver smashed the truck through the remaining barriers and into the lobby of the headquarters, where he detonated some 2,600 pounds of explosives. Within seconds, the four-story building was reduced to a heap of rubble, trapping hundreds of dead and wounded soldiers under the crushing weight of broken cement and cinder blocks. Minutes later, a similar attack destroyed a nearby barracks housing French paratroopers.
The next day, U.S. newspapers described a nightmare scene at the Beirut airport, where rescue workers used blow torches, pneumatic drills, and cranes in a desperate effort to free Marines still pinned under the collapsed building. "I haven't seen carnage like that since Vietnam," a Marine spokesman told reporters. 241 Marines lost their lives in the suicide attack, attributed to Lebanese Shi'ite militants. The French counted over 56 paratroopers dead.
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