The 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing, and the Current U.S. Retreat from Syria
By Robin Wright
Thirty-six years ago, a yellow Mercedes truck loaded with twelve thousand pounds of explosives sped into the barracks of U.S. Marine peacekeepers in Beirut. It was 6:22 a.m. Lance Corporal Eddie DiFranco, on guard duty nearby, was the only one who saw the bomber. “He looked right at me, smiled,” DiFranco said later. “Soon as I saw the truck, I knew what was going to happen.” The truck set off the largest non-nuclear explosion on Earth since the Second World War. The four-story concrete building imploded; marines were crushed like paper dolls. The collapse set off a brown mushroom cloud over the Lebanese
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