The United States was not viewed as a favorable party by the Lebanese Moslem factions as they were thought to be supporting the Christian mercenaries who received aid and gear from Israel. In supplement, the United States was known to have an intimate affiliation with the intelligence division of the Lebanese Armed Forces. The United States was also viewed as backing up Lebanese President Elias Sarkis. (Letter ….. Sarkis 54)
The Islamic Jihad Organization claimed responsibility for the attack on the American embassy in Beirut, which killed some two hundred people, twenty of whom were Americans. Informed sources believed that the Islamic Jihad Organization was a nom de guerre for Husayn Musawi's Islamic Amal organization, while others believed that it was a cover name for Hezbollah. On September 29, 1983, the United States Congress, by a substantial margin, implemented a declaration stating the 1973 War Powers Resolution to attach to the setting in Lebanon and authorized the United States military authority for an eighteen-month period.
On October 23, 1983, Shia terrorists struck the United States Marines compound and the French MNF headquarters in devastating, near-simultaneous suicide bombing attacks. The attack on the United States Marines compound took 241 lives and wounded over 100. The bombing was carried out by a lone terrorist driving a stake bed truck that penetrated the central lobby of the building and exploded. United States Federal Bureau of Investigation experts announced that the blast, with the force of over 12,000 pounds of trinitrotoluene, was the largest non-nuclear explosion ever detonated.
On December 12, 1983, a truck bomb exploded in the United States embassy compound in Kuwait, killing 6 people, none of them United States citizens. The incident seemed to be related to the presence of the United States in Lebanon. In February 1984, the MNF, including.....
