Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Post
February 14, 2008
Pg. 21
Suicide Bombing Tactics Adopted Widely
By Robin Wright, Washington Post Staff Writer
Lance Cpl. Eddie DiMarco was the only survivor who saw how it happened. The big yellow Mercedes truck circled outside the Marine compound in Beirut, strangely gaining speed, until it broke straight for the building where a battalion of Marines slept. DiMarco, on guard duty at the four-story concrete building, was haunted by the driver's expression.
"He looked right at me . . . smiled, that's it. Soon as I saw [the truck], I knew what was going to happen," he later recalled.
Within seconds, the vehicle, laden with the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of explosives, set off the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II, killing 241 U.S. military personnel.
It took two years, but U.S. intelligence eventually linked the 1983 bombing of the Marine compound to Imad Mughniyah, the high school dropout who became the prototype for a generation of extremists -- the enigmatic architect of the most notorious attack against U.S. targets until Sept. 11, 2001.
"Long before Osama bin Laden, there was Imad Mughniyah," said Bilal Saab, a Hezbollah expert at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center. "He introduced catastrophic suicide terrorism and many other tactics now used widely by many groups throughout the region."
The United States issued a sealed indictment against Mughniyah in 1985 -- three years before bin Laden formed al-Qaeda.
With Marines planning to mark this year's 25th anniversary of the barracks attack, the Marine commander at the time, Col. Tim Geraghty, reflected yesterday on Mughniyah's death in Syria. "It's very fitting that it was a car bomb. It was long overdue," he said from his home in Phoenix. "The fact that he was still active with a $5 million bounty on his head showed his genius for maintaining and running terrorism operations all this time."
For a quarter-century Mughniyah, pronounced Moog-NEE-yah, eluded intensive American pursuit, demonstrating the difficulty of capturing extremists targeting the United States.
Mughniyah's battle was a family affair. His Islamic Jihad, an embryo of what became Hezbollah, began abducting American hostages off the streets of Beirut in 1984 to win freedom for Mustafa Badreddin, a cousin and brother-in-law. The two men had been a deadly team. Mughniyah was the master planner, Badreddin an explosives expert for the Marine bombing and an earlier suicide attack on the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, according to U.S. officials at the time. Badreddin developed a trademark technique of using gas to enhance the power of already sophisticated explosives.
Badreddin was later imprisoned and sentenced to death in Kuwait for a series of 1983 bombings, including attacks on the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait City. But the United States and Kuwait both resisted Islamic Jihad's demands for the release of the 17 men held for the attacks in order to free the Americans.
The hostage drama dragged on for seven years. At one point, the Reagan administration traded arms to Iran in exchange for persuading Mughniyah to free three hostages in 1986. After the deal was complete, Mughniyah captured three more Americans.
The saga ended only after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991 and opened up its prisons, allowing Badreddin to slip back into Lebanon. Iran later paid off Mughniyah in exchange for the final hostage releases.
Thomas Sutherland, a former dean at the American University of Beirut who was seized in 1985, yesterday recalled his encounters with Mughniyah, whom he described as short with stubby hands.
"We met Mughniyah right after I was kidnapped. He shook hands with me and welcomed me. He told me that everything was good, very good, and very soon we would be freed," Sutherland said. The Colorado academic was instead held for six years and five months, the second-longest period of captivity among the American hostages.
Mughniyah won a place on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list for the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847. During a stop in Beirut, hijackers took U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem to the door of the plane, forced him to kneel, shot him in the head and dumped his body on the tarmac. Passengers and crew were then held hostage for two weeks before being freed.
Cultivated and trained in part by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mughniyah became the operational link between Hezbollah and Tehran. He was instrumental in setting up Hezbollah's military operations in south Lebanon before the 2006 war with Israel. He had since gotten Iran to resupply the Shiite Muslim movement with longer-range missiles, according to U.S. intelligence.
The U.S. military was elated by Mughniyah's death. The Pentagon says he was also involved in the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers, a compound for foreign military personnel in the Saudi city of Dhahran, where 19 American service members were killed.
"We welcome the news that Imad Mughniyah's life of terror has finally come to an end. From Beirut to Dhahran, he orchestrated bombings, kidnappings and hijackings in which hundreds of American service members were killed," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. "Hopefully, his demise will bring some measure of comfort to the families of all those military men he murdered."
But some Marine families had mixed feelings. Larry Gerlach is a retired Marine colonel whose injuries in the 1983 barracks bombing left him a quadriplegic.
"Your first reaction is yeah, good," said his wife, Patti. "But then you realize that what you're talking about is someone who was blown up in a car bomb -- and you don't want to feel happy about something like that."
Her husband interjected: "But I do."
February 14, 2008
Pg. 21
Suicide Bombing Tactics Adopted Widely
By Robin Wright, Washington Post Staff Writer
Lance Cpl. Eddie DiMarco was the only survivor who saw how it happened. The big yellow Mercedes truck circled outside the Marine compound in Beirut, strangely gaining speed, until it broke straight for the building where a battalion of Marines slept. DiMarco, on guard duty at the four-story concrete building, was haunted by the driver's expression.
"He looked right at me . . . smiled, that's it. Soon as I saw [the truck], I knew what was going to happen," he later recalled.
Within seconds, the vehicle, laden with the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of explosives, set off the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II, killing 241 U.S. military personnel.
It took two years, but U.S. intelligence eventually linked the 1983 bombing of the Marine compound to Imad Mughniyah, the high school dropout who became the prototype for a generation of extremists -- the enigmatic architect of the most notorious attack against U.S. targets until Sept. 11, 2001.
"Long before Osama bin Laden, there was Imad Mughniyah," said Bilal Saab, a Hezbollah expert at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center. "He introduced catastrophic suicide terrorism and many other tactics now used widely by many groups throughout the region."
The United States issued a sealed indictment against Mughniyah in 1985 -- three years before bin Laden formed al-Qaeda.
With Marines planning to mark this year's 25th anniversary of the barracks attack, the Marine commander at the time, Col. Tim Geraghty, reflected yesterday on Mughniyah's death in Syria. "It's very fitting that it was a car bomb. It was long overdue," he said from his home in Phoenix. "The fact that he was still active with a $5 million bounty on his head showed his genius for maintaining and running terrorism operations all this time."
For a quarter-century Mughniyah, pronounced Moog-NEE-yah, eluded intensive American pursuit, demonstrating the difficulty of capturing extremists targeting the United States.
Mughniyah's battle was a family affair. His Islamic Jihad, an embryo of what became Hezbollah, began abducting American hostages off the streets of Beirut in 1984 to win freedom for Mustafa Badreddin, a cousin and brother-in-law. The two men had been a deadly team. Mughniyah was the master planner, Badreddin an explosives expert for the Marine bombing and an earlier suicide attack on the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, according to U.S. officials at the time. Badreddin developed a trademark technique of using gas to enhance the power of already sophisticated explosives.
Badreddin was later imprisoned and sentenced to death in Kuwait for a series of 1983 bombings, including attacks on the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait City. But the United States and Kuwait both resisted Islamic Jihad's demands for the release of the 17 men held for the attacks in order to free the Americans.
The hostage drama dragged on for seven years. At one point, the Reagan administration traded arms to Iran in exchange for persuading Mughniyah to free three hostages in 1986. After the deal was complete, Mughniyah captured three more Americans.
The saga ended only after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991 and opened up its prisons, allowing Badreddin to slip back into Lebanon. Iran later paid off Mughniyah in exchange for the final hostage releases.
Thomas Sutherland, a former dean at the American University of Beirut who was seized in 1985, yesterday recalled his encounters with Mughniyah, whom he described as short with stubby hands.
"We met Mughniyah right after I was kidnapped. He shook hands with me and welcomed me. He told me that everything was good, very good, and very soon we would be freed," Sutherland said. The Colorado academic was instead held for six years and five months, the second-longest period of captivity among the American hostages.
Mughniyah won a place on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list for the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847. During a stop in Beirut, hijackers took U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem to the door of the plane, forced him to kneel, shot him in the head and dumped his body on the tarmac. Passengers and crew were then held hostage for two weeks before being freed.
Cultivated and trained in part by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mughniyah became the operational link between Hezbollah and Tehran. He was instrumental in setting up Hezbollah's military operations in south Lebanon before the 2006 war with Israel. He had since gotten Iran to resupply the Shiite Muslim movement with longer-range missiles, according to U.S. intelligence.
The U.S. military was elated by Mughniyah's death. The Pentagon says he was also involved in the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers, a compound for foreign military personnel in the Saudi city of Dhahran, where 19 American service members were killed.
"We welcome the news that Imad Mughniyah's life of terror has finally come to an end. From Beirut to Dhahran, he orchestrated bombings, kidnappings and hijackings in which hundreds of American service members were killed," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. "Hopefully, his demise will bring some measure of comfort to the families of all those military men he murdered."
But some Marine families had mixed feelings. Larry Gerlach is a retired Marine colonel whose injuries in the 1983 barracks bombing left him a quadriplegic.
"Your first reaction is yeah, good," said his wife, Patti. "But then you realize that what you're talking about is someone who was blown up in a car bomb -- and you don't want to feel happy about something like that."
Her husband interjected: "But I do."