Word: terrorists
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After the briefing, Reagan decided to go ahead with a scheduled campaign trip to Iowa, on the grounds that he could easily keep in touch with the situation in Beirut. Throughout the day, he spoke of the bombing as "a cowardly terrorist act" and described it as "another painful reminder of the persistent threat of terrorism in the world." When asked whether he was satisfied with the security at the Beirut embassy, the President replied, "As much as I know about it, yes. I think if someone is determined to do what they did, it's pretty difficult...
...however, the building was still under construction and some of the planned security measures had not been completed. According to reports from Washington, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency recently concluded that security at embassy installations in the East Beirut area was inadequate and that the buildings were vulnerable to terrorist attack. A separate report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative and auditing arm of Congress, faulted the State Department for the way it had managed its "security-enhancement program" for embassies in the region. Late last week Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign...
...easy to identify, let alone punish. Most experts believe the name Islamic Jihad is a sort of catchword used by several fanatical Shi'ite Muslim groups inspired by Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and affiliated with Iranian Revolutionary Guards based in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The terrorists seem to be linked to the ruling Shi'ite hierarchy in Iran or to a segment of it. Because the groups operate out of an area that is controlled by Syria, it has been assumed that Damascus was encouraging their terrorist activities, but this is probably no longer true...
...troublemaking has continued. Even Libyan and Soviet diplomats have on occasion been harassed by fundamentalist groups, and a number of Western officials and journalists have been kidnaped. (Late last week, Reuters Correspondent Jonathan Wright was released unharmed by unidentified gunmen after being held for 23 days.) All these terrorist incidents, coming at a time when Syria was trying to bring some kind of order to Lebanon, have embarrassed the Damascus government of President Hafez Assad. Worse, they bring with them the possibility of U.S. retaliation. The Syrians thus have reason to be annoyed with their onetime surrogates but obviously have...
Others traced the continuing series of terrorist acts to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. Said a British government official: "Until there is a just Palestinian settlement that assures Israel's statehood and security and grants self-determination to the Palestinians, there will be no ending to the sort of violence we have seen this week." Some Middle East experts, including William Quandt of the Brookings Institution, advocate closer U.S. ties with Syria as a possible way of reducing the risks of such terrorism. Quandt argues that neither Syria nor any of the other main powers...