You must be a leftist you distort reality so well...try this little refresher course on what happened and then get back to me.
REAGAN: Those who directed this atrocity must be dealt justice and they will be.
ROBERTS: He rejected a Marine withdrawal.
REAGAN: If we were to leave Lebanon now, what message would that send to those who foment instability and terrorism.
ROBERTS: His words became empty promises, abandoned within months.
MCFARLANE: Well, I wrote that language, and I took it seriously at the time, and intended and believed that he intended to fulfill it.
ROBERTS: At the end of the week, the first caskets began coming home. The next week, on a damp and dreary day, Ronald and Nancy Reagan went to the Marine base at Camp LeJuene to mourn, along with a grieving nation.
MCFARLANE: He always took very personal the loss of life of any American, especially servicemen.
ROBERTS: By now, American intelligence had traced the seeds of the attack to a barracks in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah was holed up. The Navy was ready to strike back.
LYONS: We went ahead and made up the plans. We had the photography. It was a great radar target. There's nothing else around. And we were going to take out all 250 of them.
MCFARLANE: The president called the National Security Council together. He was convinced himself that the target was responsible in the Bekaa Valley, that Hezbollah had done the deed, and that's where they trained and were armed.
There were arguments, disagreements. Weinberger disagreed, thought it would have a very negative impact on our relations in the Arab states. The president said, "Well, I believe we have to do this."
LYONS: We had the planes loaded. It would have been a minute and a half strike, in and out in a minute and a half, and we would have sent the message that everybody was waiting for us to send. We never got the orders to launch.
MCFARLANE: I was awakened at home by the situation room, with the word that the attack had been aborted. I was speechless. I said, "By whom?" and I was told the Secretary of Defense. I was thunderstruck. I went down to the office and called Cap right away and asked him, what in the world happened? He said, "Well, Bud, I believed it was a bad idea, and it would have done us great harm." and I said, "Cap, the president of the United States approved this."
ROBERTS: When McFarlane told Reagan, he said the president was at a loss for words. That Cap Weinberger, now deceased, had been a close friend and ally of Reagan since their California days. Reagan would forgive and forget.
MCFARLANE: At the end of the day, the president was so captive really to his feelings of loyalty for Secretary Weinberger that he let it cloud his judgment.
ROBERTS: The terrorist attacks continued. Soon, new truck bomb attempts at the French and American embassies in Kuwait. In Beirut, the Marines were hunkered down behind new defensive barriers, doing little or nothing. The White House seemed paralyzed.
MCFARLANE: And Cap said we simply ought to withdraw.
ROBERTS: While the fighting in Lebanon grew worse, Reagan was talking tough, right up until the end. In a radio address early in February, he called the situation in Lebanon "difficult."
REAGAN: But that is no reason to turn our backs on friends and to cut and run. If we do, we'll be sending one signal to terrorists everywhere. They can gain by waging war against innocent people.
ROBERTS: Yet only three days later, the president would order the Marines out. No speeches this time. The announcement was handed out, as Reagan landed in California, to go on vacation at his ranch.
By February 26th, just four months after the bombing, the Marines had retreated from Beirut, back to ships offshore. Survivor Jack Anderson was glad to see his fellow Marines heading for home, yet was disappointed.
JACK ANDERSON, FMR. U.S. MARINE: I really wanted to see us do something to the people responsible for the car bombing. You know, hopefully in the end, they get theirs, but not at the hand of the Marine Corps this time.
ROBERTS: Coming up, Beirut's deadly lesson for today's war on terror.
LYONS: As soon as we suffer casualties, we will cut and run. We are a paper tiger.
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ROBERTS: U.S. Marines approaching sacred ground, Beirut, Lebanon, where 23 years ago they lost so many of their own. But for these Marines, touching ground has even more meaning, because so many belong to the same unit attacked in 1983.
Like their comrades before them, these Marines have come in peace. Their mission? To evacuate Americans. Still, the lore of Lebanon is not forgotten. It is here where the Marines paid the ultimate price.
PERRY: Would you think that over a period of 23 years that the United States military, the memory of the barracks bombing would have faded. It hasn't. When Secretary Rice talks about perhaps a peacekeeping force, the first question in a U.S. officer's mind is, does that mean us? No one in the military wants a replay of 1983.
ROBERTS: Retired Lieutenant General Lawrence Snowden called the barracks bombing an act of war.
SNOWDEN: We wanted to strike attention in the hearts of the Defense Department, and others, that this is a way of warfare that we've got to face in the future and we're ill-prepared at this moment to deal with it.
REAGAN: I received the report of the Long Commission last night --
ROBERTS: President Reagan a day before the report went public.
REGAN: The report draws the conclusion that the United States and its military institutions are by tradition and training, inadequately equipped to deal with the fundamentally new phenomenon of state-supported terrorism. I whole-heartedly agree.
ROBERTS: Again, Reagan promised to stand firm.
REAGAN: Now, one fact, though it's already obvious, the problem of terrorism will not disappear if we run from it.
ROBERTS: But that's what the U.S. did. Four months after the bombing, the Marines left Lebanon.
MCFARLANE: I think he understood very well the withdrawal of American forces, anywhere, at any time, is a negative signal, a sign of weakness. Shortly thereafter he acknowledged that we're going to pay a price for this downstream.
ROBERTS: At a price that, many believe, the U.S. is paying for today.
SNOWDEN: I think the terrorists had good memories, and they remember that, when we were pushed up against the wall, and they successfully attacked us like that, there was a demand for the troops to come home, and they did.
MCFARLANE: To absorb such a horrific loss as the Marines suffered in Beirut, without reacting, implies that you can attack the United States and not pay a price for it. That we're too weak, irresolute, politically paralyzed, and that is intolerable for a great power.
ROBERTS: Somalia, 1993, a Blackhawk down, 18 soldiers killed after a fire fight with local militia. This picture of a soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu had an enormous impact on public opinion. Six months later, President Clinton pulled the troops out. A decision that Osama bin Laden later claimed emboldened him to strike out at America. OSAMA BIN LADEN, FOUNDER, AL QAEDA (through translator): After a little resistance, the Americans left after achieving nothing. They left after claiming they were the largest power on earth. They left after some resistance from the powerless, poor, unarmed people whose only weapon it s their belief in Allah, the Almighty.