Ex-US Commander Ties 1983 to 9/11

The commanding officer of the US Marine unit which was devastated by a suicide bombing in Beirut in 1983 blames the "timidity" of the American response to the blast for giving Al-Qaeda the confidence to launch the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.

Retired Colonel Timothy J. Geraghty was in charge of America's contribution to the MultiNational Force in Lebanon following Israel's bloody 1982 invasion.

The US lost 241 servicemen when a truck laden with explosives rammed into a building at a US military compound at Beirut International Airport in October 1983.

Writing in the US naval magazine Proceedings to mark the 25th anniversary of the explosion, Geraghty argues that America's "timidity to respond created an aura of impunity that the Islamic extremists sensed and pursued all the way to the September 11 attacks."

In the article -- entitled "We Came in Peace" despite US support for Israel and Israeli-backed Lebanese militias then taking part in the 1975-1990 Civil War -- Geraghty draws direct links between the 1983 bombing and Al-Qaeda's later attacks against Western interests. He also claims that Imad Mughniyeh, the Hizbullah operative whom many believe planned the 1983 attack, met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan the year before Al-Qaeda's first strike against a US target.

Geraghty says Mughniyeh taught bin Laden how to conduct the simultaneous suicide strikes that became the hallmark of Al-Qaeda operations. "Before a meeting between bin Laden and Mughniyeh in Sudan in 1996, Al-Qaeda did not have this expertise," Geraghty writes. Mughniyeh died in a car-bomb explosion in Damascus in February this year after over two decades spent on America's and Israel's most-wanted lists. Geraghty describes his death as "long overdue justice."

In the article, he says the 1983 bombing "exposed a deep-seated religious fanaticism fanned by Islamic jihadists without sectarian divisions."

He rejects claims that Sunni and Shiite religious differences mean their respective militant groups should be treated as separate entities. "What continues to unfold is the debunking of the theory that an ideological separation between the Sunnis and Shiites would prevent any mutual cooperation in operations against a common enemy," he writes.

The article also blames Iran and Syria for helping to orchestrate the suicide attack and says the attack against US troops and another targeting French forces "achieved their strategic goal: the withdrawal of the multinational force from Lebanon and a dramatic change in US national policy."

In the months after the attack, the US withdrew its troops from Lebanon. The attack came after the US had provided naval gunfire support to a Lebanese Army operation, which undermined their impartial status as peacekeepers. Geraghty says he advised against providing such assistance, claiming to have warned fellow officers that "we were going to pay in blood for this decision."

Geraghty says Iran's intentions have not changed since the the Islamic Revolution. "Iranian persistence and determination has paid off handsomely in terms of regional influence, political power and military prowess," he writes. "It is clear that their brashness and the carnage they inflict continue to expand."

He accuses Iran of deliberately destabilizing the Middle East to maintain its influence in foreign countries. "Iranian mullahs have chosen to wage a radically aggressive campaign to create and accelerate instability throughout the region by using their proxies" he writes.

He uses the article to warn that the US is at risk of being targeted by Hizbullah. It is "more probable than possible that Iran will use its favorite proxy, Hizbullah, to carry out future attacks against the West including the US ... we could well find ourselves, in our own country, the recipient of a weapon of mass destruction," he says.

Read more about Colonel Timothy J. Geraghty's story: Beirut 25 Years Later: We Came in Peace