Reagan said we were not leaving Beirut after he got 241 Marines blown up

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040401/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_resolve&cid=540&ncid=1480

Newsview: Iraq a Big Test of U.S. Resolve

<snip>But analysts also recall that President Reagan at first vowed not to be swayed by the October 1983 suicide bomb that killed 241 servicemen in the Marine barracks in Beirut — only to bow to public opinion and pull U.S. forces out of Lebanon.

With attacks like those in Fallujah against Americans, "we rally around our leaders," said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University. "At the same time, people will increasingly be asking, `Why should we be there when the people don't seem to want us there?'"

Nobody knows how much more violence in Iraq Americans can tolerate before opposition escalates sharply as it eventually did over U.S. troops in Vietnam. But polls show support for the war to be slowly eroding.

People were about evenly divided on Bush's handling of Iraq in a Los Angeles Times poll out Thursday, with 49 percent saying they approve and 46 percent saying they disapprove. At the time of the war, about seven in 10 said they approved of his handling of the Iraq situation.

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[trotsky]

1. Ann Coulter had some usual trash that mentioned this recently.

Only she blamed - wait for it - DEMOCRATS for forcing Ronnie to pull out of Lebanon. Honestly, with most of the stuff she writes I'm fully expecting her to just say, "Gotcha! I don't really believe all this, I'm just exposing the ridiculousness of what passes for right-wing thought!"

[mistertrickster]

3. She's like an April fool's joke every damn day!

nt

[Old and In the Way]

2. How soon after the Lebanon fiasco was it before we suddenly

invaded Grenada. I think that was the defining "Wag the Dog" moment in RR's term.