The Long Road Back to Tehran

Secretary of State/Commander-in-Chief Pelosi visits Region

***HOSTAGE RELEASE IMMINENT***

For those who sometimes need reminded of why we are where we are in this War, I have put together this chronological listing of attacks against Americans. To put this into a personal perspective, I was 20 years old, like some of my readers today when this became important to me. Until we have the resolve to win this once and for all as only we know how to do (Japan sure changed) this will continue and escalate.

You will also notice that April is an exceptionally violent month for some reason even without mentioning other domestic events such as Oklahoma City or Waco.

**This is a work in progress, as is this War. I will update this as it becomes unfortunately necessary**

February 1979: Afghan militants assassinated The United States Ambassador to Afghanistan.

A defaced Great Seal of the United States at the former US embassy, Tehran, Iran, as it appears today

4 November 1979: Muslims led by who many believe, including former hostages was the current President of Iran, Ahmadinejad took over the US Embassy in Tehran. This launched a 444-day news story and the career of Ted Kopel and others. I personally remember my frustration watching “America Held Hostage” Day 1-443 every night at 11:30.

Iranian militants escort a blindfolded U.S. hostage to the media

24 April 1980: Operation Eagle Claw ended at Desert One in disaster as a departing helicopter hit a C-130 resulting in the loss of 11 American servicemen.

Authors note: This is when I decided that Uncle Sam needed me to help solve this problem.....I joined the Air Force, and the rest is history, as they say.

18 April 1983: An Islamic suicide bomber drove a van full of high explosives under the portico of the American Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon and detonated it killing 63 people and wounding another 120.

October 1983: A large truck packed full of TNT smashed through the main gate of the US Marine Corps HQ in Beirut killing 241 US service members. Also 50 UN peacekeepers were slain at the French military barracks. Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad backed by Iran and Syria claimed responsibility for the largest single day American death toll since WWII.

A smoke cloud rises from the rubble of the bombed barracks at Beirut International Airport

12 December 1983: Four killed and 83 wounded in Kuwait City, Kuwait when a truck driven by an Islamic suicide bomber crashed into the US Embassy annex.

April 1984: Islamic terrorist killed 18 US military service personnel at Torrejon AFB, Spain.

September 1984: US Embassy in Beirut is ransacked again, killing 2 Americans and wounding 20 more.

12 April 1985: A bomb explodes in Madrid, Spain at a restaurant frequented by American service personnel.

14 June 1985: TWA Flight 847 is hijacked by Organization for the Oppressed of the Earth, a group with links to Hezbollah. The hijackers identified an American Navy diver, Robert Stethem, among the passengers. They beat him, shot him in the right temple, and dumped his body out of the plane onto the tarmac.

Two hijackers in the cockpit with Captain Testrake

August 1985: A Volkswagen loaded with explosives is driven into the front gate of the US Air Force Base Rhein-Main, Germany killing 22.

7 October 1985: The Passenger liner, Achille Lauro is hijacked and many of us watch on live TV as an American passenger Leon Klinghoffer-in a wheelchair, was singled out of the ships' manifest and executed, because he was Jewish, and his body thrown overboard.

2 April 1986: The Arabian Revolutionary Cells exploded a bomb on Pan Am Flight 840 while it was in Athens Greece. Four American passengers were killed including a four-month-old baby.

21 December 1988: Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland with 270 passengers and crew, 189 of which were Americans. Libyan Islamic Terrorists loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, President of Libya took responsibility for the explosion.

26 February 1993: A Ryder truck packed with nearly a ton of a fertilizer based homemade explosive was detonated on the second level parking basement of the World Trade Center in New York City. The attack, planned by Ramzi Yousef, was intended to make the building structurally unsafe but failed. Still 6 people were killed and 1000 injured.

21 October 1993: Muslim militants shot down a US Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter over Mogadishu, Somalia while taking part in providing security for food distribution to the local starving inhabitants caught between local “war lords” and controlling factions that were Islamic militant. 21 US Army Rangers were killed and 1 was dragged through the streets.

6 January 1995: Plans for a large scale bomb attack on 11 US bound airliners was discovered on a laptop computer after an apartment fire in a Manila apartment. Islamic Terrorist, Ramzi Yousef and Klalid Shaikh Mohammed developed the plan while visiting Manila in 1994.

March 1995: Islamic terrorists killed 2 US Diplomats and wounded a third in an attack on a US Consulate van in Karachi, Pakistan.

November 1995: A car bomb was driven into the US military housing facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killing seven and wounding 60. The Islamic Movement for Change and Fighting Advocates of God took responsibility.

25 June 1996: A fuel truck is exploded by the The Islamic Movement for Change and Fighting Advocates of God, outside the military housing facility in the Kobar Towers, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. 19 US service members were killed.

August 1998: Explosion at the US Embassy in Nairibi, Kenya kills 247. Another blast in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania kills 10 more. 5000 are wounded.

12 October 2000: The USS Cole is attacked by a suicide bomb boat while refueling in Aden, Yemen. 17 sailors were killed and 130 injured.

11 September 2001: Islamic extremists hijack 4 US airliners flying 2 into the World Trade Center, New York City. 3,020 people were killed and 2,337 were injured. Another plane was flown into the Pentagon, Washington D.C. killing 64 passengers and crew and 125 military personnel at the Pentagon. The fourth was “diverted” from the Capital or White House to a field outside Shansksville, PA where it crashed with 44 on board.

30 January 2003: Richard Colvin Reid, also known as the shoe bomber, is an individual convicted on charges of terrorism and is currently serving a life sentence in the United States for attempting to detonate a commercial aircraft in-flight using plastic explosives contained in his shoes. According to al-Qaeda operative Mohammed Mansour Jabarah (who was captured and interrogated in Oman in 2003), Reid was a member of al-Qaeda and had been sent on the bombing mission by Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, a senior member of the organization.