Word: iranian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Beirut suburb, killing more than 80 people and injuring 200, there was little doubt as to the attack's target. The detonation took place just 50 yds. from the home of Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, spiritual leader of the Hizballah (Party of God), a militant pro-Iranian Shi'ite group. Several of Fadlallah's bodyguards were among the victims, but the sheik, who was in a nearby mosque, was uninjured. No one ever claimed responsibility for the incident...
What red-blooded American doesn't love graphic stories about killing IRA gun runners. Basque terrorists, Syrians, Druze, and Iranian lighters who after all are the scum of the earth? I like Dirty Harry, Rivers doesn't mess around with stupid questions like "who is responsible" or "Is it legal." He gets right down to the good stuff, like now to blow up a terrorist's Renault while he is sticking his head under the hood...
Aside from the narration, which but for the action would be unsalvageable, the worst thing about The Specialist is that it is probably not true. Although Rivers stories about killing a Greek arms dealer, helping, he Iraqi army blow up Iranian shipping, and carrying out missions to stop the shelling of the Marines in Lebanon are plausible, someone in such a dangerous business would not say so specifically exactly what he did and to whom. The kind of detail in this book makes it unbelievable. Anyone could track down and kill the author if the details were anywhere near true...
Logging in on the side of the first interpretation is Newsweek, book reviewer Gene Lyons, who wrote this March that the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 only succeeded, after all, in replacing one kind of Oriental despot with another...
...assumed in Washington that some of the missing Americans are being held by pro-Iranian Lebanese Shi'ite groups that hope to swap their prisoners for 19 militant Islamic fundamentalists imprisoned in Kuwait. With that in mind, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz recently sent a message through the Swiss government warning Iran that Washington would not be slow to retaliate should an American captive be killed...