On June 25th, 1996 Iran attacked America once again and we did nothing.
In Dhahan, Saudi Arabia, a huge truck bomb was detonated in front of the Khobar Towers where US Servicemen and women were housed killing 19 of our citizens:
- Captain Christopher Adams
- Technical Sergeant Daniel B. Cafourek
- Sergeant Millard D. Campbell
- Senior Airman Earl R. Cartrette Jr
- Captain Leland Haun
- Technical Sergeant Patrick P. Fennig
- Master Sergeant Michael G. Heiser
- Staff Sergeant Kevin Johnson
- Sergeant Ronald King
- Master Sergeant Kendall K. Kitson
- Airman 1st Class Christopher Lester
- Airman 1st Class Brent E. Marthaler
- Airman 1st Class Brian W. McVeigh
- Airman 1st Class Peter J. Morgera
- Technical Sergeant Thanh V. Nguyen
- Airman 1st Class Joseph E. Rimkus
- Airman 1st Class Justin Wood
- Airman 1st Class Joshua E. Woody
Louis Freeh wrote a piece about this attack in the Wall Street Journal back in 2003:
When I visited this horrific scene soon after the attack, I watched dozens of dedicated FBI agents combing through the wreckage in 120-degree heat, reverently handling the human remains of our brave young men. More than 400 of our Air Force men and women were wounded in this well-planned attack, and I was humbled by their courage and spirit.
[…]Over the course of our investigation the evidence became clear that while the attack was staged by Saudi Hezbollah members, the entire operation was planned, funded and coordinated by Iran’s security services, the IRGC and MOIS, acting on orders from the highest levels of the regime in Tehran.
In order to return an indictment and bring these terrorists to American justice, it became essential that FBI agents be permitted to interview several of the participating Hezbollah terrorists who were detained in Saudi Arabia. The purpose of the interviews was to confirm–with usable, co-conspirator testimonial evidence–the Iranian complicity that Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan and the Mabaheth had already relayed to us. (For the record, the FBI’s investigation only succeeded because of the real cooperation provided by Prince Bandar and our colleagues in the Mabaheth.) FBI agents had never before been permitted to interview firsthand Saudis detained in the kingdom.
Unfortunately, the White House was unable or unwilling to help the FBI gain access to these critical witnesses. The only direction from the Clinton administration regarding Iran was to order the FBI to stop photographing and fingerprinting official Iranian delegations entering the U.S. because it was adversely impacting our "relationship" with Tehran. We had argued that the MOIS was using these groups to infiltrate its agents into the U.S.
After months of inaction, I finally turned to the former President Bush, who immediately interceded with Crown Prince Abdullah on the FBI’s behalf. Mr. Bush personally asked the Saudis to let the FBI do one-on-one interviews of the detained Khobar bombers. The Saudis immediately acceded. After Mr. Bush’s Saturday meeting with the Crown Prince in Washington, Ambassador Wyche Fowler, Dale Watson, the FBI’s excellent counterterrorism chief, and I were summoned to a Monday meeting where the crown prince directed that the FBI be given direct access to the Saudi detainees. This was the investigative breakthrough for which we had been waiting for several years.
Mr. Bush typically disclaimed any credit for his critical intervention but he earned the gratitude of many FBI agents and the Khobar families. I quickly dispatched the FBI case agents back to Saudi Arabia, where they interviewed, one-on-one, six of the Hezbollah members who actually carried out the attack. All of them directly implicated the IRGC, MOIS and senior Iranian government officials in the planning and execution of this attack. Armed with this evidence, the FBI recommended a criminal indictment that would identify Iran as the sponsor of the Khobar bombing. Finding a problem for every solution, the Clinton administration refused to support a prosecution.
The prosecution and criminal indictment for these murders had to wait for a new administration. In February 2001, working with exactly the same evidence but with a talented new prosecutor, James B. Comey Jr. (now U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York), Attorney General John Ashcroft’s personal intervention, and White House support, the case was presented to a grand jury. On June 21, 2001, only four days before some of the terrorist charges would have become barred by the five-year statute of limitations, the grand jury indicted 13 Hezbollah terrorists for the Khobar attack and identified Iran as the sponsor.
Nonetheless, the terrorists who murdered 19 U.S. airmen and wounded hundreds more have yet to be brought to American justice.
And now another court has ruled that Iraq owes money to the family members of those killed:
The Iranian government financed a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia and must pay $254 million to the victims’ families, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth allows families of the victims of the Khobar Towers bombing to seek their compensation from assets that have been seized from the conservative Islamic regime in Tehran.
On June 25, 1996, a truck bomb exploded in a military housing area known as the Khobar Towers dormitory near Dhahran. U.S. authorities have long alleged that the bombing was carried out by a Saudi wing of the militant group Hezbollah, which receives support from Iran and Syria.
Though Lamberth has previously ruled that a survivor of the blast could seek payment from Iran, Friday’s ruling was the first time Tehran has been blamed for the deaths of the Americans in the bombing.
"The defendants also provided money, training and travel documents to Saudi Hezbollah members in order to facilitate the attacks," Lamberth wrote. "Moreover, the sheer gravity and nature of the attack demonstrate the defendants’ unlawful intent to inflict severe emotional distress upon the American servicemen as well as their close relatives."
But instead of holding the Iranians responsible we should now just sit down and talk to the Iranians because, well, they must someday come to their senses right?
Iran has been at war with us since Jimmy Carter gave them the go-ahead in 1979. Until we get that through our thick skulls nothing will change. But those on the left and the right who jump on the Baker bandwagon are Ignoring Iran’s complicity in killing our troops from 1979 onward. Including those killed at the Khobar Towers and those soldiers dying in Iraq right now from IED’s supplied by Iran.
They have been the center of the terrorist movement for over 30 years but now we should sit down and discuss our surrender terms? They want nukes? Lets allow it. They want guarantees that their nation will never be invaded? Let’s give them that guarantee. Their nutcase of a leader calls for the total destruction of Israel but we should just look the other way. So what if they drop a nuke on Israel, we guaranteed we would never touch them and in return we get what?
Not a damn thing.
Iran will NEVER stop supporting those who want to bring down the west. Get over your rose peddled fantasies Mr. Joe Liberal and come back to reality.
Iran will get nukes unless the west takes them out militarily, as a Israeli think tank just concluded:
Nothing short of a military strike will stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, an Israeli newspaper quoted a respected Israeli think tank as concluding on Friday.
"There is no longer a possibility for effective sanctions to stop Iran," retired Brig.-Gen. Zvi Shtauber, of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, told The Jerusalem Post.
"Our conclusion is that without military action you won’t be able to stop Iran," Shtauber said.
And even then that will only set them back. Unless there is total and complete regime change in Iran that country will continue to be a harbor for terrorism, and a harbor which may someday include nuclear weapons.
You think only 19 servicemen will die next time if Iran has the bomb?
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