In 1983 , 241 Americans were murdered in Beirut by a homicide truck bomber. Almost all of the dead were Marines, Army, or Navy, and very young. Today the survivors and surviving family members have gathered to remember their dead family and comrades. Many of the young men who survived the blast had to be dug out of rubble. Imagine the relief that the searches felt when they found survivors.
Immediately following this disaster President Reagan appointed D.Rumsfeld to his cabinet. I remember the scene when President Reagan spoke to the surviving family members, and after he spoke he went into the audience and shook the hand or hugged and kissed every single man woman and child in the audience. His compassion was as overwhelming as the disaster had been devastating. In a country where buracracy had become numbing, we saw a President who wanted to genuinely reach out to his fellow countrymen in their distress.