re: Today in history 1983 - 241 U.S. troops killed in Lebanon

"Our Greatest Ally" was well aware that a large Mercedes truck was being modified to accept a large amount of explosives. They knew that the US and French were the likely targets but they decided to say nothing. What would the US do without such great friends?

An excerpt from Page 321 from the book "By Way of Deception"

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He said it had even
larger than usual spaces for this, so that whatever it was destined
for was going to be a major target. Now, the Mossad knew that, for
size, there were only a few logical targets, one of which must be
the U.S. compound. The question then was whether or not to
warn the Americans to be on particular alert for a truck matching
the description.

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Admony, in refusing to give the Americans specific information on
the truck, said, "No, we're not there to protect Americans. They're
a big country. Send only the regular information."
At the same time, however, all Israeli installations were given the
specific details and warned to watch for a truck matching the
description of the Mercedes.

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At Mossad headquarters, there was a sigh of relief that it wasn't us
who got hit. It was seen as a small incident so far as the Mossad
was concerned — that we had stumbled over it and wouldn't tell
anybody.

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The general attitude about the Americans was: "Hey, they wanted
to stick their nose into this Lebanon thing, let them pay the price."

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