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Our Opinion: Newspapers cover the issues close to (your) home

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NEPA Horror Film Festival expands event schedule for Scranton showcase

<p>On Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck loaded with explosives into a U.S. Marine compound in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen.</p><p>A vehicle gate had been left open. Guards had been ordered not to load their weapons. </p><p>A few months earlier, militants had bombed the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. One congressional investigation followed. One. The purpose was to make recommendations to improve security. Even though Democrats controlled the House, there were no calls to impeach President Ronald Reagan, no subpoenas were issued for Cabinet members, no one tried to put Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in prison.</p><p>The assigned blame fell on the perpetrators, not members of the opposition party.</p><p>In the third attack in the same city in 18 months, three months after Congress published its recommendations, militants struck again, kidnapping, torturing and murdering the CIA station chief in Beirut. Congressional members wanted to know why their recommendations had not been implemented.</p><p>President Reagan compared the delay to a kitchen remodel taking longer than expected. Can you imagine the reaction today of congressional Republicans and Fox News to such a flippant response from President Barack Obama?</p><p>It&#8217;s not our security that has deteriorated over the intervening years; it&#8217;s the loss of the ability to distinguish an attack on us from a scandal by us, and the degradation of basic human decency of members of Congress and the partisan press.</p><p><strong>Wayne Warner</strong></p><p>Clarks Green</p><style>
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Letter to the Editor: Response to attacks on US increasingly shaded by hyper-partisanship