Another August 25th and another crisis in the Middle East. On this day it was the PLO leaving Beirut, after a brokered and somewhat tenuous peace settlement. The U.S. Marines arrived as part of a peace keeping force which would have disastrous results some months later. But for now they were acting as buffers.
Meanwhile, President Reagan returned to his vacation ranch vowing to veto the $14 Billion Supplemental Money Bill before Congress . . . oh yeah, another one of those threatened Government shutdowns we hear so much about and seem terminally shocked by. Speaking of Congress and terminally shocked, New York Congressman Fred Richmond was facing an indictment on fraud and drug charges and calls for his removal from office. Somewhere in the middle of all that was an incident with a 16 year old boy and a somewhat maladroit attempt at "who's yer daddy?" which sparked the investigation. The recession was lumbering along with the Steel Industry complaining about unfairly low prices from overseas suppliers, claiming governments in Europe were subsidizing their Steel industry and we . . .well, weren't.
And a mural painted for the Nixon library depicted a 25 foot Phoenix rising from the ashes. Cautious smiles from the Nixon folks, however there was no Nixon library at the moment to put it in. Thank God for small favors.
And so went this particular August 25th in1982 as breathlessly presented by ABC World News This Morning.
