No biggie, Mbo. However, Petr, the bombing in April killed mostly diplomats, who had come in peace (I almost typoed piece! Ew!), and --to a much greater extent-- local office workers just trying to have jobs. Anyway, at that time, "peace" had been "declared" by the US government, and civilians like Dad were taken from their other posts if a) they spoke French and b) had no dependent children. I (the youngest) finished college midyear, got my degree in February, and the very next week they transferred Dad, who was in the Housing and Urban Development office of the U S Agency for International Development (AID), not in the military. They took everyone off danger pay, and dropped the barricades. Luckily for my family, the terrorists bombed the Embassy so soon after the restaffing that Mom hadn't finished packing out of Bangkok yet. In fact, I didn't even get the postcard that said that Dad had arrived in Beirut, and was eagerly awaiting Mom, until after they found his body, which wasn't right away. And I didn't have my graduation ceremony until the month after he was killed. But since this particular bombing was out of the news pretty quickly, and the subsequent one killed upwards of 300 Marines, I can see why you'd have the impression that people there were not there for peaceful reasons. I agree with what I think you say, that the death of military personnel in wartime, which this is even if undeclared (viz. the much more recent African bombings of US Embassies) is not the same type of tragedy as the death of civilians on peaceful missions in war zones. Especially when said civilians had actual assurances from the people sending them that they were not, in fact, war zones.