I usually find Tom Friedman to be a windbag, but this is well researched and germane:

nytimes.com

One thing he mentioned is that the killing of the 241 Marines in Beirut (two of whom I grew up with and are buried almost next to each other near my mom and dad in Arlington) was on October 23, 1983. What he doesn’t mention is that on October 25, 1983, we invaded Grenada in Operation Urgent Fury.

We didn’t put the Grenada attack together in 48 hours, but Reagan’s eyes were certainly not on Beirut. He also doesn’t mention that the US Embassy in Beirut was hit the same day with an additional 17 dead.