Camille Chamoun, Longtime Lebanon Leader, Dies at 87
Former President Camille Chamoun, a tough Christian warlord who invited the first U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, died today of heart failure.
The 87-year-old Maronite Catholic died in the intensive care unit of Christian East Beirut’s Saint Georges Hospital, to which he was rushed Thursday.
Chamoun, a leading Christian politician for four decades, had escaped four assassination attempts in 19 years, the most recent in January.
In 1958, near the end of his six-year term as president, Chamoun invited U.S. troops into Lebanon to help quell a Muslim uprising. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched a 5,000-strong army and Marine contingent to aid Chamoun. The detachment stayed for six months.
Chamoun, an attorney who served as interior minister when Lebanon gained its independence from France in 1943, was finance minister in the current Cabinet, which because of the 12-year-old civil war does not function.
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