After living with senseless death and unresolved bickering for three months, few in Beirut believed that the election of President Camille Chamoun's successor would be held on schedule last week. But the U.S. troop landings had shocked all Lebanese into a new sense of urgency. Under the implied threat that troops might otherwise stay indefinitely, U.S. five-star Ambassador Robert Murphy, Ike's special envoy, performed his good offices among the warring factions with characteristically persuasive art (and then tactfully left town on polling day). All knew, and had long known, that there was only one possible figure on whom government...
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