On the August 1 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter suggested that the Reagan administration's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Beirut, Lebanon, in 1984, helped bring about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Coulter stated: “We shoot a few ... rockets into Syria as we're pulling out of Beirut, after Hezbollah kills 241 of our Marines in 1983. We always have a little skirmish with them and then pull out again. Well, OK. You keep doing that and after 30 years, you get 9-11.” Coulter's assertion came less than one week after she credited former President Ronald Reagan, in a July 26 column, with achieving “an amazing, historic pause in Muslim extremists' relentless war on America” between 1988 and 1993, after he “won the Cold War.”

In addition, during a discussion with host John Gibson about reports of Cuban President Fidel Castro's temporary transfer of power reportedly due to illness, Coulter suggested that the situation in Cuba is an opportunity to “make this [President] George Bush's Grenada.”

From the August 1 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson:

GIBSON: Big story at the State Department today -- the possibility of a democratic transition on the island of Cuba. Spokesman Sean McCormack says the U.S. has no doubt the Cuban people are weary of communist rule after 47 years and are eager to choose their leaders rather than having them imposed. The government wants to see Cuba transition to democracy, not see Castro's brother succeed him. Will that happen? Let's ask Ann Coulter, author of Godless: The Church of Liberalism. So, does this seem like a break in the long national nightmare of the Cuban people?

COULTER: Unless his brother Raúl is the George Washington of the Cubans, probably not -- not without some sort of action. I mean, we're just going to trade one dictator for the next.

I do think it's mentioning this long national nightmare for the Cubans wouldn't have happened at all if not for a typically incompetent Democrat mission under Kennedy when he withdrew air cover from the Cubans during the Bay of Pigs at the last minute. He shouldn't have let them go in at all if he was going to withdraw air cover. It's just a typical incompetent Democrat move and we could have had him out 40 years ago.

GIBSON: Raúl is said to be the more radical of the two.

COULTER: That's what I've heard. That's why I'm not looking at this with bright prospects, though, I mean, it's a tiny little tin pot dictatorship. Why not make this George Bush's Grenada? How about taking this guy out?

GIBSON: You are suggesting we attempt yet another invasion?

COULTER: Yeah. The Cubans could do it if we gave them air cover this time.

[...]

GIBSON: Is it reasonable though, to expect, do you think, that the Israelis can get in there and actually disarm these guys, or that we're going to have to stop this thing at some point, a little bit short of Hezbollah being completely gone?

COULTER: Oh, I think that would be a mistake. I mean, that is the problem. We never fight these wars to the end. We shoot a few, you know, rockets into Syria as we're pulling out of Beirut, after Hezbollah kills 241 of our Marines in 1983. We always have a little skirmish with them and then pull out again. Well, OK. You keep doing that and after 30 years, you get 9-11.

GIBSON: What do you think is going on right now? I mean, when there was -- when he turned up with -- whether it's 60 or 30 bodies in Qana, when all those women and kids are killed and you see the State Department sort of insisting on Israel finishing this quickly, what do you think is going on?

COULTER: The same thing that always goes on with the State Department -- oh, oh, there's some fighting in the war room. That's why we have so much contempt for the State Department.

GIBSON: All right, Ann Coulter, the author of Godless: The Church of Liberalism, on both Cuba and what's going on in the Middle East. Ann, thanks very much.