In Memory: The Dead of Iran Air Flight 655
Today is Tuesday, 3 July 2007.
On this date in 1988, the USS Vincennes, a US Navy guided missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf, intentionally and with malice aforethought, shot down an Iranian airliner, thus assassinating 288 civilian human beings.
Various reasons have been ascribed. The command staff was so computer-illiterate and generally poorly-trained as to be incompetent to properly evaluate what they saw on their sensors. (Among other issues, they couldn’t decide if the civilian airliner, in a recognized civilian air corridor, on a scheduled flight, was climbing or descending, or whether it was turning toward the Vincennes (as if attacking) or turning away, or if it was a large airliner or a small fighter.) (True.) The captain of the ship was provably overly-aggressive. (True.) (The ship was illegally within Iranian waters.) “Better safe than sorry”.
The Wikipedia article (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 ) is a sound guide to the incident.
(Don’t ya love the way such events are so frequently described as “incidents”.)
The proximate cause of the Iran Air Flight 655 massacre was the incompetence of the command staff of the Vincennes.
The ultimate cause of the Iran Air Flight 655 massacre was the choice of the Reagan-Bush1 regime to support the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in its criminal war of aggression against Iran. (Justification: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. A fine Christian sentiment by fundamentalist Raygun.)
Such support included more than $3 billion from American taxpayers, invaluable intelligence data (which led to targeting of Iranians and Kurds with poison gases), and deployment of US armed forces, particularly the Navy, to protect Iraqi oil shipping.
Trigger-happy was the necessary corollary.
The Museum of the Bourgeois expresses its most profound sympathy to all those who suffered loss because of the assassinations perpetrated against 655 by the country of HH.
Appropriately, it is also the birthday in 1883 of Franz Kafka.
On this date in 1988, the USS Vincennes, a US Navy guided missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf, intentionally and with malice aforethought, shot down an Iranian airliner, thus assassinating 288 civilian human beings.
Various reasons have been ascribed. The command staff was so computer-illiterate and generally poorly-trained as to be incompetent to properly evaluate what they saw on their sensors. (Among other issues, they couldn’t decide if the civilian airliner, in a recognized civilian air corridor, on a scheduled flight, was climbing or descending, or whether it was turning toward the Vincennes (as if attacking) or turning away, or if it was a large airliner or a small fighter.) (True.) The captain of the ship was provably overly-aggressive. (True.) (The ship was illegally within Iranian waters.) “Better safe than sorry”.
The Wikipedia article (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 ) is a sound guide to the incident.
(Don’t ya love the way such events are so frequently described as “incidents”.)
The proximate cause of the Iran Air Flight 655 massacre was the incompetence of the command staff of the Vincennes.
The ultimate cause of the Iran Air Flight 655 massacre was the choice of the Reagan-Bush1 regime to support the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in its criminal war of aggression against Iran. (Justification: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. A fine Christian sentiment by fundamentalist Raygun.)
Such support included more than $3 billion from American taxpayers, invaluable intelligence data (which led to targeting of Iranians and Kurds with poison gases), and deployment of US armed forces, particularly the Navy, to protect Iraqi oil shipping.
Trigger-happy was the necessary corollary.
The Museum of the Bourgeois expresses its most profound sympathy to all those who suffered loss because of the assassinations perpetrated against 655 by the country of HH.
Appropriately, it is also the birthday in 1883 of Franz Kafka.
posted by HH at 7:13 PM
1 Comments:
Interesting article , you make some interesting points.
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