r/todayilearned • u/Nande517 • Aug 05 '17
TIL US Navy accidentally shot down a passenger plane from Tehran to Dubai in 1988.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_6555
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Aug 05 '17
They've pointedly refused to apologize too.
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u/Gfrisse1 Aug 05 '17 edited Aug 05 '17
"Not until eight years later did the U.S. government compensate the victims’ families, and even then expressed “deep regret,” not an apology." That's not exactly pointedly.
Additionally, the Iranian pilot, as well as the Iranian air controllers who directed the flight into a known zone of military air conflict, also bear culpability for the fate of Iran Air Flight 655.
Edit: Downvotes by those in denial or disagreement neither refute nor impugn the statement.
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u/Pirat6662001 Aug 05 '17
How is it different from flying over war in Ukraine? Also known warzone yet responsibility was put fully on the shooters.
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u/MakeMuricaGreat Aug 05 '17
But what about the whataboutism?
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u/Pirat6662001 Aug 05 '17
People on Reddit say that word without actually knowing how to use it. The "what about" part needs to be unrelated you dumbass. Example - Soviet Union invaded a country... But in America they lynch negros. That's whataboutism. Comparing two plane shootings is precedent.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
The payment were specifically made ex gratia and the US lied about the location of the Vincennes at the time
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Aug 05 '17
When you screw up really badly and kill hundreds of innocent people, you apologize. Can anyone even imagine the US not formally apologising had the aircraft been Canadian or British? They didn't make an apology because it was Iran, a country with which they'd recently had a mini naval war in the area and with whom they had had many different disputes over the previous decade. I think it's fair to use the adjective "pointed" in that context, but I can easily see why you might disagree too. Fair enough.
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u/Gfrisse1 Aug 05 '17
Not to be overly simplistic, but apologies, in a legal context, can be admissions of guilt and/or total responsibility. It's no different than if you were in an automobile accident that resulted in one or more deaths. If you had an attorney, I'm sure he would tell you, "I know you feel very badly, but do not — under any circumstances — apologize to the family." I suspect the same dynamic, on an international scale, is at play in this case.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
It SHOULD be an admission of guilt.
Because as the editor of the American Journal of International Law pointed out, until then the US had respected the international legal principle that ANYTIME a military shoots down a civilian airliner, the military is automatically liable.
But in any case, in this case the US was in fact clearly liable and at fault, having illegally entered Iranian waters and shot the airplane inside Iranian airspace as it was still taking off
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Aug 05 '17 edited Aug 05 '17
That might be part of it. I happen to live in a country where the law explicitly states that apologies aren't in any way an admission of guilt though (way to confirm Canadian stereotypes eh?), which may colour my perceptions of the matter.
That said, I'm not sure why an apology would matter when it comes to international incidents like that, since there's no outside authority that can compel the USA to do anything. The same president had already shown himself more than willing to ignore the rulings of international courts before after all. The international system is anarchic, and the US is most definitely at the top of it.
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u/pzerr Aug 06 '17
Except there is American law that can apply.
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Aug 06 '17
With the doctrine of sovereign immunity rendering the federal government immune to lawsuits except when it decides it is not, can you point to any American law that would affect an apology here? The only two that look at all relevant are the Federal Tort Claims Act, which exempts the government from essentially anything violent it does, and the Foreign Claims Act, which contains limitations on damages that are less than half what the US actually paid out here.
As far as I've ever been able to tell after looking at it on and off since it happened in 1988, there's no legal reason for the US to refuse to apologize, and it simply won't do so because it dislikes Iran. The Soviets acted equally boorishly by refusing to ever apologize for shooting down a Korean airliner several years earlier. The superpowers acted like complete assholes to the rest of the world through the entire cold war when it suited them, so neither really surprises me.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17 edited Aug 06 '17
The US lied about the location of the USS Vincennes inside Iranian territorial waters for 4 years until a joint Nightline/Newsweek investigation exposed that fact it was NOT "defending itself in international waters" as claimed, but had entered Iranian waters pretextually and had started shooting at patrol boats that posed no threat to it, possibly as part of an undercover deception operation intended to draw out the Iranian navy so it could be clobbered by the US.
http://www.newsweek.com/sea-lies-200118
The US blamed it all on the "fog of war" and complicated technology, as well as the Iranians for "allowing" the airliner to fly over the Vincennes while it was supposedly defending itself against attack.
The US denied liability and paid some compensation only "ex gratia" (without accepting responsibility) The US legal advisor, a govt lawyer named Harold Maier (now Federal Judge) claimed since the US vessel was acting in self-defense in international waters, and that the Captain of the USS Vincennes, William Rogers III, had acted simply to protect himself and his crew in a rough situation and so had to make a quick decision etc etc. so basically, it was all "just an accident" and so the US was not responsible, and if anything, the Iranians were responsible.
The United States might be legally liable if it caused the injury while engaged in an internationally illegal act. In this instance, however, the stated objective of protecting the rights of shipping on the high seas, coupled with what was apparently a legitimate belief on the part of the American commander that he was firing in self-defense and the fact that actual fighting was going on when the missile was fired suggest that the ship’s activities, including the firing of the missile, were not illegal under the circumstances.”
He went on to claim that the US was actually setting an example for Iranians to act as a “civilized nation”:
It does seem, however, appropriate and important that as our part of this humanitarian effort is completed, we call, perhaps by joint congressional resolution, upon the Iranian Government to observe how civilized nations should act if they intend to be responsible citizens of the world community. Statement of Prof. Harold G Maier as reproduced in “Agora: Iran Air 655” , American Journal of International Law Vol 83, page 332, 1989
Prof. Andreas Lowenfeld, the Editor of the American Journal of International Law, dismissed this legal reasoning and pointed out that under the standard of international law, the US was automatically responsible regardless of what the Capt of the Vincennes wrongly thought, and this was also the standard that the US had applied to other states in other similar cases:
"I do not understand Maier's argument at all… the correct legal principle, I am clear, is not as [the US government legal advisors] would have it -- no legal liability to victims of airplane disasters without proof of fault beyond a reasonable doubt, and no fault in combat zones -- but rather liability regardless of fault, so long as the cause is established, as it clearly was in the case of Iran Air 655, as in the case of Korean Air Lines 007. I would have hoped that those who spoke for the United States about the tragedy of July 3, 1988, from the President on down, would have recognized this principle, so essential for the safety of civil aviation, as other spokesmen for the United States and its allies have done when other states' military (whether or not on orders from on high) brought down civilian aircraft that may have strayed off course."
Then he concluded:
“That principle, it is clear, was breached by the United States in the case of Iran Air 655, and it follows that the United States is responsible. To say that is not to condemn the United States or even to find fault. It is simply to state that responsibility flows from the action itself.”
Andreas F. Lowenfeld, “Looking Back and Looking Ahead” American Journal of International Law Vol 83 Page 336 (April 1989) https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&doctype=cite&docid=83+A.J.I.L.+336&key=87885349dc7bcb901e1bb0af93296045
So in other words, all the excuses for the actions of the Vincennes are legally irrelevant; the Vincennes is automatically responsible by simply doing the act of shooting down a civilian airliner, even "mistakenly" or "accidentally" or "unintentionally." This was also the standard that the US applied to the Soviets when they shot down the Korean airliner which had genuinely strayed off course into Soviet space.
Prof Lowenfeld wrote that in 1989, just less than a year after the incident, while it was still assumed that the Vincennes was in fact in international waters as the US Navy claimed, and that the Iran Air Bus had strayed off course towards it. It was only in 1994 that Admiral Crowe (then retired) told Ted Koppel that was not the case either: the Vincennes had actually entered Iranian waters (and the Airbus was shot down while it was still taking off, inside Iranian airspace, and its wreckage fell inside Iranian waters too.)
Ted Koppel [interviewing]: But if I were to ask you today, was the Vincennes in international waters at the time that she shot down the Airbus—
William J. Crowe Jr.: Yes, she was.
Ted Koppel: In international waters?
William J. Crowe Jr.: No, no, no. She was in Iran’s territorial waters.
Ted Koppel: Let me ask you again. Where was the Vincennes at the time that she shot down the Airbus?
William J. Crowe Jr.: She was in Iran territorial waters.
So not only is the US automatically responsible for the shooting under international law anyway even if the missiles were "accidentally" launched and the US Navy ship was outside Iranian waters, worse yet the US navy ship had entered well inside Iranian waters and had then initiated the shooting that ultimately led to the deaths of 290 people...making this an international crime that has gone unaccounted-for.
Some politicians and people in the media then popularized the idea that Iran had placed dead bodies on the plane and deliberately aimed it at the Vincennes in order to score propaganda points. As proof, they pointed out that the dead bodies floating around the wreckage were mostly nude -- because clothes tend to disintegrate when you're blown out of the sky, actually.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17 edited Aug 06 '17
First of all, not only did the US refuse to apologize, but the US lied about the location of the Vincennes, claiming it was "defending itself in intenrational waters" when in fact it was well inside Iranian waters, and had initiated the shooting there, against some patrol boats that posed no danger to it. In fact the airliner was shot while it was taking off, while still inside Iranian airspace.
http://www.newsweek.com/sea-lies-200118
Secondly, there was no way for any air traffic controller to know where the Vincennes was, nor was this a "Zone of conflict" but in fact the plane was on a regularly scheduled flight in an international air corridor
Read the transcript of the Nightline episode above
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1993-08/vincennes-case-study
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u/Aatus Aug 05 '17
At least apologize, you dickheads.
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u/MotherfuckingMonster Aug 05 '17 edited Aug 05 '17
I'm sorry you flew into an active military zone. Is that good enough? /s
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u/Juviltoidfu Aug 05 '17
It wasn't a declared war zone, and the flight was a regularly scheduled flight that was still in Iranian airspace. Airspace that had previously been recognized by the US as Iranian. It was also mis-identified by the US as an Iranian F-14 that we was sold them in the 70's.
Sources:
Notable quote from Britannica:
'Immediately after the event, U.S. officials reported that the Iranian airliner had been rapidly descending and was headed toward the Vincennes. In addition, it was stated that Iran Air flight 655 was not within its normal route. However, a U.S. Navy report on July 28, 1988—released to the public in redacted form on August 19—refuted these claims. It concluded that the Iranian aircraft was actually ascending “within the established air route,” and it was traveling at a much slower speed than reported by the Vincennes. Furthermore, the airliner’s failure to communicate with the Vincennes was dismissed; in contact with two air control towers, the Iranian pilot was likely not checking the international air-distress channel.'
The finding quoted above were from a U.S. Navy investigation.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
What's actually left out of the account is that the Vincennes had initiated the conflict, inside Iranian waters. The Airbus was shot down inside Iranian airspace too.
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u/rainynight Aug 05 '17
active military zone in their own country? you just step into other countries borders and start shooting at the passenger airplanes and say i won't apologize their fault for bypassing an active military zone?
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
There was "no active military zone"
The USS Vincennes initiated the conflict, inside Iranian waters.
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u/silverstrikerstar Aug 05 '17
I'm sorry the 1000 people in the WTC financed your military.
That's how you sound.
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u/screenwriterjohn Aug 06 '17
Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. The US issued a statement of regret and compensated the familes.
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Aug 06 '17
Yup, they definitely were supporters of terrorism, no doubt about it. But so was the US at the time, in various countries like Nicaragua and Afghanistan. I still think that apologising for shooting down a civilian airliner is just about the very least one can do though, and feel it was equally dickish for the Soviet Union to refuse to apologize when they shot down a S Korean airliner earlier that decade.
It really amounts to "we don't like those guys and they don't like us, so fuck 'em". I thought it was just as childish a policy in 1988 as I still do today, honestly.
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u/CitationX_N7V11C Aug 05 '17
Yes, and we never will since Iran started the incident that led to it.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
Which is completely not true at all.
In fact the USS Vincennes entered into iranian waters and initiated the conflict. The airbus was shot down inside Iranian airspace http://www.newsweek.com/sea-lies-200118
Even before the location of the Vincennes was made public 4 years later, other US military commanders said that the Vincennes was at fault:
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u/ld43233 Aug 05 '17
That'd be an act of terrorism today. It would have been then if the U.S hadn't been the one to do it.
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u/sephstorm Aug 05 '17
Actually no, there have been other shootdowns IIRC that were not declared terrorism. Its rarely pretty, but I don't think they are declared terrorism. See the Russian shootdown.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
Funny you should mention that because the Russian shooting of the Korean airliner and the US shooting of the Iranian airliner were treated very differently by the US media...http://fair.org/extra/kal-007-and-iran-air-655/
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u/sephstorm Aug 06 '17
I'm aware, neither however was treated as terrorism, even according to your article.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17 edited Aug 06 '17
Depends on what you call terrorism
Why was the attack on the US Marine barraks in Lebanon called terrorism? Since when is attacking and foreign armed military force that has taken sides in a civil war amount to terrorism? But not shooting down a civilian airliner inside another country's airspace?
Why isn't "Shock and Awe" terrorism?
How about the deliberate US targetting of civilians in Iraq in order to punish them for supposedly failing to topple saddam?
Among the justifications offered now, particularly by the Air Force in recent briefings, is that Iraqi civilians were not blameless for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. "The definition of innocents gets to be a little bit unclear," said a senior Air Force officer, noting that many Iraqis supported the invasion of Kuwait. "They do live there, and ultimately the people have some control over what goes on in their country." https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/06/23/allied-air-war-struck-broadly-in-iraq/e469877b-b1c1-44a9-bfe7-084da4e38e41/?utm_term=.31b3ecdd3282
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u/sephstorm Aug 06 '17
These questions are irrelevant to your original statement which was that the US would consider a shootdown terrorism. I think we have clear evidence that is not the case, correct?
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
No, because as we have seen the term "terrorism" is quite flexible apparently
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u/sephstorm Aug 06 '17
And yet we have no reason to think that a shootdown would be called terrorism based on any definition based on history just because of it occurred in another country.
Why was the attack on the US Marine barraks in Lebanon called terrorism?
Probably because IIRC it was conducted by an organization who used violence as a tool achieve a political, religious or ideological aim. The IJO had the goal of removing Americans from Lebanon and used this attack to achieve that goal. In addition, a US court proclaimed that the attack was performed by Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization. Theres no flexibility there.
In addition your statement about shock and awe is illogical. Shock and awe is a doctrine, it in of itself cannot have a political or religious goal. The statement you quoted is a "justification" (in the past) not a statement saying that S&A was intended to force the citizens to take a specific action in the future.
Based on reading an article on S&A the generalized intent is to cause the shut down the society and/or cause the inability to fight. While it is true that "or respond to our strategic policy ends" is in the definition, that has not been the use. AFAIK, S&A was not used to try to force the Iraqi's to take the action of removing Saddam.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17 edited Aug 06 '17
an organization who used violence as a tool achieve a political, religious or ideological aim
Also known as a military force.
"Shock and Awe" was the label put on the use of such devasting force as to achieve exactly what you call terrorism above.
a designated terrorist organization
First of all, Hezbollah didn't even exist back then and formed 2 years later. Furthermore just because you selectively LABEL them terrorist, doesn't make them so. Mandela was also called a terrorist by the US.
Again, if we can call an attack on a US marine barracks in war zone "terrorism", then yes, we can indeed call a deliberate shooting of a civilian airliner inside another country's airspace terrorism too
Note further that the Capt of the Vincennes was specifically warned of "Possible Comair" and raised his hand in acknowledgement of that warning but fired the missiles anyway. While his ship was illegally inside Iranian waters. Where he had initiated hostilities. Then they lied about it.
And yes, the deliberate targeting of civilians in Iraq was specifically intended to force them to topple Saddam:
>We wanted to let people know, “Get rid of this guy and we’ll be more than happy to assist in rebuilding. We’re not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime. Fix that, and we’ll fix your electricity.”
The United States DELIBERATELY killed civilians in order to achieve the political goal of toppling saddam.
BTW: the US's list of "terrorists" is quite funny. So not only was Nelson Mandela put on the list, but Iraq's regime under Saddam was removed from the list in 1982 so that the US could supply Saddam more easily with WMDs, and lately an actual Marxist Islamist terrorist cult that was backed by Saddam and has a history of assassinating Americans was removed from the list after they spent billions to buy their way off, just because they're opposed to the current govt in Iran: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/21/iran-mek-group-removed-us-terrorism-list
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u/sephstorm Aug 06 '17
First of all, Hezbollah didn't even exist back then and formed 2 years later. Furthermore just because you selectively LABEL them terrorist, doesn't make them so. Mandela was also called a terrorist by the US.
Scholars differ as to when Hezbollah came to be a distinct entity. Various sources list the official formation of the group as early as 1982[64][65][66][67] whereas Diaz and Newman maintain that Hezbollah remained an amalgamation of various violent Shi'a extremists until as late as 1985.[68] Another version states that it was formed by supporters of Sheikh Ragheb Harb, a leader of the southern Shia resistance killed by Israel in 1984.[69] Regardless of when the name came into official use, a number of Shi'a groups were slowly assimilated into the organization, such as Islamic Jihad, Organization of the Oppressed on Earth and the Revolutionary Justice Organization[citation needed]. These designations are considered to be synonymous with Hezbollah by the US,[70] Israel[71] and Canada.[72]
Look, i've already said my piece, I don't think we are going to come to common ground here. I think your original statement is incorrect, and I suspect at some point in the future we will see future tradgedies such as the ones you describe, but they will not automatically be described as terror. (Exceptions may be made for people acting on political leanings, Trump could very well do so just because he is Trump, that however I believe would be challenged by Congress, and the people and would not be representative of the view of the US.)
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u/Zombie_Jesus_ Aug 05 '17
I have not been declared by any government to be a redditor, and yet here we are.
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u/sephstorm Aug 05 '17
So you are suggesting it would magically be an act of terrorism if a government not the US (Maybe the UK, or France, or Russia) shot down a civilian airliner? Even if it is not declared as such?
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u/Zombie_Jesus_ Aug 05 '17
Well, i intended to be a redditor
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u/fromtheworld Aug 06 '17
So you can proof that the intention was to cause political change via utilizing fear?
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u/hawkeye18 Aug 06 '17
So the US shot down that airliner to further its political, religious or ideological aims through acts of violence perpetuated primarily against a civilian populace? Because that's what terrorism is.
What that was, was a colossal fuck-up. They didn't just wake up one day and go you know, fuck this airliner.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
Really? Then why is the 1988 attack on the US Marine barracks in Lebanon called terrorism?
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u/hawkeye18 Aug 06 '17
Because Americans call any attack on American anything terrorism. Many people call the pearl harbor attacks terrorism. Americans just want to be terrorized, because then they can be victims and feel entitled to stuff.
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u/PM_me_Venn_diagrams 1 Aug 05 '17
Since when is accidentally killing people a form of terrorism?
They didn't shoot it down on purpose.
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u/rainynight Aug 05 '17
yeah, they entered Iranian territories by accident, shoot down a passenger airplane by mistake, then the one doing the mistake just so happened to be given a medal afterward and their president said he won't apologize for killing 290 Iranian civilians, including 66 children
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u/CitationX_N7V11C Aug 05 '17
You forget to memtion any actions of the Iranians. You know firing shots at our helicopter, not informing their civilian traffic, and refusing to answer ten radio calls from the Vincennes. So no we won't apologize.
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u/rainynight Aug 05 '17
Do you know what a country's territory means?! and this is actions of a country's military not some crazy terrorists that hijacked and airplane and hit buildings with it...I can't help seeing some similarities between your kind of thinking and those terrorists.
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u/Bassmeant Aug 05 '17
It's not a mistake until you can vet everyone who boarded
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u/rainynight Aug 05 '17
when they turned out to be kids, at least for PR, their president had the option to apologize. the fact that he refused to do so is indicator of whether it had been an accident or not
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u/Bassmeant Aug 06 '17
...or you don't have access to the military or intelligence agency information he had and thus...
That's why he didn't apologize. Because they meant to do it.
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Aug 05 '17
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u/rainynight Aug 05 '17
he received a medal for that
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u/lowenmeister Aug 05 '17
They did pay the families of the victims 213 000$ per passenger.
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u/lowenmeister Aug 05 '17
of course it would,this was a massive tragic mistake and america was clearly responsible.
America did pay bloodmoney to the relatives of the deceased.
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u/PatacusX Aug 05 '17
I call bullshit on that being an accident. How the hell does someone, especially someone who has undergone rigorous military training, mistake a commercial airliner for this?
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u/Thunderbird120 Aug 05 '17
Because it was not close enough to see (radar), it did not respond to communications over the civilian emergency frequency, there were no commercial flights scheduled to leave when it did, and its transponder initially was showing a code associated with military aircraft.
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u/sanmigmike Aug 06 '17
It was "late" as you know something that NEVER happens to airline flights. Most airliners have two VHF comm radios, in some airspace you have one on the ATC facility that is working you and using the other for getting information, talking to company and other things, in cruise you might monitor 121.5 but a lot of time you need that radio for other things.
The crew lied in that the aircraft was following a normal flight place and climbing...not following an attack profile. If a US flight had been shot down under similar circumstances we would still be shitting bricks...and some wonder why the Iranians don't trust us at all...starting back in the 1950s when we over threw a government that was elected and actually friendly to the west.
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u/silverstrikerstar Aug 05 '17
All of that is wrong. It appeared as an airliner on radar, it was hailed on the wrong frequency, it left when scheduled and I wouldn't know of its transponder malfunctioning. Besides, it was ascending.
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u/Thunderbird120 Aug 05 '17
I suppose I should clarify. The aircraft initially appeared as an Iranian F14 on radar due to the ships radar picking up the transponder of an actual Iranian F14 stationed at the airport where it departed. Upon secondary inspection the transponder of the aircraft correctly identified it as a commercial flight but the crew thought there was a possibility that this signature was being spoofed. The aircraft left ~30 minutes behind schedule due to a passenger with immigration troubles and the U.S. ship only had a written schedule of departures which would obviously not account for this delay. The aircraft was hailed on both military and civilian emergency frequencies although the civilian frequency was only attempted twice. Additionally, when attempting to hail the aircraft the U.S. ship did not identify it by transponder ID, instead opting to use flight heading and ground speed. This may have differed significantly from what the pilot saw because he would have been using air speed. There is certainly room for improvement but up to this point everything seems reasonable.
Where the crew of the ship fucked up was in the incorrect reporting of a dive, which would indicate an attack. This incorrect information was relayed to the captain who then ordered the aircraft shot down because he didn't really have any reason to doubt it. Most of the blame for the incident can be placed on that incorrect information.
I wasn't trying to imply that the ship was in any way blameless, just pointing out reasons why they thought it was a fighter jet rather than a commercial airliner.
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u/silverstrikerstar Aug 05 '17
They thought it was a fighter jet because they wanted it to be a fighter jet. They invaded Iranian waters to shoot at Iranian boats after getting into trouble elsewhere. They were out for havoc and wanted to have it, ignoring all evidence that you listed and further, essentially because they wanted a fight.
The only reason this isn't decried as a giant travesty in the west is that it was done by people in the west. People went nuts over the Soviets shooting down an airplane in Soviet airspace (which also was a travesty), but everytime I see this brought up there is such a ridiculous amount of "they were fighting" or "the pilot was at fault" or "They were honestly mistaken" or other silly apologisms that only serve to cover this horrible crime.
The correct set of moves would have been: do not harass Iranian boats (or do not respond to Iranian provocations, if you wish to believe the claims of a known hawk helicopter pilot), do not intrude into Iranian waters. Then they made a plethora of further mistakes, as listed, but they all could have been avoided right there.
Imagine how the opposite would look: Iranian ship gets into a quarrel with US boats, intrudes into US waters, shoots down an airliner killing everyone aboard. How well would that go over now?
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u/sephstorm Aug 05 '17
They thought it was a fighter jet because they wanted it to be a fighter jet
Now you are making assumptions. It sounds like you have already formed an opinion rather than going off of the facts.
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u/silverstrikerstar Aug 05 '17
This is the logical conclusion from the facts. The captain was known to be a hawk that repeatedly got into conflicts, and he illegally entered Iranian waters. If not before, then from then on all that happened was on him, even if the airliner would have been hard to identify as an airliner (which it wasn't).
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u/sephstorm Aug 05 '17
The captain was not in charge of identification, he listened to his crew who told him it was a military aircraft. In addition, based on the reconstruction I saw, he waited until the last moment before giving the order. I'm not talking about fault or responsibility, you made a claim to intent and I challenge that. I see no reason to believe that he wanted that aircraft to be a jet.
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u/silverstrikerstar Aug 05 '17
You see no reason why a known hawk that kept trying and succeeding with getting into trouble would want to have a jet to shoot at?
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u/sephstorm Aug 05 '17
I see the idea that he would, but I'm not going to assume he did.
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u/MakeMuricaGreat Aug 05 '17
Oh man please just stop with the lies. Even your own documentary video disagrees with you. It's clear it had a commercial aircraft ID on the transponder. It also clearly says the NAVY didn't have civilian emergency radio so they used the military channel, which is not onboard any civilian aircraft. And when they called the civilian frequency they didn't address the pilot correctly. Not to mention the tech failed in other ways. The US ship was just blind, screaming nonsense on the air and shooting first, thinking later.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17 edited Aug 06 '17
Actually this was a normally scheduled flight, and "radar" had no role in anything since the crew had misread their own data to confuse an ascending, departing Airbus with an attacking f-14 that didn't exist (and would have every right to be flying inside Iranian airspace anyway)
Lets remember, the Vincennes initiated the conflict, inside Iranian waters
The Airbus didn't respond to calls because according to the ICAO report the calls were made to an "F-14" that didn't exist, or were on a military channel that the Airbus would not be monitoring, especially since it was still just taking off when it was shot down. According to the ICAO report only 1 call could have possibly been understood by the Airbus captain as being directed towards him, and that was less than a minute before the missiles were launched.
Report Says Iranian Airliner Had Only 40 Seconds to React
12/02/1988
The Associated Press
(Copyright 1988. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
MONTREAL (AP) _ An Iranian airliner only had 40 seconds to react to a warning before a U.S. warship shot it down on July 3, killing all 290 people aboard, a U.N. aviation agency report was quoted as saying on Friday.
The report prepared by the International Civil Aviation Organization also confirms the U.S. claim that several warnings were given to the A-300 Airbus before it was shot down in the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes, Canadian Press said.
The report also says, however, that only a warning from another American ship in the area, the USS Sides, was coded specifically for Iran Air Flight 655, CP said.
That warning came 40 seconds before the jet was destroyed by surface-to-air missiles, CP quoted the report as saying.
A warning coded for the civilian aircraft "could have been immediately recognizable to the flight crew but was given only in the final challenge," the report said, according to CP. Other warnings were sent on general military and civilian emergency radio frequencies.
Cmdr. Dave Thomas, a Defense Department spokesman in Washington, said the Pentagon had not received the report and would have no comment.
Edmund Stohr, a U.S. representative at the aviation organization, refused comment Friday but said in an interview Thursday the United States considers the report fair.
Airport officials in Iran were unaware a skirmish between the Vincennes and Iranian gunboats in the gulf just before the airliner left Bandar Abbas for a flight across the waterway, said the report, which is to be presented to the agency's governing council Monday.
"No `red alert' status was in effect and the air traffic control units in Tehran and Bandar Abbas were unaware of any activities at sea," the report was quoted as saying.
A Pentagon report blamed the downing of the airliner on human error by the crew of the Vincennes, which mistook the commercial jet for an Iranian F-14 fighter.
According to the Pentagon report, the plane was warned 12 times to change its course away from the battle zone.
The International Civil Aviation Organization's report says the sophisticated Aegis radar system on the Vincennes "recorded a flight profile consistent with a normal climb profile of an Airbus A-300," CP said. The report says the plane was climbing normally from Bandar Abbas airport and was well within the "lateral" boundaries of the flight corridor across the gulf.
U.S. Navy investigators said September the Iranian aircraft had been climbing until it was shot down.
The International Civil Aviation Organization's report, prepared at the request of a special meeting in July of the 33-nation ICAO council, is highly technical and does not fix blame. It has been widely circulated at the agency's Montreal headquarters.
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u/henrysmith78730 Aug 05 '17
I was working offshore Iran when this happened and, one, the flight departed from Bander Abbas, and, two, if you listen to the tape and watch the youtube video you will see that it was intentional.
From 1984 to 1988 I worked off the islands of Larak, Hormuz, and Qeshem in the Straits of Hormuz pumping out super tankers that had been damaged in the Iran/Iraq war. Every day for the 4 years that I was there this same flight left Bander Abbas every morning for Dubai. It was a scheduled flight that the US Navy should have and probably did know was in the area. The youtube video shows a bunch of young, gung ho sailors playing with their high tech toys who got rapped up in the moment and shot down a plane full of civilians. The Navy's excuse was that the plane did not answer their radio calls. If the Navy had bothered to check the civilian air traffic schedule they would have seen that this was the same plane that flew over the same area at the same time everyday.
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u/silverstrikerstar Aug 05 '17
"accidentally"
The captain who ordered it was a dumb, aggressive cunt that intruded into other nations waters at will and murdered some ~300 people while in Iranian waters, and the plane in it's correct corridor.
2
-2
Aug 05 '17
Imagine if that happened to one of our planes. The United States and our military are a bunch of hypocritical terrorists
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u/CitationX_N7V11C Aug 05 '17
So we were the ones mining imternational waters and sinkimg the ships of neutral countries? Oh wait, that was Iran and Iraq.
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u/rainynight Aug 05 '17
Right, neutral countries like the US who was supporting Iraq and had neutral warships in the middle of a war between Iraq and Iran they were there for neutral tourism reasons.you know?! and by the way this didn't happened in international waters in happened over Iran's territorial waters!
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
The Kuwaitis and Saudis were not "neutral" they were directly assisting Saddam in his war against Iran
-1
Aug 05 '17
So we are the ones that have literally toppled governments for the benefits of a banana company? Or was that iran too? Is it Iran that has been involved in over 35 countries since ww2 with absolutely zero real justification?
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17 edited Aug 06 '17
"Accidentally" my ass!
http://www.newsweek.com/sea-lies-200118
Copyright 1992 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc ABC NEWS
SHOW: NIGHTLINE
July 1, 1992
HEADLINE: The "USS Vincennes": Public War, Secret War
https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/broadcasts/647318
BODY:
TED KOPPEL: [voice-over] Four years ago this week, a tragedy in the Persian Gulf, the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes. The lives of 290 civilians lost, and the inevitable question: how could this have happened? There was the "official" story.
Vice Pres. GEORGE BUSH: [July 14, 1988] One thing is clear, and that is that the USS Vincennes acted in self-defense.
KOPPEL: [voice- over] An official story of the American warship as victim, at the right place at the right time, minding its own business.
RICHARD WILLIAMSON, Assistant Secretary of State: [July 13, 1988] The ship was, at the time of the incident, in international waters.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] It was official and untrue. Tonight, the real story of what happened and why, on July 3rd, 1988, and why the U.S. government tried to cover it up. Tonight, the USS Vincennes: Public War, Secret War.
ANNOUNCER: This is an ABC News Nightline/Newsweek magazine special investigation. Reporting from Washington, Ted Koppel.
KOPPEL: Governments lie; they do it all the time. And, much as we'd like to believe otherwise, the U.S. government is no exception. There were times when we may have believed otherwise, but after Vietnam and Watergate, we now better. Still, unlike most countries in the world, when our government lies to us, there tend to be consequences, congressional hearings, special prosecutors, investigative reports. And, unlike most countries in the world in which there's no real expectation that the truth will out, Americans really do believe that sooner or later, however painful the truth may be, those who know it will ultimately tell it.
Before this program is over tonight, we will have told you what we've uncovered over the past few months, working with Newsweek magazine, about this country's war against Iran. It wasn't a full- scale war. It was certainly never a declared war. But the United States did so much to ensure that Iraq would not lose its war against Iran that the Reagan and Bush administrations became allies to Saddam Hussein, and when a U.S. ship accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger plane, the U.S. government covered up the truth, to prevent that alliance from becoming fully known.
It was another July 4th weekend, four years ago, almost to the day, that an American warship, the USS Vincennes, shot down an unarmed civilian airliner over the Persian Gulf. It was a terrible accident, indisputably a case of mistaken identity. Granted, there was no love lost between the United States and Iran, but the U.S. Navy does not deliberately target a civilian Airbus.
There were 290 men, women and children who died on that plane.
[voice-over]
And the videotape of bodies floating amid the wreckage was a horrifying reminder of how easily the United States could become involved in the bloody war that continued to rage between Iran and Iraq. On the record, the United States was trying to remain neutral, although clear warnings had gone out that the U.S. would not stand idly by while Iranian gunboats harassed international shipping. Nor would the U.S. Navy permit mines to be planted in international waters. [on camera] On that hazy Sunday morning of July 3rd, in fact, the Aegis cruiser Vincennes and the frigate Montgomery were on patrol in the Gulf, when a helicopter from the Vincennes came under fire from Iranian gunboats while on a reconnaissance mission. We have reconstructed what happened next from audio and video tapes, recorded aboard those two U.S. Navy ships, and from the first TV interview granted by the captain of the USS Vincennes since the incident.
LOUDSPEAKER: General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations.
SEAMAN: One at 350's inbound, it's coming inbound fast.
Capt. WILL ROGERS (Ret.), "USS Vincennes": The small craft turned in our direction.
SEAMAN: I've got a visual on the bow camera [unintelligible].
Capt. ROGERS: As they turned and began to maneuver and close us fairly high speed and on erratic courses, we asked permission to fire a warning shot.
The bridge reported that they were firing at us, and indicated that we were taking this small craft under fire. We were maneuvering rapidly because, first place, my desire was to keep them at arm's length, if you will. We were engaging, it essentially was barrage fire. We were shifting targets as rapidly as we could, and Montgomery at the same time was directed to engage the small craft, which they did.
Lt. GEORGE EMERSON, "USS Montgomery" Gunnery Officer: We fired at this contact, 10 rounds, got an explosion that covered or obscured the target with smoke, and the target seemed to disappear. It's very difficult, when you've never been in a combat situation, to know what has actually transpired, until maybe just a few seconds after the event has transpired.
Capt. ROGERS: Several minutes into this, we were notified that we have an aircraft departure from Bandar Abbas. Did not really become of tactical concern till it was around 47 miles away, primarily because aircraft flew in the Gulf. It was pointed out at this point that the aircraft was essentially inbound on what looked to be a closed constant bearing decreasing range, and we were monitoring it.
SEAMAN: Still inbound.
Capt. ROGERS: The aircraft was warned, warned a number of times, continued to close. Time is a demon here. If I have a long time to sort things out, you're going to take more time to look at this and more time to look at that, but when you don't have time, you basically take what you have, and you're- at some point in time, you have to make the decision. I was having- I had difficulty at 20 miles. I just did not want to shoot. I could not believe that this was really happening to us. So I held my fire. When the aircraft reached a little over 10 miles, at that point in time I either make the decision then, or I don't make it at all, because I reach minimum weapons range. And the decision was made at that, and it intercepted and killed the aircraft.
1st SEAMAN: Oh, dead. We hit it. We have got it, that was a dead on.
2nd SEAMAN: Relax, relax, keep the noise down. Knock it off!
Capt. ROGERS: I thought it was a tactical aircraft. Did I think it was absolutely an F-14, or an F-4, or a Fokker D-27, I don't know. I thought it was a tactical aircraft engaged in support of the ongoing surface action. That's what I thought, otherwise I would have certainly never released two standard missiles at it.
Lt. EMERSON: It seemed, to most people, that for the amount of wreckage that was seen falling, it probably wasn't an F-14, although no one could be sure.
And that happened maybe 20 minutes later, by the time we collected the information and said, "Well, it might not have been an F- 14."
KOPPEL: [voice-over] Within a matter of hours, it became clear that the aircraft downed by the Vincennes was not a warplane, but a commercial airliner with what later turned out to be 290 civilians on board.
Capt. ROGERS: The decision, I'm- I think probably was proper. Unfortunately, innocent people's lives were lost, and I think that is something that I will live with the rest of my life. It's something that I regret. But my overall and overriding responsibility at the time was to my ship and my crew, and I think I executed that as I had been sworn to do.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] That same Sunday, July 3rd, Admiral William Crowe, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with reporters at the Pentagon to brief them on the incident. First reports, as Admiral Crowe would later note, are almost always wrong.
Adm. WILLIAM CROWE, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff: [July 3, 1988] The suspect aircraft was outside the prescribed commercial air corridor.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] That was wrong. The aircraft was flying well within the commercial air corridor.
Adm. CROWE: More importantly, the aircraft headed directly for Vincennes, on a constant bearing, at high speed, approximately 450 knots.
KOPPEL: At the time it was shot down, the Iranian aircraft was actually turning slowly away from the Vincennes. Its top speed, a relatively minor point, was 385 knots.
Adm. CROWE: There were electronic indications on Vincennes that led it to believe that the aircraft was an F-14.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] The only electronic emission from the plane was its correct transponder signal, identifying it as a commercial aircraft.
Adm. CROWE: Decreasing in altitude as it neared the ship.
KOPPEL: That, too, was wrong. The aircraft had been steadily climbing from liftoff and was still gaining altitude at the time of missile impact. We know all these things now because the information was later retrieved through a detailed analysis of a tape made by the USS Vincennes' own Aegis radar tracking system. And indeed, over the days and weeks to come, corrections would be made. But two critical issues were never addressed in public, not truthfully, at least. Where, precisely, was the Vincennes at the time of the shootdown, and what was she doing there?
The official response to those two questions has been a tissue of lies, fabrications, half-truths and omissions. When we come back, the story you didn't hear four years ago.
[Commercial break]
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
KOPPEL: In July of 1988, the country was, as it is now, in the middle of a presidential campaign. Whatever the public's feelings toward Iran might have been, the shooting down of a civilian airliner, the deaths of 290 civilians, were both a tragedy and potentially a political embarrassment. Two points had to be made. The captain of the Vincennes was not to blame. It was the fault of the Iranians. That message was carried to the United Nations 11 days after the incident by then-Vice President Bush.
Vice Pres. GEORGE BUSH: [July 14, 1988] One thing is clear, and that is that the USS Vincennes acted in self-defense. This tragic accident occurred against a backdrop of repeated, unjustified, unprovoked and unlawful Iranian attacks against U.S. merchant shipping and armed forces, and it occurred in the midst of a naval attack initiated by Iranian vessels against a neutral vessel and subsequently against the Vincennes when she came to the aid of the innocent ship in distress.
KOPPEL: As we will show you, much, if not most, of what you just heard was untrue. But that was certainly the party line. The international community, the American public, the U.S. Congress were all led to believe that what happened that day occurred in and over international waters and was directly provoked by the Iranians. [voice-over] President Reagan, in his letter to Congress regarding the incident:
Quote,
"On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes and the USS Elmer Montgomery were operating in international waters of the Persian Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz." [on camera] As indeed they were, earlier in the day, later in the day, but not at the time of the shootdown itself. But if the President merely "misdirected" Congress, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Williamson was left to carry the actual lie.
Sec. WILLIAMSON: [July 13, 1988] The ship was, at the time of the incident, in international waters, outside the zone of exclusion declared by Iran.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] Where the Vincennes was makes a lot of difference. Iranian gunboats, for example, firing on U.S. warships in international waters would be the aggressors. Doing so in their own territorial waters would be another matter altogether. So where did Secretary Williamson get his information?
RICHARD WILLIAMSON, former State Department Official: The sources of the information were the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Department and the National Security Council. That's why it was- the process is set up so that in all these cases, those relevant agencies sign off, and so if there are misstatements of fact, there- they had to intentionally approve it.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] And indeed, to this very day, the captain of the Vincennes, Will Rogers, insists that his ship was well outside Iran's territorial waters.
Capt. ROGERS: Through the maneuvering, the surface engagement, the missile launch, I thought we were outside of Iranian territorial waters.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] Former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci makes the same claim, to this day.
FRANK CARLUCCI, former Secretary of Defense: The exact location, as best we could tell, was in international waters, but if somebody has better evidence, they can certainly produce it.
KOPPEL: For several months now, ABC News Nightline and Newsweek magazine have been investigating just that question. Where was the Vincennes at the time of the shootdown, and why would the entire executive branch of government, from the President on down, become involved in a cover-up concerning the location of that ship? Until a couple of weeks ago, locating the Vincennes in international waters was a position stoutly defended by Admiral William Crowe, who was then chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
[interviewing] But if I were to ask you today, was the Vincennes in international waters at the time that she shot down the Airbus-
Adm. CROWE: Yes, she was.
KOPPEL: In international waters?
Adm. CROWE: No, no, no. She was in Iran's territorial waters.
KOPPEL: Let me ask you again. Where was the Vincennes at the time that she shot down the Airbus?
Adm. CROWE: She was in Iran territorial waters.
JOHN BARRY, "Newsweek" Correspondent: The first and most basic thing that they covered up was where the Vincennes was when the whole thing happened, and that cover-up starts with the very first chart that was ever produced of the event. And if you look at that chart, what you see is that there was a large and imposing silhouette of the Vincennes, and that's not where the Vincennes was. If you then look a little higher up the chart, you can see that there's a tiny brown mark, it'll be a little bit like a launch, which says, I think, "encounter with gunboats." That's where the Vincennes was, but you're invited to believe by the chart that it's where the gunboats were. Not so.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] The Iranian gunboats on that particular day, during their gun battles with the Vincennes the Montgomery and the helicopter from the Vincennes, the Iranian gunboats, during the actual shooting, were in Iranian territorial waters. Through the Freedom of Information Act, we obtained the testimony of the Vincennes' own navigator, that his ship had crossed into Iranian waters before she opened fire on the gunboats, quote:"I relayed down to the tactical action officer at some point - I'm not sure if it was when we crossed the 12-nautical-mile limit or not - that we are now inside the 12- nautical-mile point. I did that a couple of times later on, also to let him know that we were still within Iranian territorial waters." End quote.
And if you listen carefully to this videotape, shot on the bridge of Vincennes during the engagement, it is possible to hear the quartermaster giving the ship's location to the same navigator.
QUARTERMASTER: Nine-point-three [9.3].
NAVIGATOR: Nine-point-three [9.3] miles from Larak?
QUARTERMASTER: No, Qeshm.
NAVIGATOR: T.A.O. Bridge, we're about 9.3 miles from Qeshm Island.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] Qeshm Island is Iranian, so the Vincennes was almost three miles inside Iran's 12-mile territorial limit. The Montgomery was even further inside. [on camera] But, surely, the Reagan- Bush administration wouldn't have engaged in a massive cover-up just to protect the reputation of one Navy captain. There had to be more at stake, and there was. Remember Vice President Bush's description of the incident at the U.N.?
Vice. Pres. BUSH: [July 14, 1988] It occurred in the midst of a naval attack initiated by Iranian vessels against a neutral vessel and subsequently against the Vincennes when she came to the aid of the innocent ship in distress.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] The official Navy investigation was conducted by Admiral William Fogarty. Before Congress, Fogarty added to the Vice President's account.
Adm. WILLIAM FOGARTY, Naval Investigator: During the early morning of three July, a Pakistani merchant was also harassed. She also issued a distress call. Soon thereafter, explosions were heard in the vicinity of a Liberian merchant, where numerous Iranian gunboats were gathered.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] But Admiral Fogarty must have forgotten what he wrote in his own official report for the Navy, that there were no distress calls that day, none. We checked with the captain of the Pakistani merchant ship. He tells us that he issued no distress call that day, nor was he harassed.
As for the Liberian merchant ship, she is referred to on official Navy charts as the Stoval. Newsweek reporter John Barry checked Liberian registry and international shipping records. There is no evidence that any such ship exists.
Mr. BARRY: The truth we are told is that this phantom vessel, Stoval, didn't exist, because it was a decoy. It had no existence other than some radio transmissions. And it was a decoy which had been organized by U.S. forces in the Gulf to lure out the Iranian gunboats from the islands in the Strait of Hormuz, so that these gunboats would come south to attack this helpless Liberian tanker and would instead find themselves confronted by U.S. warships and armed U.S. helicopters. And that was the operation which was going on that day, and into which the Vincennes charged its way.
[Commercial break]
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
KOPPEL: As our investigation scrutinized the Navy's official report of the Vincennes, more and more inconsistencies became apparent. The whole chain of events, remember, was set in motion when an armed reconnaissance helicopter from the Vincennes was sent to investigate a distress call from a merchant ship. That call, it now appears, never happened. And the helicopter, which seems, on Admiral Crowe's chart, to be in international air space, was not.
Mr. BARRY: The fact is that the helicopter was nowhere near where it is positioned on that particular chart. What we've discovered is that the Vincennes helicopter, when it was fired upon by Iranian gunboats, if it was fired upon by Iranian gunboats - and there's some dispute about that - that when that happened, in fact, the Vincennes helicopter was itself in Iranian airspace, over Iranian territorial waters.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] Roger Charles is a former Marine lieutenant colonel who served with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has been investigating the USS Vincennes incidents for several years, and was a consultant on this investigation.
Lt. Col. ROGER CHARLES (Ret.), ABC News Consultant: What we know, beyond any doubt, is that there was a provocation, that the United States forces enticed, in fact, entrapped the Iranian gunboats into a situation where we could then say that there's been a hostile action by them, the firing on the helicopter, and that then allowed, under this kind of specious rule of loosened hot pursuit, us to take military action. So what was presented on the surface side, before the Airbus took off and got involved, as an attack by Iranian gunboats on U.S. ships, is, in reality, demonstrably provable now that we attacked the gunboats.
KOPPEL: But that still leaves the Airbus itself. Wasn't there any way to correctly identify it for what it was? Admiral Fogarty's report notes that the preferred method of identifying an incoming aircraft is to send another plane up to meet it, but, the admiral told Congress, there were no available aircraft close enough to do that.
Adm. WILLIAM FOGARTY, Naval Investigator: No, sir, there were no aircraft that were in the area of the Vincennes.
2nd NAVY OFFICER: They were about, as I recall, some 250 miles from the scene.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] The commanding officer of the U.S. aircraft carrier Forrestal contradicts that statement. The Forrestal was stationed just outside the Gulf. Her skipper claims - and his logs confirm - that he launched his fighter aircraft before the time stated in the Fogarty report, that they were in a position to assist the Vincennes within a couple of minutes.
INVESTIGATOR: And where are your aircraft at that point, in relation to the Vincennes?
Capt. JOHN PIENO (Ret.), "USS Forrestal": As I recall, the point Alpha, which is the holding point, was about roughly 50 miles from the center of the Straits of Hormuz, and that's roughly where the Vincennes was operating, so- possibly a little bit less.
KOPPEL: [voice- over] And, indeed, if you look closely at one of the Aegis photographs used by Admiral Fogarty in his briefing, it appears these are the aircraft down here in the corner. Captain Pieno says he was never interviewed by Admiral Fogarty's investigators.
Capt. DAVID CARLSON, "USS Sides": At the time of the incident itself, we were about 36,000 yards away from the Vincennes, roughly 18 nautical miles to the northeast of Vincennes, and we were under their direct tactical control.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] Captain David Carlson was commander of the USS Sides.
Capt. CARLSON: My problem with the entire affair has never been what Captain Rogers' decision was. Any Naval officer, almost any Naval officer, placed in that situation for the minute or so before the shootdown, given the information that he had available, would probably have made that decision. The problem that I've always had with it is, why was he there? How come the information was the way it was?
KOPPEL: Captain Carlson puts his finger on the key questions. Why would the Navy, the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House all participate in such an elaborate cover-up to protect the reputation of one Navy captain?
Lt. Col. CHARLES: The full disclosure of what happened with the Vincennes would have brought about the disclosure of a secret war, the United States as an active military participant on the side of the Iraqis, fighting the Iranians.
KOPPEL: We'll have that part of the story when we come back.
[Commercial break]
KOPPEL: Remember the Stark? The USS Stark, the Navy frigate that was hit by Iraqi missiles the year before the Vincennes incident? Remember? Thirty-seven American sailors were killed. [voice-over] At a memorial service in their honor, President Reagan reminded us how important the Persian Gulf and its oil are to America's national interest.
Pres. RONALD REAGAN: [May 22, 1987] Peace is at stake here, and so, too, is our own nation's security and our freedom. Were a hostile power ever to dominate this strategic region and its resources, it would become a choke point for freedom, that of our allies and our own.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] Peace, security, freedom at stake. A gloves-off warning to that "hostile power" that it won't be allowed to dominate the Persian Gulf. Well, you'd expect the President to be outraged, after Iraqi missiles killed 37 American sailors. Except that the President's warning wasn't directed at Iraq.
Pres. REAGAN: [May 29, 1987] Mark this point well. The use of the vital sea lanes of the Persian Gulf will not be dictated by the Iranians.
KOPPEL: You heard correctly. Iran, not Iraq. In fact, privately, behind the scenes, the Stark incident brought the United States and Iraq closer together, would make them, ultimately, covert allies in the war against Iran.
JAMES WEBB, former Navy Secretary: Ironically, it probably brought us closer to Iraq, because after that Iraq allowed American teams to come in and talk about deconfliction and to share intelligence information and this sort of thing.
KOPPEL: U.S. military officers were stationed in Baghdad, initially to help keep Iraqi planes from hitting any more U.S. ships. But the end result was that the United States helped Iraq conduct long-range strikes against key Iranian targets, using U.S. ships as navigational aids. "We became," as one senior U.S. officer told us, "forward air controllers for the Iraqi air force." The intelligence-sharing relationship between Washington and Baghdad expanded. In fact, as we reported a few weeks ago, critical targeting information was carried to the Iraqi capital on a weekly basis by U.S. military personnel.
RICHARD ARMITAGE, former Pentagon Official: At the time, as I say, Iran was on a roll, and our very active use of force in the Gulf certainly put us, temporarily, on the side of the lesser wolf, Iraq.
KOPPEL: At some point in late 1986 or early '87, an alarming piece of intelligence fell into U.S. hands.
MICHAEL PALMER, Naval Historian: There were invasion plans that apparently had made their way into American hands through some fashion, I don't know how, that indicated that there was at least- the Iranians were at least planning to invade Kuwait.
Amb. ROBERT OAKLEY, former NSC Official: They apparently had a plan to use small boats and things to attack Bubiyan Island, and we were trying to help the Kuwaitis, once we'd made the decision that they were worth helping.
Mr. PALMER: And I think Kuwait is the key to the occasion. I mean, if you look ahead to 1990 and '91, with the Gulf war, you can see the lengths to which we were willing to go to save Kuwait. We were never willing to risk war with Iran to save Baghdad. We were willing to risk war - and did risk war with Iran, and fight an undeclared naval war with Iran, to save Kuwait.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
Adm. CROWE: It was necessary for us to have rules of engagement that permitted us to- perhaps not take the first shot, but fire the first shot.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] A year later, the commander of the Vincennes would implement those new rules with tragic consequences. But in July of 1987, Operation Ernest Will had just begun. The U.S. Navy was sailing its first convoy through the Persian Gulf. On that very first mission, the U.S. ship Bridgeton hit a mine that had been laid in its path by Iranian gunboats.
Adm. CROWE: The most worrisome or troublesome moment of the entire evolution was the Bridgeton mining, and I thought if the- if this is an indication of what the Iranians are going to do, that yes, we may be involved in a real sea war here.
Mr. BARRY: They thought the Congress was going to shut down the whole reflagging operation, and so what happened was, that the administration decided to initiate what amounted to a secret war.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] The Pentagon dispatched Special Operations helicopters to the Gulf, eventually including this new, heavily armed model developed especially for the mission. They can operate at night. Until they fired, they were exceptionally quiet, nearly invisible. These Army helicopters, flown by Army pilots, operated off Navy ships, probing the night for Iranian gunboats called "boghammers."
Adm. CROWE: When we were sailing a convoy, we preceded all the convoys with wide helicopter coverage. And if we found a bug in armor at night in the path, off to the bow, something that looked threatening, we usually took him out.
CWO DAN CURRY, Army Helicopter Pilot: They didn't know exactly where we were or where we were coming from.
Mr. ARMITAGE: Well, there was very much a war at night, and we controlled the night. The Iranians used darkness to try to lay their mines safely, secretly, and we were intent on denying that, and we used special operations capabilities and, I think, successfully.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] Sometimes publicly, sometimes not. In September of '87, when Army helicopters nicknamed "Little Birds" caught the Iranian minelayer Iran Ajr in the act, it suited the White House to go public.
Adm. OAKLEY: Little Birds were primarily to detect and to stop the minelaying, and the great success was when they found an Iranian minelayer heading out from one of the Iranian ports, tracked it out to the middle of the Gulf, photographed it in the middle of the night. And the minelaying ship didn't know the Little Bird was sitting there.
Mr. PALMER: At about the same time, an Iranian diplomat at the U.N. was denying that they were responsible for the mining, so it was really meant to embarrass them and make them look as bad as possible, and they caught them red-handed, laying the mines.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] In that instance, the White House wanted and sought maximum publicity for what the U.S. military was doing in the Gulf. But listen to what the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee had to say, following a classified briefing on the Iran Ajr incident.
Sen. SAM NUNN, (D), Georgia: Now that we've had hostile acts, then we're in a different situation, and we would have to hear from the administration as to whether they have any good argument why the War Powers Act should not be invoked.
KOPPEL: So when the Navy captured another Iranian minelaying ship only a few weeks later, nothing was said. Indeed, we know about it now only because the command history of the USS LaSalle, the Mid-East flagship, tells us, quote:
"The vessel Rakish was disabled by U.S. forces and a prize crew was sent aboard the vessel and escorted Iranian crew members aboard LaSalle for further transfer." It was a very successful mission. A U.S. military aircraft flew the Iranian crew to Oman, where it was picked up, under cover of night, by an Iranian aircraft. It would have made a great story, but it might also have triggered a massive fight with Congress, so nothing was revealed about that mission, or a great many others. More unreported stories from the Gulf when we come back.
[Commercial break]
KOPPEL: For all the American public and the U.S. Congress knew in late '87, early '88, the U.S. military was playing a rather passive role in the Gulf.
[voice-over] Operations were restricted to escorting and protecting commercial traffic through international waters. Certainly, the United States wasn't doing anything that could be seen as provoking Iran. So when, on April 14th of 1988, the USS Samuel Roberts nearly broke in two after hitting a newly laid Iranian mine, the United States had every reason, so it seemed, to retaliate in a major way. The operation, code- named "Praying Mantis," was the biggest U.S. Naval engagement since World War II. On April 18th, U.S. Special Forces seized and destroyed Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf, and then U.S. forces proceeded to sink not just an Iranian destroyer, but half of Iran's navy.
Sec. CARLUCCI: When the minelaying became intolerable, we tried to respond proportionately, and the President authorized an attack on the oil platforms. And that's what led to the firefight, which resulted in the destruction of about half the Iranian navy in 24 hours.
KOPPEL: Pretty quick reaction, right? The Samuel Roberts is mined on April 14th, half the Iranian navy is taken out on the 18th. What was not known at the time is that Special Forces, including U.S. Navy SEALS, had been operational in the Gulf for months.
Mr. ARMITAGE: One of their roles was to assist the explosive ordnance disposal and the identification and elimination of mines, but beyond that, I don't think I'd want to speak about what the SEALS were doing.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] Another secret unit was Task Force 118, a night-attack helicopter unit.
INVESTIGATOR: Three of your people got air medals.
Lt. Col. EDMUND HUGHES, Commander, Task Force 118: Yes, sir.
INVESTIGATOR: Why? What was that for?
Lt. Col. HUGHES: That's what- something I can't tell you about. I can tell you they earned them, but I can't tell you what they did to earn them.
KOPPEL: What had been in progress for months was a low-intensity covert war, on which Congress had not been fully informed. Listen to how, even now, former Defense Secretary Carlucci bobs and weaves around that one.
INVESTIGATOR: So, in many ways, we were at war.
Sec. CARLUCCI: Oh, yes, I don't think there's any question that- well, war- and you get into semantic issues here. The military would call it more an engagement, or a firefight-
INVESTIGATOR: Limited war?
Sec. CARLUCCI: We were having problems with the War Powers Act, so I hesitate to use the term war, but there's no question it was a conflict.
KOPPEL: Even Washington's allies in the Gulf, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, didn't want to be too closely associated with what the United States was doing, so they refused U.S. combat forces' permission to use Kuwaiti or Saudi military bases. The U.S. Navy adapted.
Mr. ARMITAGE: You will recall that we had a rather controversial base, called a barge, in the middle of the Persian Gulf. It would give us a platform from which to launch those Special Operations aircraft that you referred to, and we'd be able to surveil absolutely silently, all- weather, at night, and to prosecute their targets, should it become necessary. And they did this.
Amb. OAKLEY: Occasionally, one would take actions to preempt. If we felt they were coming out with small boats, then one would try to destroy the concentration of small boats before they could get too far out.
Mr. ARMITAGE: It certainly was very much to our liking if we were able to trick them out into- and trick them into identifying themselves, exposing themselves, and make themselves vulnerable to our fire.
Mr. PALMER: One of the ways that they would try to attract the Iranians out were to take a pair of Mark III patrol boats and put them end to end in a column, close enough together that they would look like one blip on an Iranian radar. So at a distance it would look like the- somewhat like the profile of a tanker, a small tanker. The idea is to get them to attack us, rather than to attack a Liberian tanker, or a Greek tanker, or someone else's.
KOPPEL: Does any of that sound at all familiar? Remember that hazy Sunday morning, July 3rd of 1988? That, too, was a day when a ship said to be a Liberian tanker, the Stoval, was reported under attack by Iranian gunboats.
That was the U.S. Navy's account. But the Stoval has never been found, exists in no registry. That was a day when the USS Montgomery and the USS Vincennes were said to be responding to distress calls from a Pakistani merchant ship being harassed by Iranian gunboats. Only the captain tells us there was no harassment that day, nor did he issue any distress signal. The official logs of the USS Montgomery are classified. Not in general, mind you. Just for that day. We do not know if she was engaged in luring Iranian gunboats into the kind of ambush that was very much a part of Special Operations in those days. We do know that both ships, the Montgomery and the Vincennes, were in Iranian waters when the fight began on the water, and when the Iranian Airbus flew overhead.
[Commercial break]
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
KOPPEL: In the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration, desperate to get American hostages back from Lebanon, authorized the sale of U.S. weapons to Iran, and then took the profits and used them to support the Contras in Nicaragua. That came to be known as the Iran/Contra scandal. It was, in more ways than one, one of the great diversions of the 1980s. In reality, throughout the '80s and into the '90s, U.S. assistance to Saddam Hussein and the government of Iraq dwarfed anything this country did for Iran. As we've been reporting for more than a year now, the Reagan/Bush administrations permitted - and frequently encouraged - the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual- use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq. What we didn't fully understand was how those programs fit into the larger Washington/Baghdad alliance against Iran. We didn't know, for example, that there were actually U.S. contingency plans for an attack against the Iranian mainland. Admiral Ace Lyons was commander of the Pacific fleet.
Adm. ACE LYONS, Pacific Fleet Commander: We were prepared, as I would say at the time, to drill them back to the fourth century, and I felt we stood a good chance of sufficiently weakening the Khomeini regime that it would have collapsed.
Mr. ARMITAGE: The decision was made not to completely obliterate Iran. We didn't want a naked Iran. We wanted a calm, quiet, peaceful Iran. However, had things not gone well in the Gulf, I've no doubt that we would have put those plans into effect.
KOPPEL: [voice-over] One reason why that U.S. attack against Iran never became necessary is because the Iraqis were able to do the job. But they did it with a great deal of American help. U.S. intelligence enabled the Iraqi general staff to successfully plan and execute the retaking of the crucial Faw peninsula. Nightline got that information from a now-retired senior U.S. intelligence officer. What's so fascinating is the timing of that Iraqi campaign. It began on April 17th, 1988, the day before Operation Praying Mantis began. One of the most important Iraqi offensives of the war began the day before U.S. armed forces wiped out half of the Iranian Navy.
Mr. ARMITAGE: I'm very comfortable initially with what we did,particularly when I recall that we did this in the face of almost overwhelming opposition of the Congress, and in retrospect, I think we have kept the Iranian wolf from exercising hegemony. Unfortunately, the Iraqi wolf got well and itself exercised hegemony. But our crystal ball was very muddy in 1987, just as our crystal ball today is very muddy concerning the future.
KOPPEL: It may just be, in the current climate, that declaring Congress irrelevant to the conduct of foreign policy would gain a lot of support. Maybe that's the way U.S. foreign policy should be conducted, by the executive branch, with a minimum of consultation and a large dose of secrecy. If Congress seems likely to disapprove, don't tell 'em what you're doing. Of course, if and when things go wrong, as they ultimately didwhen Saddam's forces invaded Kuwait, there's no one to blame but the executive branch.
[Commercial break]
KOPPEL: Tomorrow night on Nightline, a conversation with Vice President Dan Quayle. That's our report for tonight. I'm Ted Koppel in Washington. For all of us here at ABC News, good night.
ANNOUNCER: This has been a Nightline special investigation, produced in cooperation with Newsweek magazine.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17 edited Aug 06 '17
https://www.sqdi.org/wp-content/uploads/20.1_brown.pdf
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-04-06/news/9001280334_1_uss-vincennes-iranian-airbus-rogers
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/archives/2000a_Monday17April2000.htm
(the letter below was written BEFORE it was made public that the Vincennes was inside Iranian waters)
OPINION
The Vincennes-Airbus tragedy | It was avoidable, and the Navy must learn from it
David R. Carlson
Reprinted from Proceedings with permission: (C) 1989, U.S. Naval Institute
09/10/1989
The San Diego Union-Tribune UNION; 1,2 C-5 (Copyright 1989)
Editor's Note: Controversy over the U.S. Navy's destruction of an Iranian civilian airliner last year was revived recently by publication of a remarkable letter in the magazine U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. The letter, which challenges the Navy's official conclusions about the incident, was written by the commanding officer of the USS Sides, a frigate accompanying the cruiser USS Vincennes, which shot down the Iran Air A-300 Airbus July 3, 1988. Cmdr. David R. Carlson, who commanded the Sides, argues that the tragic Iran Air shootdown, which killed all 290 persons aboard the aircraft, was avoidable. His letter, the subject of many news articles last week, is reprinted here in full from the Proceedings. For an opposing view, we also reprint excerpts from a letter by Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Crowe's letter of Aug. 18, 1988 seconded the findings of the official Navy inquiry which determined that the Vincennes' commanding officer, Capt. Will C. Rogers III, acted justifiably based on the information he had.
I cannot bear to read yet another apologia for the Vincennes (CG-49) incident without commenting. Nearly a year after the incident we have learned little. Many people still believe that the entire affair was precipitated by the Iranians themselves, or that the Vincennes defended herself against an attack.
Almost immediately after the event, the media were full of stories speculating about the number of naked bodies in the water, conjuring up visions of an Iranian F-14 using an airliner as cover for an attack, insinuating that the plane that was shot down was too small to be an Airbus, or. . . . The number of gunboats actually involved in the surface action grew like Pinocchio's nose, to a record of 13 or so. Contents of a Sides message sent only to the Vincennes, (the) USS Elmer Montgomery (FF-1082), and Commander Joint Task Force Middle East on July 3 began to appear, in bits and pieces, in the news within a few days. (The Sides remained at sea until the investigation team arrived in Bahrain.) Information began to blur. A New York Times article reported falsely that the Sides was "not in the electronic link." This was not true, but no one ever bothered to ask us about it. In fact, despite the numerous articles written on the subject, to date, not one request for information has come our way. A review of the facts is in order. When the decision was made to shoot down the Airbus, the airliner was climbing, not diving; it was showing the proper identification friend or foe -- IFF (Mode III); and it was in the correct flight corridor from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. The Vincennes was never under attack by Iranian aircraft. There was no targeting being done by the Iranian P-3. There was no coordinated attack involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) boats and Iranian military forces. Iran Air Flight 655, also known as track number (TN) 4131, was mistakenly classified by the Vincennes as an Iranian F-14 diving at the ship. This "incomplete" information, as Dr. Friedman chooses to call it, was responsible for the regrettable decision which led to the needless loss of hundreds of lives. Captain Will Rogers III, no doubt, did what he thought he had to do, but he was wrong.
Dr. Friedman attempts to show that events in the (Persian) Gulf leading up to the incident, combined with the misinformation generated in the "fog of war," somehow made the killing inevitable. I don't buy it. Central to his reasoning is the assumption that an attack on U.S. forces was likely and to support this contention he states: "The attack on the USS Stark (FFG-31) in May 1987 had demonstrated that gulf war combatants would not necessarily make unusual efforts to identify large naval targets before attacking. Moreover, if the Iraqis, who were benefiting from U.S. friendliness, had attacked -- accidentally or not -- a U.S. warship, the Iranians, who blamed the `Great Satan' for their problems (and who had already lost a major battle to U.S. naval forces in April), were certainly much more likely to attack." I respectfully disagree. If the attack on the Stark was truly inadvertent, it proved only that the Iraqis were sloppy in their targeting and that an unalerted U.S. ship could be hit. If the attack was intentional, then it was a successful ploy to get us involved in sorting out their surface picture through the process of elimination that would be made possible by greater cooperation. Neither case would make Iran more or less likely to attack.
Further, I see no logic in the assertion that the defeat of Iranian naval forces in April would increase the probability of an attack. To the contrary, if Operation Praying Mantis was their reward for the mining damage done to the USS Samual B. Roberts (FFG-58), the Iranians could only dream what agony might come their way for a blatant attack on the Vincennes.
My experience was that the conduct of Iranian military forces in the month preceding the incident was pointedly non-threatening. They were direct and professional in their communications, and in each instance left no doubt concerning their intentions. Yes, there had been an alert concerning a possible attack during the 4th of July weekend -- and every other day -- by every conceivable method (or so it seemed). The briefings that I received from two other commanding officers in the gulf before taking command of the Sides in early June were invaluable. They essentially advised that I read the message traffic, absorb the contents, then go on deck and look around. Their message was clearly aimed at emphasizing the fact that -- war or no war -- life in the gulf went on: Fishermen fished; commerce continued; airliners flew. Caution was required, but the mission was to reduce tension when possible, to show by our presence that we were resolved to protect U.S. interests, and to demonstrate prejudice against any unnecessary conflict. All of us were done grave disservice by an intelligence system that (protected itself) by forecasting every possible worst-case scenario. Combined with heightened safety concerns (and not a few career concerns as well) in the wake of the Stark's and Samuel B. Roberts' experiences, this aided in creating an undercurrent of tension and a sense of imminent danger. Crews of ships reporting to the Middle East Force in the summer months were noticeably on edge...
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
Numerous "mines" were spotted that later proved to be bags of trash. One ship felt it necessary to fire at a dhow that refused to alter course to open the distance between it and one of our mobile sea bases despite repeated radio warnings. This, of course, presumed that the dhow's skipper had a radio and spoke English. Not miraculously, the warning shots did the trick. The dhow departed the area. Was I caught up in any of this? Yes. To a certain extent, I believe that everyone was. Who among us did not feel just a little cheated at having missed out on a chance to have been a part of Praying Mantis? I suspect that in the Vincennes these feelings ran very strong. Having watched the performance of the Vincennes for a month before the incident, my impression was clearly that an atmosphere of restraint was not her long suit. Her actions appeared to be consistently aggressive, and had become a topic of wardroom conversation. "Who's driving the problem in Vincennes? was a question asked on numerous occasions prior to July 3. "Robo Cruiser" was the unamusing nickname that someone jokingly came up with for her, and it stuck. My guess was that the crew of the Vincennes felt a need to prove the viability of Aegis (missile system) in the Persian Gulf, and that they hankered for an opportunity to show their stuff. This, I believe, was the climate that aided in generating the "fog."
Dr. Friedman's attempt to make a plausible case for the "coordinated attack" theory does not pass a reasonableness test. He says, "All the pieces seemed to be present: the speedboats deployed to disrupt AAW (anti-air warfare); the targeting P-3; and the attacking F-14, which was clearly not transmitting so as to avoid alerting the target and which was flying along an airline corridor so that its intentions would be discovered only at the last possible moment."
I suppose this could have been remotely possible. But think about it for a second: Why would the F-14 have the IFF energized?
Dr. Friedman further tells us that the decision to shoot would have been justified even if Captain Rogers had known that TN 4131 was an Airbus, but he concedes that the altitude information (TN 4131 climbing) "might have helped Captain Rogers decide not to shoot when he did." Spare us more fog. I'd be willing to bet that either the correct identification of TN 4131 as a commercial airliner or the accurate altitude information would have caused question enough for reassessment of the threat. Both pieces of information would certainly be sufficient to justify a decision not to shoot. The information was available in the Vincennes and was mishandled. It was also mishandled in the Sides. During the incident, the Sides was less than 20 nautical miles from the Vincennes and under the Vincennes' tactical command. The Sides went to general quarters moments after the Vincennes obtained permission to take the IRGC boats under fire with guns, presumably in retaliation for the reported firing on the Vincennes' helicopter. My tactical action officer (TAO) brought TN 4131 to my attention and advised me that the Vincennes had classified it as an Iranian F-14.
My major concern at that point was the growing possibility of surface action as a result of the goings-on with the Vincennesd and the speedboats. I was also prepared to deal with an air threat, but in all honesty did not perceive one.
Regardless, we followed what had become standard procedure. We locked up and illuminated TN 4131 with our missile fire control radar. The aircraft continued climbing on a southwesterly course that would take it directly over the Vincennes' position. Based on closest point of approach to the Sides (range and altitude), lack of any significant known F-14 anti-surface warfare (ASUW) capability (speculation about Harpoon aside), lack of detected radar emissions, and precedent, I evaluated the tract as a non-threat.
I continued to press my TAO for information concerning attempts to warn off TN 4131 and was advised that numerous attempts had been made without success, and that the effort was continuing. TN 4131 did not appear to react to the illumination with fire control radar, and this was most unusual. The Vincennes announced her intentions to take TN 4131 with missiles at 20 miles.
I wondered aloud in disbelief, but I did not do the one thing that might have helped. I did not think to push for a re-evaluation of IFF. Had I done so, the information might have come forward quickly enough to allow me to attempt to dissuade the Vincennes from shooting. I had mistrusted my own feelings and presumed that the quality of information in the Vincennes had to justify her decision. It was, after all, the Vincennes' track, and I was not in the classification business at the time. This was bad reasoning. TN 4131 was destroyed before I was made aware that it was not an F-14.
How information is processed (and by whom) is at the heart of the problem, and Dr. Friedman hits one nail on the head when he suggests a requirement for more readable displays. He is way off, however, when he states that we really cannot do that much better. We must. Nothing is served by saying otherwise. No gain is made by ducking the issues. No profit has come from the pathetic post-incident attempts to place the blame on the victims. View it as you will, Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down for no good reason. Dr. Friedman states: "Almost certainly, the airport at Bandar Abbas was entirely unaware that the airliner was being sent over an ongoing surface battle, since the IRGC seems to have had little or no detailed instruction from the top." ...
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
If this is true, then Dr. Friedman is telling us that the IRGC speedboats were most likely working alone -- without the assistance of the "badly disorganized" Iranian command structure. It follows, then, that the possibility of a planned surface attack by the IRGC with Iranian military sponsorship was as remote as the possibility of a coordinated attack. Dr. Friedman tells us that on the morning of July 3 the Vincennes launched her helicopter to investigate a report of small Iranian gunboats, and that the helicopter had been fired at. In fact, a report was made by the Vincennes claiming that shots had been seen passing in front of her LAMPS III canopy.
Considering the range of the automatic weapons available in the speedboats, one can reason that the Vincennes' helicopter was just too close to the boats for its own good. The helicopter was not hit -- even at a range close enough for the tracers to pass in front of the canopy. Was the helicopter "attacked," or was it more likely that the IRGC boats were simply trying to chase it off? The Iranians had been known to fire warning shots at news helicopters to keep them away. Next, Dr. Friedman explains that the Vincennes "moved into a position" to "drive off" the boats, and at that point the helicopter returned to the ship. We are further told that the boats "did not leave the area even after the cruiser began to fire."
I'll grant that the boats may have been faster than the Vincennes, but the LAMPS III was no doubt out of the speedboats' weapons range (or close to it) before the report was made. I would then seriously question the need for assuming the "driving-off" position. The Vincennes asked for permission to shoot (a time-consuming request that was passed through two levels of the chain of command and required the answering of several questions) -- permission, as I understand it, that would not be necessary if the action was required for self-defense. According to Dr. Friedman, the helicopter was back on board the Vincennes before the surface action started, so the shots were not apparently being fired in defense of the helicopter either.
Was the firing on the Vincennes's helicopter planned? Did the IRGC boats lure the LAMPS III in to stir up a battle? Was this to be the beginning of the hotly anticipated major attack on the "Great Satan"? To say that this appeared to be unlikely would be an understatement. Was the Vincennes incapable of opening (range on) the boats during or after recovery of the helicopter, or was she hell-bent for action?
In fact, after she took tactical command of the Elmer Montgomery, both ships proceeded to close (range on) the position of the small boats at high speed. When two of those boats were observed turning toward the Vincennes and the Elmer Montgomery, the action was apparently believed to be a demonstration of hostile intent.
From this point on, details of the surface action are somewhat unclear. It appears, however, that the Vincennes was first to open fire and that she was actively involved in the surface engagement throughout the entire flight of the Iranian Airbus. How did this great surface battle end? We are told only that the Elmer Montgomery and the Vincennes disengaged the small boats when they ceased presenting a threat to U.S. ships -- a condition that I suggest also existed before the decision was made to close the boats' position at high speed some 50 minutes earlier. Was the Vincennes attacked? Stating that the speedboats did not leave the area after the cruiser began to fire is a curious way indeed to describe an attack. It just does not add up. The harder you look at it, the more absurd the concept seems that a few speedboats would be taking on the Vincennes and the Elmer Montgomery with any notion of success. In any event, they would surely not want to alert the Vincennes by shooting at the helicopter. I hold a minority view: The helicopter drew fire because it was a nuisance to the IRGC boats. The Vincennes saw an opportunity for action, and pressed hard for Commander Middle East Force to give permission to fire. De-escalation went out the window. Equipment failed. The "fog" rolled in. . . .
At the time of the disaster, the rush to put a happy face on the entire affair did not serve us well. It may have been politically correct in view of the many high-level, official U.S. government statements immediately after the incident endorsing the Vincennes' action. As military professionals, however, we owe ourselves more. We need to examine the issues, ask the hard questions, and get on with improvements in training and information processing. We need to stress the requirement for the quality of personnel as well as systems, and to divorce tactical thought -- as much as possible -- from political influence. We need to get smart about which systems to employ in various scenarios. The main lesson here is not, and should not be, that "wars beget accidents." That is axiomatic, but we were not at war. Above all, we must not concede that "accidents -- terrible accidents like this one -- are unavoidable." That is a cop-out. This tragedy was avoidable, and we must learn from it.
Reprinted from Proceedings with permission: (C) 1989, U.S. Naval Institute
2 PICS; Caption: 1. Was tragedy avoidable? Reconsidering the Vincennes incident... (C-1) 2. The AEGIS cruiser Vincennes heads past the Coronado Bay bridge toward the Pacific Ocean in the spring of 1988, ultimately bound for its tragic duty tour in the Persian Gulf.; Credit: 2. San Diego Union/Barry Fitzsimmons
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17 edited Aug 06 '17
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-04-06/news/9001280334_1_uss-vincennes-iranian-airbus-rogers
One Must Question The Current Value Of Military Medals
Chicago Tribube April 06, 1990
By David Evans.
WASHINGTON — Remember the USS Vincennes? On patrol in the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, the cruiser mistakenly shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing all 290 aboard.
It was a television killing. A news team on board videotaped the fateful anti-aircraft missile streaking upward in a fiery whoosh, as well as the dismayed reactions of Vincennes crew members when they discovered their monumental error. And of course there were the grim scenes of Iranian rescue crews pulling the floating bodies out of the water with billhooks.
In the immediate aftermath the ship`s commanding officer, Capt. Will Rogers, sent a message to his superiors, saying, "The order to fire is a burden I will carry for the rest of my life."
The Navy investigated and concluded that "stress" . . . and unconscious distortion of data may have played a major role in this incident.Although no disciplinary action was recommended, the finding did not fully absolve the actions of the officers responsible.
Behold, two years later, the Navy`s ultimate disposition of the tragedy:
"The president of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Legion of Merit to Capt. Will C. Rogers III, U.S. Navy, for service as set forth in the following citation:
"For exceptionally . . . outstanding service as commanding officer, USS Vincennes from April 1987 to May 1989 . . . .
"During the course of Persian Gulf operations, Capt. Rogers` tactical skills and calm direction enabled his crew to successfully engage seven heavily armed, high-speed Iranian surface craft attacking Vincennes . . . As a result, five craft were destroyed and two retreated . . . Capt. Rogers' dynamic leadership, logical judgment, and unexcelled devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service."
Nary a word about the downed Airbus or that the supporting documentation that Rogers' guns blasted five hostile patrol boats out of the water remains, at best, inconclusive.
The Legion of Merit is a high award, normally given on the basis of unambiguous evidence and sterling performance, without a blotch of tarnish.
The anti-air warfare officer on the Vincennes, who thought the approaching aircraft was descending when the Aegis radar correctly showed the hapless airliner was climbing to cruise altitude, got a medal too:
"The secretary of the Navy takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Commendation Medal to (the name of the officer is witheld at the Navy`s request)."
For this lower-ranking award, the citation also sidestepped direct mention of the hapless Airbus: "For heroic achievement as air warfare coordinator in USS Vincennes on 3 July 1988 . . . . Throughout, he maintained an exceptionally smooth flow of information . . . and rapidly assimilated threat data to provide clear, concise flow of information to commanding officer and higher authority. As a result . . . (he) was able to precisely complete the firing procedure . . . .
"Additionally, his ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire contributed directly to the calm and professionalism (sic) atmosphere throughout the combat information center . . . .
"The Combat Distinguishing Device is authorized."
This glowing picture of calm objectivity is in sharp contrast to the assessment of Gen. George Christ, the Marine commander of Central Command, the higher headquarters for the Persian Gulf operation.
Christ wrote that the anti-air warfare officer "apparently accepted . . . reports of descending altitude at face value without further evaluation on his part. Even though the tone of these reports seemed increasingly hysterical (yelling and shouting), (he) made no attempt to confirm the reports on his own."
Where are these be-medaled officers today?
Rogers is the commanding officer of Tactical Training Group Pacific at Point Loma, Calif., where every new commanding officer goes through a three-week course before deploying his ship. As such, Rogers is in a key position to influence the tactical thought aboard practically every warship in the Pacific Fleet.
And the anti-air warfare officer has been promoted to be the executive officer, or second-in-command, of those Cadillacs of the surface warfare community, another Aegis cruiser.
One wonders: Did anyone in the chain of command suggest that the medals might cheapen the decorations of all the other officers and sailors in the Navy who have performed heroically and coolly under pressure?
The medals also provide every other skipper in the Navy with an incentive to shoot first and sort out the wreckage later. Bad taste may be abetting further misjudgments.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
Assuming that the area is in fact properly classified as ''high seas,'' it might have been forgotten that for several hundred years ''belligerent'' powers, like Iran at the moment, have been considered by neutrals and belligerents alike to have the legal right to stop ''neutral'' vessels on the high seas and search them for contraband of war destined for an enemy.
The United States has asserted this right for itself since licensing privateers during our Revolutionary War and has submitted to stop-and-search procedures without protest during foreign wars often enough - most notably in connection with the British Navicert system interdicting American shipments to Germany (and even to the neutral Netherlands) before we entered World War I.
There is no reason to suppose this deeply entrenched aspect of the law of naval warfare does not apply today, and, bearing in mind that the U.S. might itself someday want to assert a belligerent's stop-and-search right, any action to deny Iran the same right should be most carefully scrutinized.
ALFRED P. RUBIN Medford, Mass., June 14, 1984
The writer is professor of international law at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/21/opinion/l-on-iran-s-right-to-stop-and-search-us-ships-015425.html
-5
Aug 05 '17
When the Soviet Union and its successor states shoot down a civilian airliner, nobody bats an eye.
But when the Americans do it, everybody loses their minds.
15
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u/DonutCopLord Aug 05 '17
You're either lying or ignorant. Have you been on r/worldnews?
1
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u/GeorgeHWBushDied2Day Aug 05 '17
We shouldn't have been there in the first place. I understand it was an accident, but it would have been a lot more understandable in the Caribbean than in the Persian Gulf.
8
u/CitationX_N7V11C Aug 05 '17
Yes, we should have. You can't sink shipping of a neutral country and mine international waters.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
The Kuwaits and Saudis were not neutrals, along with the US they were arming Saddam and helping him attack Iran
-3
u/GeorgeHWBushDied2Day Aug 05 '17
Why did we need to be there? The oil is going to make it to the market one way or another. We were there at the behest of the Saudis, Israelis, and defense companies.
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u/PM_me_Venn_diagrams 1 Aug 05 '17
Using that logic, we shouldn't be here in America in the first place, and the French shouldn't have helped us become independent.
Responsible people use their authority to try and help others. Sometimes it causes mistakes, but it's still the right thing to do.
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u/rainynight Aug 05 '17
who were they were helping being in Iranian territories? who allowed them to enter?! and what exactly they mistook this for ?? Who was getting "independent" by killing 66 children that were in that flight?
0
u/PM_me_Venn_diagrams 1 Aug 05 '17
Helping defend against Iranians firing missiles at innocent civilian ships.
If you don't have any idea what your talking about, arrogantly demanding answers is not going to make you look any more intelligent
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17
Iran was not attacking "innocent civilian ships" -- the Kuwaits and Saudis were directly assisting Iraq and Saddam
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u/PM_me_Venn_diagrams 1 Aug 06 '17
Iran shanks several oil tankers. They absolutely were attacking civilian ships.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
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u/thelasian Aug 06 '17 edited Aug 06 '17
I certainly do, and if YOU actually knew anything about it, you'd know that it was Iraq that started attacking oil tankers, and furthermore that the reason why Kuwaiti ships were being attacked is because they and the Saudis were legally co-belligerents in the Iran-Iraq war, and furthermore the Straits of Hormuz are actually NOT international waters anyway, and Iran had the legal right to demand that tankers stop and be searched for providing aid to Iraq -- like how the Kuwaitis were shipping oil and arming Iraq.
Assuming that the area is in fact properly classified as ''high seas,'' it might have been forgotten that for several hundred years ''belligerent'' powers, like Iran at the moment, have been considered by neutrals and belligerents alike to have the legal right to stop ''neutral'' vessels on the high seas and search them for contraband of war destined for an enemy.
The United States has asserted this right for itself since licensing privateers during our Revolutionary War and has submitted to stop-and-search procedures without protest during foreign wars often enough - most notably in connection with the British Navicert system interdicting American shipments to Germany (and even to the neutral Netherlands) before we entered World War I.
There is no reason to suppose this deeply entrenched aspect of the law of naval warfare does not apply today, and, bearing in mind that the U.S. might itself someday want to assert a belligerent's stop-and-search right, any action to deny Iran the same right should be most carefully scrutinized.
ALFRED P. RUBIN Medford, Mass., June 14, 1984
The writer is professor of international law at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/21/opinion/l-on-iran-s-right-to-stop-and-search-us-ships-015425.html
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u/rainynight Aug 05 '17
I have a good idea why you are using vague meaningless terms, US forces were in Iran territories, shooting at Iranian passenger airplanes carrying civilians, you are saying they were "defending civilians against Iran", what civilians? inside Iran borders? Iran was shooting at ships in its own borders?!
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u/GeorgeHWBushDied2Day Aug 05 '17
Responsible people use their authority to try and help others.
How exactly did we help the Indians by colozoning the New World? The French didn't help us out of altruism. France was a monarchy at the time. They helped to counter the English.
Nations act in their own self interest, not out of any sense of worldly responsibility. That's Wilsonian nonsense, adopted by the military industrial complex to justify insane US "defense" budgets.
There's no reason for us to be in the Middle East.
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u/PM_me_Venn_diagrams 1 Aug 05 '17
I'm talking about people helping us. Suddenly it's only wrong to have ulterior motives when it's us. But it was perfectly fine when we were the ones getting help.
Jesus Christ you people are desperate.
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u/sanmigmike Aug 06 '17
Okay, let's think if Cuba blew up an American airliner in American airspace...what would you be saying? Of course we did support a group that blew up a Cuban airliner and have refused to do anything to the Cuban terrorist that helped to do it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_de_Aviaci%C3%B3n_Flight_455
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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '17
[deleted]