It was a grim day for many Iranians today as the nation commemorated the 24th anniversary of the 1988 attack on Flight 655, an Iranian passenger airliner that was shot down over the Strait of Hormuz by the US Navy, killing all 290 civilians aboard.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry blasted the US for the killings, adding that to this day the US has refused to apologize for the attack. “This inhumane crime is clear proof of the innocence of the Iranian nation and clear evidence that the United States is not committed to any international legal and ethical principles and norms,” the statement added.
The US State Department has declined comment repeatedly, and in 2008 spokesman Sean McCormack said no new comments were forthcoming, saying that he was unfamiliar with the historical context of the attack.
The context was that the US shot down the civilian aircraft, and officials initially claimed they thought it was an F-14 Tomcat from neighboring Iraq attacking the ships. Though all the evidence suggested this was an unlikely error, then vice-president George H.W. Bush was quoted in Newsweek saying “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” The International Court of Justice later faulted the US and reparations were paid, though an apology was still never made.
In 2000 the US claimed that the entire crew of the USS Vincennes, the ship which shot the plane down, was under a simultaneous psychological condition called “scenario fulfillment” and that they were carrying out a training scenario while ignoring the evidence of the situation. The warship’s commander, William C. Rogers III, was later given the Legion of Merit by Bush for his “service as a commanding officer.”
US and israel – both to same to this day, US Flight 655, Israel Liberty…and this duo of Truth Axis of Evil goes on with its violations of internacional law unchalenged. Scary future for whole Humanity, this "satanic, arrogant regimes" hold nearly worldvide No.1 weapon of mass destruction – they mastered and perfected "Goebles propaganda of Nazi Germany" and managed brainwash big part of the people on this planet…..peter czech
Well stated
I agree with Peter
As always US government and its media did lied, saying that there was an Iranian fighter jet hiding under the belly of that passenger plain wanting to attack a US war ship. If nothing that alone shows that US government has been committing crimes against humanity again and again.., Bush regime was a war criminal so it goes for the rest.
What a victory!!! 290 Iranian civilians slaughtered by an American naval ship. Yankee Doodle Dandy. Since America's inception a little more than two-hundred years. Let's see now, Native Americans slaughtered, the American invasion of Mexico, the Civil War when fifty-thousand Americans (white and black) were raped and murdered. Now we come to a goodie, the war for Filipino Independence although the tools here called it the Filipino Insurrection. Our boys slaughtered six-hundred thousand to eight-hundred thousand civilians. Anything over the age of ten was fair game. The officers (officers and gentlement by an Act of Congress) raped Mesticas and when they were through with them, passed them on to the enlisted swine. During the Korean War, soldiers sited in their rifles by shooting farmers working in their rice paddies. During the Vietnam War many mini-maccacres ocurred. I witnessed two myself. We were the first country to use nukes on civilians. we have murdered over a million Iraqis. This country also backed murderous dictatorships in the Americas, hundreds-of-thousands of lives were taken. Our score will no doubtless be increasing rapidly. Personally, I think the ship's complement should have received the M.O.H.
dictatorship
Bush was channeling John Wayne in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." Who gave him that line? Who tied the yellow ribbon round the old oak tree? It's all theater isn't it? As in Wag the Dog.
An act of terrorism ordered by British Petroleum, the multinational corporation that owned most all of the oil rights in Iran when they were nationalized. Which begs the question, as the rich nobility of England, France and Spain lost not a penny of wealth nor an acre of land in the American Revolution, who really is funding all our politicians?
Conspiracy much?
It was a gung-ho crew with a gung-ho captain – the Vincennes was reportedly called Robocruiser by the other Navy ships because it behaved rather recklessly towards civilian vessels and aircraft. They saw what they were primed to see. They pushed the button.
"Scenario fulfillment" is exactly what happened – and these things will happen again. When Russians shot down KAL 007, we had the same phenomenon. All the evidence pointed away from the assumption that an enemy spyplane was flying over the USSR – but once people under stress and with hard time limits take a bad assumption, all the evidence to its contrary is discarded and explained away. Happens also in the civilian sector – planes may fall from the sky (like Air France 447) and nuclear reactors go up in flames precisely because the human mind is unable to step back and get rid of tunnel vision under stress.
And this is why there shouldn't be armed Aegis cruisers with hot weapons next to civilian traffic.
If you want interesting conspiracy regarding the case though:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators…
What would anyone expect? The Navy repeatedly disgraces itself giving Rogers medals and praise, while haivng abandoned the Indianapolis and even using the Japanese commander that torpoeded it to testify against the commander, and abandoning the Liberty to Israeli assault on the ship and the war crime of murdering those who made it to life boats, while giving its captain William L McGonagle his well deserved Medal of Honor but doing so not in the White House which is customary, but in an isolated place being shunned by the media, the Congress, and President Johnson.
I can't help but mourn over the fact that that event was no aberration of American foreign policy—only a recurring ocassion consigned to the waste-bin of history. Chirstopher Hitchens, in The Trial of Henry Kissinger, mourned too: "Its truth is therefore the guarantee of its obscurity; it lies like Poe's 'purloined letter' across the very aisle that signifies bipartisanship."
And that obscure truth is very close to the following: Admiral William Crowe, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, admitting on national TV in 1992, contrary to earlier lies, that the Vincennes had in fact been weaving – provocatively – in and out of the 12-mile territorial limit of Iranian waters, said our purpose was to draw out small Iranian patrol boats and hope to get in a shoot-out with them. The purpose was to sink them. The blip on the radar of a plane taking off from the nearby coast, caused Commander Rogers to order the shoot down of a suspected fighter on a counter-attack mission, before positve ID could be made. He said they only had one minute to decide to shoot it down, so they did. One must recall that ABC Nightline had already reported that, as a secret ally of Iraq, we had "sunk the [modest] Iranian navy" earlier in a one- or two- day battle in 1988. That shoot down was probably part of that larger naval operation.
According to the article, the airliner was mistaken for an Iraqi F-14.
Funny.
Iraq didn't have F-14s.
“I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.”
Satanist !
Something is terribly wrong with a nation that gives medal to a commander that kills 290 innocent men, women, and children. This clearly shows the US lies and deception that it cares for the people.
Just like those in charge of NORAD and the NSA on 911 got promotions……. for doing nothing…. What's REALLY goin on….?????
But the govt wouldn't admit they were innocent civilians on an Airbus passenger plane. I remember one story put out saying that the Iranians had emptied their morgues and that the dead bodies found in the water were already dead when they were put on the plane; that it was Iran that was trying to make the US look bad.
Yea, right, one of the dead was Uncle Sam.
Could that really Be true Watson….??? Are we that craven…???
I'm not defending America's meddling in other parts of the world or it's imperialistic policies, but the Iranians themselves contributed to this accident.
They had instituted a policy to ignore American warships in the area as an act of defiance. The Vincennes tried to contact the airliner several times to get an identification, but the airliner refused to answer. The Vincennes' crew got confused and thought the ship was being attacked. That's why they shot the plane down.
If you want to take defiant action against an international adversary you don't do it by playing games with the lives of civilians.