American Imperialism, Firing Squads, and the Vincennes Shootdown

[tbyfield at panix.com]

Timothy C. May) wrote:

> At 1:03 AM 9/2/96, Alan Horowitz wrote:
> >The Aegis ship in the Gulf wzs not in an exercise. It was in a war zone.
> >
> >If my memory serves, the Iranian jetliner had its squawker turned off, or
> >broken. The officer in charge in the CIC had about ten seconds to decide
> >if he was about to be locked-on by a missle. And no real information to
> >make the decision with.
> 
> The U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that was in
> its normal and well-known flight path out of Bandar Abbas. <...>
> 
> As to the "squawker" being turned off, this is not my recollection of the
> case (though it was nearly a decade ago, so memories fade...).

   If memory serves, the disinfo campaign following the Airbus incident
put much emphasis on the plane's (allegedly) erratic, seemingly hostile
behavior: it was said to be menacing a specific US ship in the convoy. It
later turned out, I think, that the ship being menaced was a radar ghost
fabricated by the Vincennes's AEGIS system.

\t