Back on Ronald Raygun days, didn't Iraq "accidentally" shoot down

[pinkpops]

an American plane, and didn't the US let it pass as an honest mistake?

[Redstone]

1. No, but we "accidentally" shot down an Iranian airliner.

Redstone

[whistle]

4. That's right and the MSM certainly covered Reagans ass on it

<snip>
Extra! July/August 1988

KAL 007 and Iran Air 655
Comparing the Coverage

By Norman Solomon


The day after a Soviet interceptor plane blew up a Korean passenger jet, the first sentence of a New York Times editorial (9/2/83) was unequivocal: "There is no conceivable excuse for any nation shooting down a harmless airliner." Headlined "Murder in the Air", the editorial asserted that "no circumstance whatever justifies attacking an innocent plane."

Confronted with the sudden reality of a similar action by the U.S. government, the New York Times inverted every standard invoked with righteous indignation five years earlier. Editorials condemning the KAL shoot down were filled with phrases like "wanton killing," "reckless aerial murder" and "no conceivable excuse." But when Iran Air's flight 655 was blown out of the sky on July 3, excuses were more than conceivable – they were profuse.

Two days after the Iranian passenger jet went down in flames killing 290 people, the Times (7/5/88) editorialized that "while horrifying, it was nonetheless an accident." The editorial concluded, "The onus for avoiding such accidents in the future rests on civilian aircraft: avoid combat zones, fly high, acknowledge warnings."

A similar pattern pervaded electronic media coverage. In the aftermath of the KAL incident, America's airwaves routinely carried journalistic denunciations. CBS anchor Dan Rather, for example, called it a "barbaric act." No such adjectives were heard from America's TV commentators when discussing the U.S. shoot down of a civilian jet.

<MORE>

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1527

[jobycom]

6. I'll never forget the image of an Iranian rescuer holding a dead infant by its heel

and shaking it at the television cameras. Reagan kept building our presence in the Persian Gulf, hoping Iran would attack. They at first claimed the airliner was a military plane, then they claimed that it was tagged as a military plane by the fleet because it was not on a commercial route, and not a scheduled flight, and it was descending towards the ship. The American ship, of course, had no way of knowing it was commercial, and got no response when it tried to radio the plane...

By the end of the investigation, it turned out it was a regularly scheduled flight, clearly climbing and not descending, and that every ship in the area knew it was civilian and tried to tell the ship that shot it down. The captain of the ship ignored them, blew it up, and as I recall, was cleared of any wrongdoing.

At least Reagan didn't get his war. That piece of shit was no better than Bush, not by any stretch of the imagination.

[RufusTFirefly]

2. Redstone's right. We killed 290 passengers (including 66 children)...

.. on Iran Air Flight 655.
That was in 1988.
Oops. Our bad.

Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Perhaps you are thinking of an Iraqi jet firing on an American ship?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Stark_(FFG-31)

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. no, the israelis - never mind

ahhh.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jobycom]

8. I don't remember that incident, but remember, Iraq was our ally against Iran

during Reagan's administration. We were funding Iraq to continue it's war with Iran, even after the Kurd gassing incident. So, if Iraq shot down one of our planes, we'd have looked for a reason to clear them.

Aside from the Iranian airliner already mentioned, I can think of two other incidents during Reagan. One was the US airliner shot down over Russia by the Russians. Killed a US Congressman. Flight 007, of all numbers. Russia honestly believed it was a spy plane. There have been stories ever sense that it was, but I have no idea if there is any evidence to back that. The flight number alone may have made Russian think that.

The other incident was when Iraq shot down an Iranian plane carrying most of Iran's top military leaders. No accident, there, and I don't recall a US involvement, other than maybe the weapons used were US.

Just my random thoughts.

[The Magistrate]

9. It Was A Warship, Sir

The U.S.S. Stark. An Iraqi pilot mistook it for something else, and just about blew the bow off it with an Exocet, or some similar air to surface rocket. There were quite a few casualties, and eventually something of an apology....

[pinkpops]

10. That must be what I'm remembering