On the rare
occasions the US mainstream media refer to the US shootdown of an Iranian
airliner in 1988, they sustain the myth it was simply a "mistake".
Get a FREE
e-Book!
Sign up to
get the FPJ Weekly newsletter, plus get a free e-book, The
Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Collection of Essays by Jeremy R.
Hammond.
Today marks
twenty-nine years since the shootdown by the USS Vincennes of
Iran Air flight 655, which killed all of the plane’s 290 civilian passengers.
This shootdown of a civilian airliner by a US naval ship occurred on July 3,
1988, toward the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War.
This
incident is, of course, something that the people of Iran well remember.
Americans who rely on the US mainstream media, on the other hand, would have to
be forgiven for never having heard about it.
Furthermore,
in the rare instances when the media do mention it, to this day they tend to
maintain official US government falsehoods about what occurred and otherwise
omit relevant details that would inform Americans about what really happened.
The lack of
mention of the incident or, when it is mentioned, the deceptive reporting about
what occurred illustrates an institutionalized bias in the media. The
consequence is that Americans seeking to understand US-Iran relations today
fail to grasp a key historical event that has helped to define that
relationship.
How the
Mainstream Media Report the US Shootdown of Flight 655
If one does
a quick Google search for relevant keywords specific to the shootdown, only a
handful of US mainstream media reports turn up on first-page results.
Max Fisher
in the Washington Post wrote a piece about it several years
ago, appropriately titled “The Forgotten story of Iran Air Flight 655”. For
context, Fisher asserted that “the Vincennes was exchanging fire with small
Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf.” As explanation for how the Vincennes
“mistook the lumbering Airbus A300 civilian airliner for a much smaller and
faster F-14 fighter jet”, Fisher suggested it was “perhaps” due to “the heat of
battle” or “perhaps because the flight allegedly did not identify itself.”
The Washington
Examiner a couple years ago ran a piece with the headline
“Iran says 1988 airliner shootdown is why U.S. can’t be trusted”. The author,
Charles Hoskinson, stated simply that “An investigation revealed that the
cruiser’s crew mistook the airliner for an attacking F-14 fighter jet while
involved in a confrontation with Iranian gunboats.”
Fred Kaplan
in Slate noted in a 2014 piece that
the incident “is almost completely forgotten” (at least in the US). His article
was appropriately subtitled “The time the United States blew up a passenger
plane—and covered it up.” As a journalist who had reported on the incident at
the time and challenged the US government’s official story, Kaplan noted that
“American officials told various lies” intended to blame the Iranians for the
tragedy.
The
government had claimed that the Vincennes was in international
waters at the time, that the plane was flying “outside of the prescribed
commercial air route” and descending at the “high speed” of 450 knots directly
toward the Vincennes, and that the plane’s transponder was
squawking a code over a military channel.
In truth, the Vincennes was
in Iran’s territorial waters, the plane was ascending through 12,000 feet at
380 knots within the established commercial air route, and its transponder was
squawking the plane’s identity over a civilian channel.
Like Fisher
and Hoskinson, however, Kaplan nevertheless maintained the US government’s
narrative that “the Iranian Airbus A300 wandered into a naval skirmish” and on
that basis characterized it as a “horrible mistake”.
These are
the only three examples from within the past decade that appeared in initial
search results for various relevant keywords at the time of this writing. It’s
also helpful see how America’s “newspaper of record”, the New York
Times, has reported it over the years, by searching its online archives.
Doing
various related keyword searches at the New York Times website
turns up a smattering of articles. Without going further back, a November
1988 piece acknowledged that,
contrary to the US government’s claims, “Flight 655 was behaving normally for a
commercial jet”. The Times nevertheless maintained the
government’s official line that “Iranian [air traffic] tower officials clearly
are guilty of not listening to the dozens of radio warnings broadcast by the
Navy and ordering the airliner to change course”.
The
following month, the Times revealed that this attempt to
blame the Iranians was also untruthful. As the International
Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) determined in an investigation of the
incident, seven of the eleven warnings issued by the Americans “were
transmitted on a military channel that was inaccessible to the airliner crew.”
The other four were transmitted on the international civil aviation distress
frequency. Of these, only one, transmitted by the USS Sides “39
seconds before the Vincennes fired, was of sufficient clarity that it might
have been ‘instantly recognizable’ to the airliner as being directed at it.”
The Times nevertheless
sustained the US government’s narrative that Iran was at least partly to blame
by “allowing an airliner to fly into the area at the time when warships were
involved in an intense battle with Iranian gunboats.”
In May
1989, Iran sued the US in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the
shootdown. The Times ran a piece in July about how the
US was trying to settle the matter by offering to compensate victims’ families
with up to $250,000. The only details of the attack the Times offered
readers was to relay the claim from a senior State Department official that
“the Vincennes was defending itself against what it believed was a ‘coordinated
attack’”.
Another Times article that August reported
that Iran’s case was proceeding at the ICJ. For context, the Times simply
parroted the government’s official line that, “At the time, the Vincennes was
part of a group of American warships protecting neutral shipping in the
[Persian] gulf during the war between Iraq and Iran.”
(The ICJ
case was dropped in 1996 when the US and Iran reached a settlement in which the US
“expressed deep regret” and agreed to pay $61.8 million to the victims’
families.)
In 1992,
a Times article reported on the further
unravelling of the US government’s official account. It noted that, contrary to
the government’s claims, Flight 655 was ascending and flying within the
commercial air corridor. Vice President George H. W. Bush had told the UN that
the shootdown occurred “in the midst of a naval attack initiated by Iranian
vessels against a neutral vessel and subsequently against the Vincennes.” In
fact, as government officials were now admitting, the Vincennes was
in Iranian waters at the time. Furthermore, an investigative report for
ABC’s Nightline determined that it was not the Iranian ships
that started the naval skirmish, but the US Navy’s.
The US
government maintained that, while the Vincennes was admittedly
within Iran’s territorial waters, it was the Iranian ships who initiated
hostilities. However, even the commander of the USS Sides, Captain
David Carlson, whose ship was in the same American convoy, had stated three
years prior that the actions of the Vincennes under the
command of Captain Will Rogers were “consistently aggressive.”
The Times also
noted that neither Captain Rogers nor any other officers or crew of the Vincennes were
disciplined.
There are
only scarce mentions of the incident by the Times since.
Columnist Roger Cohen in an August 2009 piece referred in passing to
“the mistaken 1988 shooting-down of Iran Air Flight 655, in which 290 people
perished”. A 2015 article mentioned it, stating
that the Vincennes was “patrolling the strait [of Hormuz]” and
that its crew “apparently mistook the plane for an Iranian F-14 fighter.” The
most recent mention that turned up was from February 2 of this year, in an article that states simply
that “Iran called the attack deliberate and the United States called it a
mistake.”
The above
is not an exhaustive list, but these examples illustrate that, on the rare
occasions when the US mainstream media do mention the
incident, to this day they sustain the US government’s narrative that this
killing of 290 civilians was simply a “mistake” for which no one should be held
criminally responsible.
So how well
does this narrative hold up?
The Facts
about the US Shootdown of Flight 655
After
the Vincennes shot down Flight 655, as Fred Kaplan noted in
his Slate piece, Vice President George H. W. Bush responded by
saying, “I will never apologize for the United States of America—I don’t care
what the facts are.”
The facts
were that the Aegis cruiser USS Vincennes, under the command of
Captain Will Rogers III, had entered Iran’s territorial waters and opened fire
on and sank two Iranian gunboats
posing no threat to the American vessels. (Aboard another Iranian boat
the Vincennes was passing by at the same moment Rogers gave
the order to open fire, the crew was seen relaxing topside, as captured by the camera of US
Navy journalists.)
At the
time, as a Navy investigation later acknowledged, the Vincennes detected
a plane ascending “on a normal commercial air flight plan profile” and
squawking a transponder signal identifying itself as a commercial aircraft.
Aboard
the Sides, with identical radar information as received aboard
the Vincennes, Captain Carlson determined the plane was a
“non-threat”.
Aboard
the Vincennes, Lieutenant William Montford warned Captain Rogers
that the plane was “possible COMAIR”, but Rogers nevertheless ostensibly
convinced himself that his ship was under attack from an F-14 fighter plane and
minutes later ordered it shot down.
(Incidentally,
the US had sold F-14s to Iran in the early 1970s while it was under the thumb
of Washington’s strongman, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was put in power
after a CIA-orchestrated coup in 1953 overthrew Iran’s democratically elected
government by deposing Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh for having
nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The Shah was in turn overthrown
during Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.)
Well aware
that his action might kill civilians, Rogers ordered his gunner
to open fire on the plane, shooting it out of the sky.
The Navy’s
self-investigation attributed the discrepancy between the known facts and
Rogers’ actions to “scenario fulfillment”. Rogers had made “an unconscious
attempt to make available evidence fit a preconceived scenario.”
In other
words, even though the information the officers and crew aboard the Vincennes were
receiving indicated that the plane was ascending along a commercial flight path
and squawking its identify as a civilian airliner, Rogers imagined it
to be an F-14 fighter jet coming down out of the sky to attack his ship.
US
government officials evidently also suffered from “scenario fulfillment” as
they proceeded to make claims about what had happened bearing no relationship
to reality.
President
Ronald Reagan claimed that the killing of
290 civilians was justified as “a proper defensive action”.
Never one
to apologize, Vice President Bush, while campaigning for the presidency, called it “just an unhappy
incident” and reassured Americans that “life goes on.”
As he was
scheduled to speak before the UN Security Council about the incident,
Bush said, “I can’t wait to get up
there and defend the policy of the United States government” by presenting “the
free world’s case” for why 290 mostly Iranian civilians were dead.
Speaking
before the Security Council, Bush blamed Iran for allowing a civilian airliner
to go about its business carrying passengers to Dubai at a time when an
American warship was “engaged in battle”.
He declined
to explain how the pilot, Captain Mohsen Rezaian, or the air traffic controllers
at the airport in Bandar Abbas, where Flight 655 had taken off, could possibly
have known that a US warship with an imaginative captain on board was in Iran’s
territorial waters firing at anything that moved.
Bush lied
to the Council that the Vincennes had “acted in self-defense”
against “a naval attack initiated by Iranian vessels” on the American ship when
it “came to the aid” of an “innocent ship in distress.”
Also not
wont to question the actions of the US government, the New York
Times in an
editorial published July 5, 1988, urged Americans via their
headline to put themselves “In Captain Rogers’s Shoes”.
Sympathizing
with the killer, the Times editors described the shootdown as
“horrifying”, but “nonetheless an accident.” It was “hard to see what the Navy
could have done to avoid it.” Captain Rogers “had little choice” but to open
fire, they opined, assuming the US government’s account “turns out even
approximately correct”.
Of course,
the official account turned out to be pretty much the opposite of the truth in
virtually every aspect, but the Times was, as ever, not
over-eager to seriously question the government’s claims.
Thus, the
editors maintained the deception that the Vincennes was “in a
combat zone” and “engaged in action against Iranian gunboats making high-speed
runs against it.”
The editors
also relayed as fact that the radar operators aboard the Vincennes had
“reported an aircraft heading toward the ship and descending.” Furthermore,
they “apparently had indications, which the Navy refuses to discuss, that the
plane was a powerful F-14 jet.”
Unimaginatively,
the Times editors failed to conceive of the most obvious
reason why the Navy would refuse to discuss that claim: because there
were no such indications.
The
furthest the Times would go to question the official narrative
was to state that it was “not yet clear why sophisticated radar did not
distinguish between an F-14 and a much larger Airbus.”
The lie
the Times was upholding then—as to this day—was that the
ship’s sophisticated radar had indicated it was something other than
a civilian airliner.
After
axiomatically accepting this lie, the editors immediately urged their readers
to “put yourself in Captain Rogers’s shoes”. They proceeded to assert that the
“evidence” suggested “an imminent attack” by the plane on the Vincennes.
Note that
the word “evidence” in this context is being used euphemistically by the Times’
editorial board to mean claims by US government officials that were
directly contradicted by the actual evidence available to them.
The Times proceeded
to state that, if the US government’s account was at least “largely correct”,
then we could safely conclude that the Iran Air pilot was to blame “for failing
to acknowledge the ship’s warnings and flying outside the civilian corridor.
Iran, too, may bear responsibility for failing to warn civilian planes away
from the combat zone of an action it had initiated.”
They concluded
that “the onus for avoiding such accidents in the future” fell not on the
captains of American warships operating in the territorial waters of other
countries, but “on civilian aircraft” flying in their own airspace.
The
takeaway lesson presented by the Times was that civilian
aircraft should just “avoid combat zones, fly high, [and] acknowledge
warnings.”
Finally,
the editorial concluded that ultimate blame lay with the government of Iran,
with the “accident” instructing the world that it was time for Tehran “to bring
an end to its futile eight-year war with Iraq.”
Of course,
as the Times editors were perfectly well aware, it was Iraq who
started the war, which dragged on for eight long years in large part due to the
fact that the US was backing the aggressor.
Far from
being held accountable for the mass murder of 290 civilians, Captain Rogers was
later presented with the Legion of Merit award “for exceptionally meritorious
conduct in the performance of outstanding service” during his time as commanding
officer when the shootdown occurred.
Rogers’
weapons and combat systems officer at the time, Lieutenant Commander Scott E.
Lustig, received two commendation medals and was praised for “heroic
achievement” for his conduct during the incident.
The entire
crew of the Vincennes received combat action ribbons.
Conclusion
The US
shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655 receives only rare mentions in the US
mainstream media despite being a key incident in the history of the US’s
relations with Iran that serves as critical context for understanding how
Iranians today view the US government.
When
it is mentioned, the media’s tendency is to characterize the
mass killing as an honest “mistake”, resulting from an action any other
country’s navy would have taken if put in the same position. Although it has
long been known that the US government’s account of the incident was a pack of
lies, the US media to this day characterize it as though the resulting death of
civilians was just an unfortunate consequence of war.
When Max Fisher
wrote in in the Washington Post in 2013 that “the Vincennes
was exchanging fire with small Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf”, it is hard
to fathom that he was unaware that the US warship was in Iranian waters; and
yet he declined to relay that critical piece of information to his readers.
It is
equally hard to fathom that he was unaware it was the Vincennes that
initiated hostilities; yet this fact, too, he omitted.
Fisher also
unquestioningly parroted the US government’s claim that the Vincennes’
crew “mistook” the plane for an F-14, which he attributed either to “the heat
of battle” or the plane’s failure to identify itself.
It may be
true that, as the naval investigation determined, Captain Rogers imagined it
to be an F-14. Yet, as Lieutenant Colonel David Evans wrote in the US Naval
Institute’s Proceedings Magazine in August 1993, the
information received by the American ships from the plane’s transponder unambiguouslyidentified
it as an ascending commercial aircraft.
“Both
Captain Rogers and Captain Carlson,” Evans noted in his essay, “had this
information.”
It is no
less hard to fathom how Fisher could have been unaware of the fact that Flight
655 had been squawking its identify as a civilian aircraft, something even the
most precursory research into the incident would have revealed to him.
It is
therefore difficult to escape the conclusion that Max Fisher’s purpose in
writing was not to educate Americans about what happened, but
to sustain the central myth that the shootdown was merely an unfortunate
accident of the kind that happens in the fog of war.
He was, in
other words, dutifully serving his role as a propagandist.
Charles
Hoskinson in his 2015 Washington Examiner piece was hardly
more forthcoming.
Fred
Kaplan was far more forthcoming in his Slate piece
from three years ago; yet even in the face of his own contrary evidence, he
still preserved the central myth that the shootdown was merely a “mistake”
resulting from Iran Air Flight 655 having “wandered into a naval skirmish”.
This is the
same false narrative that America’s “newspaper of record” maintains on those
rare occasions when the incident receives a passing mention.
The real
story, in sum, is as follows:
Twenty-nine
years ago, on July 3, 1988, US warships entered Iranian waters and initiated
hostilities with Iranian vessels.
The
consoles of the radar operators aboard the USS Vincennes at
the time unambiguously showed an aircraft ascending within a commercial
corridor in Iranian airspace, with the plane’s transponder signaling its
identity as a commercial aircraft.
Captain
Rogers nevertheless ordered his gunner to open fire on the plane, shooting it
out of the sky and killing the 290 civilians on board.
Subsequently,
rather than being held accountable for committing a war crime, Rogers and his
entire crew received awards for their actions.
Like
Captain Rogers, the mainstream media establishment seems to suffer from
institutional “scenario fulfillment”, in which this action did not constitute
a war crime or, at best, an act of international terrorism.
In the case
of the media, the preconceived notion is that the US is an exceptional nation
whose government is sometimes capable of “mistakes”, but only ever acts out of
benevolent intent.
It is an
assumption that, while deemed axiomatic by the mainstream media establishment,
is no less self-delusional than Captain Rogers’ imaginary scenario of this
“forgotten” episode in US-Iran relations.
I get it, you want Congress to call Facebook a monopoly
and break it up.
Unfortunately,here are two hard truths:
1) Politicians would rather use Facebook as a weapon than reduce its power.
2) Politicians don't work for you.
00
I’d also like to point out that
Facebook’s stock was up over 4% today, completely shrugging off any potential
backlash from users. Executives
assume its users are all addled junkies unwilling to give up convenience and
their addiction no matter what the company does. Are they right?
Speaking of which, on the same day the move against Jones
was announced we learn Facebook is in talks with mega banks to get your
financial information.
Facebook Inc.wants your financial
data.
The social media giant has asked large
U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers,
including card transactions and checking account balances, as part of an effort
to offer new services to users.
Facebook increasingly wants to be a
platform where people buy and sell goods and services, besides connecting with
friends. The company over the past year asked JPMorgan Chase & Co.,
Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and U.S. Bancorp to
discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook
Messenger, said people familiar with the matter.
Facebook executives don’t actually care about anything
besides their profits and power, so the only way you can take any individual
action against the company is to delete your account. I haven’t engaged with
Facebook since 2012, so permanently deleting it wasn’t a personal sacrifice,
but I did it anyway earlier today.
Don’t wait for other people to change
things for you, stop whining and take some individual responsibility. If you agree that Facebook’s primarily a nefarious
narcissism-factory wasteland masquerading as a platform just delete
it… before it deletes you.
* * *
If you liked this article and enjoy my
work, consider becoming a monthly Patron, or
visit the Support Page to
show your appreciation for independent content creators.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.