From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 1996 14:16:09 +0800
To: Simon Spero <alanh@infi.net>
Subject: Re: FLT 800: From the Rumor Mill...But It Makes Sense.. (fwd)
Message-ID: <199609020358.UAA05172@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 10:15 PM 9/1/96 -0400, Simon Spero wrote:
>On Sun, 1 Sep 1996, 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 
>
>I think it was actually a combination of a design flaw in the user 
>interface for the control system combined with a human error that led to 
>the radar officer confusing the airbus with an (F4?) a hundred miles away 
>that he'd previously clicked on. 


Isn't there just the tiniest bit of a double-standard here?  If the ship was 
supposedly "justified" in firing on an airplane just because it 
_could_become_ a threat, and _could_ fire a missile at any moment, then why 
can't we turn this logic around and claim that an Iranian aircraft could 
view an Aegis as a ship which "could become a threat" and "could fire a 
missile at any moment."

Generally, I'm not sympathetic to the Iranians; far from it.  But I can 
smell hypocrisy a mile away and the US military's "logic" in this area is 
unbelievable.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com