iran, iraq, US:
The deadly missile attack on the USS Stark was unleashed by a Mirage F-1 jet -- flown by an Iraqi pilot who mistook the U.S. warship for an Iranian vessel. At that moment, Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran were in the seventh year of a war that had begun in 1980 with a surprise Iraqi invasion.
(...) Glory to the gospel of perpetual dividends. This was the 1980s, after all; a time when the Reagan administration was still busy fondling Saddam Hussein. There would be no counter-strike at Iraq, of course. Not then. And the angriest criticism would come from Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger, who described the attack as "indiscriminate." "Apparently," said Weinberger, the Iraqi pilot "didn't care enough to find out what ship he was shooting at."
(...) "We've never considered them hostile at all," was the way President Ronald Reagan described Saddam's military. "They've never been in any way hostile... And the villain in the piece is Iran."
(...) Responding to the great loss of lives "in a spasm of rage at the one country that had nothing to do with the American deaths," Republican Senator and ex-Secretary of the Navy John Warner denounced Iran as "a belligerent that knows no rules, no morals." In language that hinted of military action, Democratic Senator John Glenn slammed Iran as "the sponsor of terrorism and the hijacker of airliners." It was the first and only successful cruise missile attack on a U.S. Navy warship. Iraqi officials determined that the American frigate was inside their "forbidden zone" and never produced the plane's pilot. The captain of the USS Stark was relieved of his command and his executive officer was disciplined for "dereliction of duty."
(...) A little over a year after the attack, on July 3, 1988, two surface-to-air missiles are fired by the USS Vincennes, an Aegis-class cruiser, reportedly inside Iranian territorial waters at the time, at Iran Air flight 655. The first missile cut the civilian airliner in half. All 290 passengers and crew aboard the Iranian airbus were killed. In her coffin, reported Fisk, who, at the time, was in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas where the human remains of flight 655 were collected, Leila Behbahani was still in the same garments and bracelets that she had worn when she was fished out of the water minutes after the Vincennes brought down the passenger plane -- a green dress and white pinafore, two bright gold bangles on each wrist, white socks, and tiny black shoes. Leila was three-years old. There were 66 children on board the aircraft.
(...) The Pentagon claimed that the Vincennes shot down the Iranian plane because it appeared the pilot was attempting to fly it into the warship -- even though the USS Sides, a frigate in the area, recorded the airliner climbing, not diving.
(...) When the Vincennes returned to San Diego, its homeport, the ship was given a hero's welcome, while the members of the crew were "all awarded combat action ribbons." The air warfare coordinator of the ship won the Navy's Commendation Medal "for heroic achievement" for the "ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire." Citizens in Vincennes, Indiana, raised money to build a monument -- not to the dead Iranians but to the ship that shot them down.
(...) A memorable quote resulting from the act of terror came from George H.W. Bush, who was then Ronald Reagan's vice president: "I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are," said Bush in response to the atrocity. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher weighed in to support the U.S. The destruction of the passenger plane, she said, was "understandable."