INTRO: Media spin about the USS Vincennes shoot-down of Iran Air 655 on July 3 1988

Tracking US media's spin and misrepresentation of of the history of an American military atrocity over the decades

To this day, more than 30 years after the incident, the US media are still misrepresenting the circumstances of the US military shoot-down of an Iranian civilian airliner in the Persian Gulf...

With the accidental downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in Tehran on January 7 2020, the US media has been comparing the incident with the events of July 3, 1988 when a US navy cruiser, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus, Iran Air Flight 655, going from Bandar Abbas, Iran, to Dubai. It is therefore all the more important to keep the facts straight. 

More importantly, this should be viewed as an example of how the US media toes the official government line and actually helps people to "forget" inconvenient historical facts. The point is, if the media still refuse to get this straight, what else are they not being truthful on. And I think it will be obvious from the articles analyzed that there is an unquestionable bias at work


For years afterwards, the US Navy and the Reagan administration claimed that the incident occurred while the Vincennes was defending itself in international waters against Iranian aggression by Iran's coastal patrol speedboats. Only 4 years later did Admiral William Crowe (then retired) admit on Nightline before anchor Ted Koppel that the warship was in fact inside Iranian waters at the time.

The coverage of the event by the US media at the time was of course blatantly one-sided and included promoting claims that the Iranians had put dead bodies on the plane and deliberately aimed it at the USS Vincennes (in fact there was no way for anyone in Iran including the pilot or the air traffic controller, to know that minutes earlier the USS VIncennes, an Aegis cruiser, had entered Iranian waters and started shooting up lightly armed speedboats.)


To this very day, the US media is misrepresenting and spinning the events of the tragedy The spin falls into clear patterns and there seem to be three main points that are either missing or are misrepreseted in the re-telling. I will be collecting and classifying the articles based on the version(s) of spin it promotes:


1-- WHERE DID IT HAPPEN AGAIN? There's no mention of the presence of the USS Vincennes inside Iranian waters. This fact was exposed 4 years after the event, and until then the Reagan administration had been claiming that the Vincennes was defending itself in international waters. This is a very significant fact (which is why it was covered-up) because not only does it directly contradict the official US Navy and Reagan administration version of events, it also further confirms the USS Vincennes as being legally in the wrong. Imagine, after all, if an Iranian warship had cruised into the Chesapeake and shot down  Boeing taking off from Dulles Airport.

2-  "FOG OF WAR" It is claimed that the incident was the consequence of a "Fog of War" and since it was accidental then the US is not responsible. The "Fog of War" was cooked-up as an exucse to diffuse responsibility: since everyone was responsible, no one was responsible. The US legal position - no liablity without fault -- was critized by international legal experts as contrary to established legal principles.There's usually some long complicated explanation about weapons systems and psychology etc. when in fact none of that is really relevant since the USS Vincennes initiated the shooting once illegally inside Iranian waters, thus making the US liable for all the consequences that followed.

3- U.S. APOLOGIZEDIt is claimed that the US apologized for the incident but left out that is that Reagan offered an informal apology via the media, however officially the US continued to insist that the Vincennes was defending itself in international waters, and the incident was the fault of Iran for allowing the Airbus to fly overhead. While compensation was provided -- about 1/10th of that demanded for the dead aboard the USS Stark which was earlier struck by an Iraqi missile -- it was paid on an 'ex gratia" basis meaning without acceptance of responsibility

4- "JUST AN ACCIDENT"It is claimed that the Iranians thought the shoot down of Iran Air 655 intentional. The source for this assertion is  a book by Kenneth Pollack, cheerleader in chief for the Iraq invasion and Iran war. This claim is used to discredit the Iranians as crazily blaming the US for what was "just an accident" which implies blamelessness, and confuses motivation with intention.In reality "The Iranians" are not a single, hive-mind and there are a variety of opionions on the issue. The consensus is criminal negligence not intentionality.And there are good reason for arguing against the "just an accident" claim: Capt William Rogers III of the USS Vincennes was specifically warned of "possible comair" and raised his hand to acknowledge the warning, and furthermore none of the other US ships in the area similarly misidentified the ascending, departing Airbus for a descending, attacking F-14.  Certainly the launch of the missiles was an intentional act. So while the Capt of the USS Vincennes may not have had the motivation to kill civilians, his actions were in fact intentional. SImilarly a drunk driver may not intend to kill people but is still liable for his actions.This is aside from the fact that whether the act is intentional or not is irrelevant under international law ("strict liability" applies) and that the Vincennes had initiated the conflict in Iranian waters thus making the US reponsible regardless. This was the legal standard that the US applied to other countries too when there was a similar tragedy. 

6- WHAT HAPPENED
Many of the articles simply distort the factual circumstances leading to the shootdown, either by omission of relevant facts or the introduction of new claims that have no factual basis. Often, this involves selective representation of the timeline of events, so as shift the blame onto Iran and away from the US.

7- WHAT WAS THE US DOING IN THE PERSIAN GULFWithout any exception whatsoever, the US media's version of why US military vessels including the Vincennes had been sent to the Persian Gulf, is simply an uncrticial repetition of the official US position of "protecting neutral tanker shipping" from Iranian "harrassment."
What's not said, is that
a - the "neutrals" *Saudi and Kuwait* were actually co-belligerents who (along with the US) had sided with Saddam in the Iran-Iraq War that was going on at the time (including US helping Saddam gas 100,000 Iranians to death)
b- Iran had a legal right to stop and search vessels
c- Iran's attacks on tankers started AFTER the US reflagging of Kuwaiti ships; until then the attacks on tankers had been carried out by Iraq, not Iran. (It was an Iraqi Exocet that killed Americans aboard the Stark not an Iranian one -- but Reagan blamed Iran anyway)
8- Iran's "revenge" and Pan Am 103
For more than a decade after the incident, the US media promoted the idea that Iran was out to get revenge by terrorist acts. Pretty much anything that blew up anywhere, was labelled as Iran's revenge for Iran Air 655, including not just Pan Am 103 (hitherto blamed on Libya) but also the crash of TWA 800 which the New York Times all but blamed on Iran.