Iranians Commemorate a Downed Airliner (not Pan Am 103)………
“Iranian helicopters scattered flowers into the Persian Gulf waters on Saturday as family members and relatives remembered the 290 passengers killed when a U.S. warship shot down an Iranian airliner 22 years ago. About 250 relatives of victims and officials sailed from the southern port city of Bandar Abbas to the spot where the Iran Air A300 Airbus was downed on July 3, 1988. The USS Vincennes shot down the airliner shortly after it took off from Bandar Abbas for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Washington said the Vincennes mistook the airliner for a hostile Iranian fighter jet. Iran maintains it was a deliberate attack….. "No one buys the faulty claim that a sophisticated warship ... mistook a passenger plane for a fighter jet, two-thirds smaller," said Hesam Ansari, who lost his father in the crash….. Local provincial governor Hossein Hashemi Takhti called it an act of terrorism. Iran has called for the commander of USS Vincennes at the time, William C. Rogers III, to be brought to trial. In 1990, then-President George H. W. Bush awarded Rogers the Legion of Merit for his service as a commanding officer. "In which culture ... can that Legion of Merit be awarded to the criminal USS Vincennes commander," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying…….”
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