Yeesh - regardless of what was known about the type of plane it was, the facts that resulted even back then from our bull-headed foreign policy are these...
Iran Air Flight 655 (IR655) was a commercial flight operated by Iran Air that flew from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Dubai, UAE. On Sunday July 3, 1988, towards the end of the Iran Iraq War, the aircraft flying IR655 was shot down by the U.S. Navy Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes between Bandar Abbas and Dubai, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children. The Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters at the time.
The event triggered an intense controversy, with Iran condemning the shootdown as a "barbaric act." On the other hand, George H.W. Bush, at the time Vice President of the United States in the Reagan Administration, defended his country at the United Nations by declaring that the shootdown had been a wartime incident and that the crew of the Vincennes had acted appropriately to the situation at the time. At a news conference on 2 August 1988 he said "I will never apologize for the United States of America—I don't care what the facts are" in reference to the incident. [2]
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