I haven't posted for while, but this story recently got my attention and I felt it worthy of comment. 

I just got Foxtel and am obsessed with the show Air Crash Investigation on the national Geographic Channel.  I must have watched 20 or 30 episodes now, and admittedly the thought of your 747 catching on fire and plummeting into the Indian Ocean, or your Airbus A320 running out of fuel because the guage was broken and the pilot thought the tanks were full when they weren't isn't everyone's idea of fun.  I mean, who wants to die in a plane crash? It sounds awful, traumatic, violent and panicked.  The reality is most of the time there's only a couple of minutes of panic then a very sudden (and i mean 700km/hr into the ground, bug on a windscreen, SPLAT! sudden).  And I could live with this if the pilot was doing everything he could to avoid or correct a potentially fatal situation, I mean when your number's up your number's up, right?

Well I recently watched an episode about the Lockerbie air disaster, during which a bomb, planted on a Pan Am 747 from Frankfurt, stopping in London and bound for the USA detonated over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21st 1988.  290 people were killed including all of the passengers, crew, and several residents on the ground.  A suspect, a Libyan national was eventually arrested and sentenced to life in prison.  He was recently released to much international scorn and condemnation as he is dying from cancer.  This story is one of the most well known airline disasters in modern history, if you say the word "Lockerbie" to almost anyone they'll know what happened there.  This crash has helped crystallise views about the middle east amongst western countries for the last decade, and helped provide a stimulus for the "war on terror".  It was an incredible catastrophe, and is enough to make you agree with one woman seen on old news footage who poignantly states, "there is no god".

What most people don't know about is another airline disaster that occurred on July 3rd, 1988, only a few months before Lockerbie.  This was the illegal shooting down of a civilian Iranian passenger jet, Iran Air flight 655, flying in Iranian arispace over the Strait of Hormuz (Iranian waters) by the American warship USS Vincennes.

On an episode of Air Crash Investigation this disaster is explained in meticulous detail.  In short the Captain of the Vincennes (William Rogers) ignored a direct order from his commanding officer (Richard McKenna of the USS Montgomery) to turn his ship around & get out of the area he was patrolling (an area he'd entered "looking for a fight" with Iranian speedboats who were in fact not acting in a hostile manner).  The passenger jet was mis-identified as an F-14 fighter plane by the radar on the Vincennes, and the person in charge of checking civilain flight schedules didn't realise that there were different time zones in the area, and even if he had, he  said he couldn't read the civilian flight schedule as it was "too dark".

While the passenger jet was ascending to its cruising altitude, in Iranian airspace, the radar operator on the Vincennes told Rogers that it was an F-14 that was rapidly descending (or diving) in an "attack" formation.  Rogers, without ever correctly identifying the plane, without checking the radar himself, illegally present in foreign waters, where he had no permission from his commanding officer to be, ordered that two surface to air missiles be fired.  The aircraft was shot out of the sky, killing all 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children.

In true American fashion, William Rogers, an aggressive "fight seeker", full of American bravado and stupidity, was not court-martialled or charged with any offences whatsoever. Instead he received the Legion of Merit medal, "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989."  The officer who finally hit the firing button to launch the missiles (after the person who's job it was to do this hit the wrong button 23 times) was also awarded a medal for his role in the firing procedure.

Regarding this incident, President George Bush (Snr) stated "I'll never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are".  This was a frightening prelude to subsequent acts of "war" enacted by the USA in the middle east.  Acts that performed by any other country would immediately be labelled "terrorism" and used as excuses for even more outrageous illegal acts by America.  Acts that have also required no factual basis for instigation and have resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.  Acts that label America as truly the worlds biggest terrorist.

I don't condone the Lockerbie bombing.  No-one deserves to die like that.  However I can fully understand the motivation that fuelled the desire of the bombers to seek revenge.  American Naval Officers were commended & decorated for murdering innocent men, women and children, and the US government not only failed to openly disclose the mistakes they made, but refused to apologise.  Instead they paid out tens of millions of dollars (of which only a small proportion was received by victim's families) in compensation but never accepted blame. 

Imagine that, flying along on a passenger jet, minding your own business, with a pilot flying in the correct airspace, in a fully functional modern jet airliner, on a day of blue skies and sunshine, and the next second you're falling through the sky with 3rd degree burns, possibly missing a limb or two, with shards of metal and glass piercing your skin, having just watched your son or daughter get ripped to pieces in front of your eyes, and maybe, just maybe, you'll be lucky enough to pass out or die before you hit the water at 500km/hr.  I hope that's the image that goes through William Rogers mind each night as he's trying to go to sleep. Or maybe he'll be lucky enough to get prostate cancer soon like the Lockerbie bomber and he can have a nice peaceful death surrounded by his family, drifting off with a morphine infusion blocking out the visions of the deaths he caused, before he spends eternity in Hell.  There may be a Hell, run by the devil and reserved for people like Rogers and the Lockerbie bomber, but one thing's for certain, there really is no God.