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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: tejek who wrote (247779)8/27/2005 8:03:11 PM
From: combjelly  Read Replies (1) of 1574489
 
"I guess he wasn't as popular as everyone thought."

Iran-Contra was a very near thing for Reagan. The taking of our embassy in Iran was still pretty fresh and selling them weapons wasn't hugely popular...

However, the media missed out on the evidence that we had been dealing with the Iranians long before Iran-Contra. During their conflict with Iraq, we accidently downed one of their airliners. The official explanation was the weapon systems got confused between it and an Iranian F14 that was taking off very close to the area. Ok, I can buy that, I don't think they would have intentionally shot down an airliner full of people. But what was interesting is that Iran still had functional F14s. Sure, we sold them to the Shah. But SOP was to not provide repair parts or train people to provide maintenance, except for Israel. Because maintenance was definitely required, they only had a mean time before failure of less than 100 hours. By controlling maintenance the US kept control over their use. Do something we don't like and their planes would shortly be airport decorations. But, ok you say, they just parked them on the runway and only fired them up when they needed. But that wouldn't work either. F14 engines pushed the technology so hard that if they weren't run on a regular basis, their bearings would develop flat spots and the engine would explosively disassemble itself when they were eventually started. So for them to be flying F14s several years after the Shah was deposed, those jets would have required a huge overhaul and regular work and parts. Now true, Israel could have been doing it, but what would their motivation be?
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