Word: exocets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...reflag Kuwait oil vessels with the Stars and Stripes and escort them through gulf waters under U.S. naval protection. That decision sparked some Democratic demands for Reagan to seek congressional approval under the War Powers Act, especially after an Iraqi jet accidentally hit the U.S. frigate Stark with an Exocet missile, killing 37 American sailors. But political heat died down as the U.S. oil convoys continued to function. The Democratic Party platform adopted last week, for example, endorsed freedom of navigation in the gulf as a desirable U.S. foreign-policy objective...
...attacking Iran in 1980, and it was Iraq that expanded the fighting into the Persian Gulf in 1984 by initiating the tanker war, thus endangering international oil shipments. The U.S. became an inadvertent victim of the last phase of the tanker war when on May 17 an Iraqi Exocet missile hit the cruiser U.S.S. Stark, killing 37 American sailors. The incident increased Administration resolve to protect neutral shipping in the gulf by reflagging and escorting the Kuwaiti tankers. Said one U.S. official in Washington: "Iraq owes us in the gulf. It owes us the U.S.S. Stark...
...warships are not suited to the warfare of the narrow Gulf, where small speedboats, mines, and Exocet missiles seem to be the weapons of the day. The navy has concentrated the largest American armada of warships, those designed for escorting convoys across the Atlantic and attacking the Soviet navy in its bases off the cold Kola Penninsula, in a region filled with terrorists, Revolutionary Guards, and trigger-happy Iraqui pilots...
...gulf fiasco is only the latest ill-fated attempt by the Reagan Administration to assert U.S. interests by deploying troops on largely symbolic missions. The crew of the Stark was on a poorly defined mission when it was struck by wayward Iraqi Exocet missiles last May. In 1983 Marines deployed in Beirut turned out to be sitting ducks in an ill-protected barracks; 241 Americans were killed by a truck bomb. Despite the valor of those who fought in Grenada in 1983, the mission was beset by examples of military ineptitude and interservice rivalries. In Libya three years later, after...
...retaliate. Another threat is the Chinese-made Silkworm missiles that Iran is deploying along the Strait of Hormuz. They have a range of about 50 miles, enough to cover the entire strait, and carry a 1,000-lb. warhead, three times as heavy as the warhead of the Exocet that hit the Stark...