Word: iraqis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Iraq has been responsible for most of the attacks on Persian Gulf shipping, and it was misguided Iraqi missiles that blindsided the U.S.S. Stark in May. But in response, the Reagan Administration lashed out at Iran and pushed its plan to put American flags on tankers belonging to Iraq's ally Kuwait...
...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...
...conflict in the Persian Gulf is sometimes called the tanker war, and last week's skirmishes showed why. In a nighttime raid, Iraqi warplanes bombed several Iranian tankers near Kharg Island. A day later an Iranian gunboat hurled nearly a score of rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S.-operated Liberian tanker off the Kuwaiti coast; no casualties were reported. The attacks followed a bout of muscle flexing between the U.S. and Iran. Soon after Iran tested a Chinese-made Silkworm missile at the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Navy held its own drill, launching planes from a carrier...
...futures markets edged past $20 per bbl. for the first time in 17 months. Industry experts said traders have been jittery about increased conflict in the Persian Gulf region, which supplies 20% of the oil consumed by the Western nations, since the attack on the U.S.S. Stark by an Iraqi plane last month...
...Defense Caspar Weinberger tried to mollify Congress with a 26- page report explaining the Navy's new rules of engagement in the gulf. Warships are now operating under "hair-trigger" alert, prepared to fire on any plane or vessel that approaches in a hostile manner. Under these rules, the Iraqi jet that zeroed in on the Stark would have been blown out of the sky before it could launch its missiles. He assured worried Congressmen that the threat to U.S. vessels was, as the report put it, "low to moderate...