Posted on 04/20/2006 4:08:59 PM PDT by shoptalk
WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 11, 1980, NOON
The meeting began with Jimmy Carter's announcement: “Gentlemen, I want you to know that I am seriously considering an attempt to rescue the hostages.”
Hamilton Jordan, the White House chief of staff, knew immediately that the president had made a decision. Planning and practice for a rescue mission had been going on in secret for five months, but it had always been regarded as the last resort, and ever since the November 4 embassy takeover, the White House had made every effort to avoid it. As the president launched into a list of detailed questions about how it was to be done, his aides knew he had mentally crossed a line.
Carter had met the takeover in Iran with tremendous restraint, equating the national interest with the well-being of the fifty-three hostages, and his measured response had elicited a great deal of admiration, both at home and abroad. His approval ratings had doubled in the first month of the crisis. But in the following months, restraint had begun to smell like weakness and indecision. Three times in the past five months, carefully negotiated secret settlements had been ditched by the inscrutable Iranian mullahs, and the administration had been made to look more foolish each time. Approval ratings had nose-dived, and even stalwart friends of the administration were demanding action. Jimmy Carter’s formidable patience was badly strained.
And the mission that had originally seemed so preposterous had gradually come to seem feasible. It was a two-day affair with a great many moving parts and very little room for error--one of the most daring thrusts in U.S. military history. It called for a nighttime rendezvous of helicopters and planes at a landing strip in the desert south of Tehran, where the choppers would refuel...
(Excerpt) Read more at iran.theatlantic.com ...
I can't read more. I known how it ends.
To get the range nedded, the sand screens had to be removed from the H-53s. Jimmuh fiddled around until the sand storm season started to send the mission. The helos were on site for about two months.
nedded = needed
Thank you. I don't forget.
Here's an old article:
The Disasterous "Desert One" Rescue Operation of 1980
Air Force Magazine ^ | Otto Kreisher
Posted on 10/13/2001
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/547308/posts
Thank you!
Restraint means weakness to the sandfleas. How did that "rescue" go again? How many brave American soldiers died for Jimmy's "restraint"?
This day after this disaster, Carter should have resigned.
Beckwith always blamed Carter for his interference in the details of the operation, such as not allowing him to use Army helicopter pilots.
He should have fallen on his sword, walked the plank, or been shot out of a torpedo tube; whatever the sub service does with disgraced officers.
The moment Reagan was sworn in, the hostages were released. Reagan would have nuked those Mullah @#^# !@&#'s back to the stone age, and they knew it.
I ran across someting similar the day after the disaster.
I was having lunch with a lady friend who was working in an area peripheral to the film industry. Her father had been a successful New York publisher and Hollywood producer. At this early point in her "career", before reality set in, it looked as though she might become a successful writer. After sitting down at our favorite Jewish deli in West L.A., she opened the conversation by saying, "Today I'm ashamed to be an American."
"Because the rescue mission failed?" I asked.
"No, because we even tried it."
I was too surprised to respond to that. I couldn't quite put myself into that mindset.
Apparently neither could Carter.
"Because the rescue mission failed?" I asked.
"No, because we even tried it."
Wow! It is scary to think how many Americans, rather than being proud of this country's greatness are, by some peculiar logic, ashamed or embarrassed. But if they really stopped and thought about it, in what other country would they prefer to have been born?
I'm with you, and I don't even like to be reminded that Jimmy Carter was ever President, let alone still alive and comitting acts of sedition on a regular basis.
May he rot in Hell.
I remember the announcement, and from that point on I knew we had someone special at the helm.
I love your profile page....short, sweet, succinct!! Bravo
Promotes them.
Sorry, a little personal history there...
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