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From: neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP (Paul Neubauer)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,misc.legal,alt.flame
Subject: Re: Historical and Geographic inaccuracies.
Message-ID: <2335@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 11 Mar 88 17:51:05 GMT
References: <3637@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP (Paul Neubauer)
Distribution: na
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 22

In article <3637@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> lazarus@athena.mit.edu 
(Michael Friedman) writes:
>I would agree with every statement in your last two paragraphs. We
>should have immediately declared war. That would have let the Iranians
>know we were serious. We should have handed them target lists
>describing what would happen if our people were hurt or killed. And a
>LARGE naval task force should have headed towards Iran. 

Just as a footnote, Jimmy Carter was speaking here at BSU the evening before
last (Wed. 3/11).  He said that, in fact, that was more or less what was
done.  Khomeini had threatened to put the hostages on "trial" as spys and
Carter said that he had communicated to Khomeini via the Swiss embassy that
certain very undesirable things would happen to Iran if that were done and
that even worse things would happen if the hostages were harmed.  Carter
commented that this communication was kept private and although he did not
say much about why, I inferred that he thought it would carry more weight if
it was clearly not just public posturing.  I also imagine that by keeping
the threats quiet, they did not come across as a "dare".

-- 
Paul Neubauer         neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP
                      <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!neubauer