"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:

An airliner on a course that approaching a US ship in a hostile zone...

A regularly scheduled commercial airliner...

Its course, schedule, transponder freq etc. in IATA publications
routinely distributed around the world (and routinely consulted by the
US armed forces, if not by Capt. Rogers)...

In a "zone" which the US had made no attempt to close to civilian air
traffic, and which the same flight (as well as hundreds of other
airliners, from Iran and a score of other countries) had routinely
transited numerous times before during that period.

I guess if you want to split hairs, it's more excusable than KAL 007
in that we didn't actually have fighters shadowing it before we
attacked. But neither incident was anything other than shameful.