Yeah AM, you're right---amazing how tequila makes all them numbers kinda blur together! Even so, it's pretty f***ing amazing if they can field that many airplanes after so long---I remember the guys on my Midshipman cruise in the Med talking about what a great airplane it was but that it was a maintenance pig---and that was with TOTAL support and trained maintenance people! Amazing.
I think you nailed it. The Iranians are an amazing people----they're not Arabic by race, they're Caucasian so it was total shock to the powers-that-be in 1980 that they would fall back into a Muslim revolution. I remember getting drunk with a guy in Paris in the late 1980s who had been a Revolutionary Guard and helped to "protect" the hostages at the embassy in '80-'81. Hewas no dumb-arse even if his politics were a bit skewed, and I still remember him saying (in answer to my naive question of why they hated Americans) "We don't hate Americans---we love Americans. We just hate your government and the things they helped the Shah to do to us. If you knew what your government really was like, you'd hate them too". I've thought about that a time or twenty over the years...
All I know is we'd better get our act straight in Iraq and Afghan becus them boys in Iran are goona be a whole 'nother ball of wax, and the day is coming. F-14s or paper airplanes, they ain't gonna play---and factor in the diesel subs to close off the PG, the other jets and AA missiles, and most importantly the will to fight---I'm glad I'm too old and my son's too young to be in what I see coming.
