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Banned
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
I may have an answer and its such an obvious one that I am kicking myself for not thinking of it prior.
Most posters on this board, tend to blame the US and ignore other countries motives. I think its just how Liberals view their own government, along with a touch of white guilt. Reasons don't matter, its just the natural reaction.
Well driving in to work just now I heard a rather interesting take on the situation with Iran.
While we piddle back and forth if it was incited by the US, if it really happened, or why the US would 'do' it, we have ignored, with a arrogance, Iran.
Instead of asking 'why would the US pretend that speed boats were mucking around US warships' ask 'Why would Iran send speed boats to muck around US warships' and see if there is an answer.
For the liberal, the reason the US would pretend is that Bush wants war with Iran. If this is the case it was done with an extreme level of incompetence.
But something has recently happened in Iran. The threat of the US invasion has gone down with the NIE report. Ahmadinejad is not a popular present on the domestic side. HE needs a US threat to maintain his power, and by provoking the US to some minor incident he can maintain that threat and put himself as someone willing to stand up to the US. Also the group believed responsible for yesterdays bombing of the US embassy vehicle in Beirut has strong Iranian ties.
Obvious Iran doesn't want a war, but if Ahmadinejad can keep the people of Iran thinking war is on the horizon, he can maintain his power.
The problem with the way we are looking at wagging the dog here is we are looking at the wrong dog.
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You have to ignore (and you did....) everything I've posted to the contrary, to come up with your theroy. It speaks to what keeps you going, through thick and thin, official lie and/or misleading statement, after official lie and/or misleading statement.
Saddam probably slipped in all of the false and misleading details into Powell's Feb., 2003 UN presentation, too.
These two reports I previouslu posted, should have shattered this portion of your belief system, that there is any way to spin this that attempts to make the US DOD/whitehouse look as if it is not having another Tillman or Lynch moment....the two reports certainly shatter your new "theory":
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...103730_pf.html
Objects From Iranian Boats Posed No Threat, Navy Says
By Robin Wright and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 12, 2008; A11
The small, boxlike objects dropped in the water by Iranian boats as they approached U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday posed no threat to the American vessels, U.S. officials said yesterday, even as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff charged that the incident reflects Iran's new tactics of asymmetric warfare.
After passing the white objects, commanders on the USS Port Royal and its accompanying destroyer and frigate decided there was so little danger from the objects that they did not bother to radio other ships to warn them, the officials said.
"The concern was that there was a boat in front of them putting these objects in the path of our ships. When they passed, the ships saw that they were floating and light, that they were not heavy or something that would have caused damage," such as a mine, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, a spokeswoman for the Navy's Fifth Fleet in the Gulf.
But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, said the incident reflects Iran's shift to small craft that can aggressively menace larger naval vessels. "It's clearly strategically where the Iranian military has gone," Mullen said. The United States has "been concerned for years about the threat of mining those straits.".....
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/worl...f-Words.html?_
WGulf Prankster at Issue in Iran Dispute
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 15, 2008
....The questions raised in the Navy Times on Sunday also come at a sensitive time for Washington as President Bush visits Gulf nations and presses for greater unity against Iran's attempt to expand its influence in the region.
Seagoing exchanges between U.S. and Iranian vessels are not uncommon in the crowded Gulf shipping lanes, especially near the Strait of Hormuz where Iran's coastline is within miles of international waters.
Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said there had been two or three similar incidents over the past year, but ''maybe not quite as dramatic'' as the Jan. 6 confrontation.
None had been publicized until the eve of Bush's trip to the region, even though in one, in December, a U.S. ship actually fired warning shots toward an Iranian boat......
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.....and the following is just out this AM....
Quote:
http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=8899
Bogus Iran story was product of Pentagon spokesman, reporter says
01/16/2008 @ 9:06 am
Filed by John Byrne
An American journalist and historian who was the first to break the story of a secret Iranian peace overture to the Bush Administration in 2006 alleges that the latest Pentagon encounter between Iranian ships and a Navy vessel was a deliberate fabrication.
The incident, on Jan. 5 in Strait of Hormuz off the Iranian coast, was originally described as a non-event -- then quickly became one in which Iranian boats threatened to "explode" American ships.
At about 4 am on Monday Jan. 7, the commander of the Fifth Fleet issued a news release on an incident with small Iranian boats. According to reporter Gareth Porter, writing in the <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA17Ak03.html">Asia Times</a>, "the release reported that the Iranian "small boats" had "maneuvered aggressively in close proximity of [sic] the Hopper [the lead ship of the three-ship convoy]. But it did not suggest that the Iranian boats had threatened the boats or that it had nearly resulted in firing on the Iranian boats."
"On the contrary, the release made the US warships handling of the incident sound almost routine," he adds. "'Following standard procedures,' the release said, "Hopper issued warnings, attempted to establish communications with the small boats and conducted evasive maneuvering.'"
No reference was made to a US ship nearly firing on an Iranian vessel, or suggestions that the US ships would "explode," or white boxes dropped into the water in the path of the US fleet.
This press release, however, went ignored by the media, Porter notes. Instead, the focus turned to CNN's Barbara Starr, who touted allegations that military officials told her Iranian boats were carrying out "threatening maneuvers." CBS soon followed up with a story positing that the Persians had dropped white boxes in the water around the American ships.
Starr added that one American boat had been given the order to fire, and the Iranians had moved away just in time.
Porter identifies Bryan Whitman, the Pentagon's top spokesman, as the culprit for the spurious account. Most of Whitman's remarks that formed the basis for Starr's and other stories were drawn from an off the record press briefing that was held on the condition he not be identified as a source.
But, "in an apparent slip-up, however, an Associated Press story that morning cited Whitman as the source for the statement that US ships were about to fire when the Iranian boats turned and moved away - a part of the story that other correspondents had attributed to an unnamed Pentagon official," he writes.
After facing suspicion, the Pentagon released a <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/09/world/main3690654.shtml?">four-minute, 20-second condensed video clip</a> that appeared to show small Iranian boats swarming around a US Navy vessel. A voice was heard to say, "I am coming to you. ... You will explode after (inaudible) minutes."
In the wake of reports, the Iranians said the footage had been fabricated.
What later emerged was a more complex view of the incident -- that in fact the threatening transmission did not come from the Iranian ships.
On Jan. 13, Pentagon officials said they did not know the source of the radio transmission, backing off a previous claim that it came from one of the boats. The Navy Times said the voice in the audio sounded different from the one belonging to an Iranian officer shown speaking to the cruiser Port Royal over a radio from a small boat in the video released by Iranian authorities.
Some now believe the threats actually emanated from a heckler known as the "Filipino Monkey," likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and vile epithets.
Ultimately, other elements of the story swallowed by Pentagon correspondents were also discredited. The commanding officer of a missile cruiser said the white boxes "didn't look threatening."
Fifth Fleet commander Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff denied that his ships had been close to firing on the Iranians. So did destroyer commander Jeffery James.
Porter asked a spokeswoman for the Navy's Fifth Fleet whether or not commanders were upset with Washington's portrayal of the incident.
Lydia Robertson of Fifth Fleet Public Affairs would not comment directly, he wrote. "There is a different perspective over there," Robertson said.
By January 11, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell was already disavowing the story that Whitman had been instrumental in creating only four days earlier. "No one in the military has said that the transmission emanated from those boats," said Morrell.
The other elements of the story given to Pentagon correspondents were also discredited. The commanding officer of the guided missile cruiser Port Royal, Captain David Adler, dismissed the Pentagon's story that he had felt threatened by the dropping of white boxes in the water. Meeting with reporters on Monday, Adler said, "I saw them float by. They didn't look threatening to me."
The naval commanders seemed most determined, however, to scotch the idea that they had been close to firing on the Iranians. Cosgriff, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, denied the story in a press briefing on January 7. A week later, Commander Jeffery James, commander of the destroyer Hopper, told reporters that the Iranians had moved away "before we got to the point where we needed to open fire".
The decision to treat the January 6 incident as evidence of an Iranian threat reveals a chasm between the interests of political officials in Washington and navy officials in the Gulf. Asked whether the navy's reporting of the episode was distorted by Pentagon officials, Lydia Robertson of Fifth Fleet Public Affairs would not comment directly. But she said, "There is a different perspective over there."
Last week, RAW STORY's Nick Juliano spoke with Steven Aftergood, an expert on military secrecy, who has recently published an NSA assessment on a notorious incident during the Vietnam war in which Vietnamese ships were said to have attacked American vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin.
"The parallels (between Tonkin and Hormuz) speak for themselves, but what they say is that even the most basic factual assumptions can be made erroneously [or] can prove to be false," Aftergood, of the Federation of American Scientists, <a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Echoes_of_Tonkin_seen_in_averted_0111.html">said</a>. "Therefore extreme caution is always appropriate before drawing conclusions ... that might leave to violent conflict. That's almost so obvious that I feel embarrassed saying it, but there is a history of mistaken interpretations of these kinds of encounters that ought to teach us humility."
"It's also surprising that President Bush was permitted to get so far out in front on this issue, even though there were significant uncertainties on what transpired," Aftergood added.
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Last edited by host; 01-16-2008 at 10:52 AM..
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