Tonkin?

[clambake]

(CNN) -- The U.S. military reported Monday on a "significant" confrontation involving five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats that "harassed and provoked" three U.S. naval ships in international waters over the weekend.


The USS Hopper, seen in a file photo, was one of the ships harassed by Iranian boats, officials say.

U.S. military officials said the incident occurred early Sunday morning in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping channel leading in and out of the Persian Gulf.

The five Iranian ships made "threatening" moves -- in one case coming within 200 yards of a U.S. ship, the U.S. officials said.

In one radio transmission, the Iranians told the U.S. Navy: "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes," the U.S. military officials told CNN.

When the U.S. ships heard that radio transmission, they took up their gun positions and officers were "in the process" of giving the order to fire when the Iranians abruptly turned away, the U.S. officials said. Watch what U.S. officials are saying about the incident »

After the radio transmission, one of the Iranian ships dropped white boxes into the water in front of the U.S. ships, the officials told CNN. It was not clear what was in the boxes, the officials said. See a map of the Strait of Hormuz »

No shots were fired and no one was injured in the confrontation.

Don't Miss
Iran patrols Persian Gulf, U.S. says
The Iranian government had no immediate response to the Sunday incident.

The Strait of Hormuz, which is in international waters, is near much of the world's oil supplies.

The White House urged Iran to refrain from "such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

In November, the U.S. military reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps had taken command of that country's naval operations in the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. considers the Revolutionary Guard to be a major supporter of terrorist activity.


Tensions between Iran and the U.S. have increased over the last few years. The U.S. has concerns about Iran's nuclear program, and has charged that Iran supplies weapons to insurgents in Iraq who target American forces.

In March, Iran detained 15 crew members of a British ship before releasing them after nearly two weeks. Iran claimed the British vessel strayed into Iranian waters -- a claim Britain strongly denied.

anybody buy this claim?

[George Gervin's Afro]

why would iran do this? especially since darth cheney is itching for another war... the iranians better watch it with crazy uncle dick at the helm...

[Nbadan]

...The Strait of Hormuz, which is in international waters...

This is akin to a chihuahua harassing a rottweiler..

[AFBlue]

Nowhere near Tonkin-level, but stupid on their part nonetheless.

[Nbadan]

..then again, Tonkin was no-where near Tonkin, it was also completely made up too....

[AFBlue]

..then again, Tonkin was no-where near Tonkin, it was also completely made up too....

Point taken...

Our problem has gone from not enough information to too much information, but at least from initial indications regarding this story I would doubt that it generates any action from the administration.

It should, however, give more "hypotheticals" for the media to play with in questions to the presidential candidates...

[Nbadan]

More details emerging...


The U.S. Navy also received a radio transmission that officials believe came from the Iranian boats. The transmission said, "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes," the U.S. military officials told CNN.

When the U.S. ships heard that radio transmission, they took up their gun positions and officers were "in the process" of giving the order to fire when the Iranians abruptly turned away, the U.S. officials said.

After the radio transmission, one of the Iranian boats dropped white boxes into the water in front of the U.S. ships, the officials said. It was not clear what was in the boxes, the officials said.

No shots were fired, and no one was injured.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman downplayed the incident, calling it "ordinary," IRNA reported. Mohammad Ali Hosseini said that similar incidents had occurred in the past between Iranian and American ships, and the issues were resolved as soon as the ships recognized each other, IRNA reported.

...

On Friday, the U.S. Navy announced the same team of naval ships had been searching in the Arabian Sea for a sailor missing for a day from the USS Hopper. The outcome of the search was not immediately known Monday.

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/07/iran.us.navy/index.html)

hmmmmmm...............why would 'a sailor' be in International waters near Iran??

[boutons_]

While The American People have been scared stupid by dubya/dickhead/rove/neo-cunts (eg, the 2004 prez election), it looks like the Iranians aren't scared at all about poking the US military.

Could it be because the Iranians see the US military exhausted physically and logistically, tied down, and about to "break" in April (according to US generals) in Iraq and back-sliding Afghanistan?

The Iranians know they can't win militarily, so I guess they were just having a little fun tweaking the American nose.

Congrats to the Navy for not shooting over a trivial incident. dickhead would have fired his shotgun and missed.

Any more gratuitous aggression by dickhead will certainly cost the Repugs the WH, and Congress, and we know dickhead is all (oil) politics, all the time, and never about US security.

[Nbadan]

A blast from the past...


"Last night I announced to the American people that the North Vietnamese regime had conducted further deliberate attacks against U.S. naval vessels operating in international waters, and I had therefore directed air action against gunboats and supporting facilities used in these hostile operations. . . The threat to the free nations of southeast Asia has long been clear. The North Vietnamese regime has constantly sought to take over South Vietnam and Laos. This Communist regime has violated the Geneva accords for Vietnam. It has systematically conducted a campaign of subversion, which includes the direction, training, and supply of personnel and arms for the conduct of guerrilla warfare in South Vietnamese territory. . .

In recent months, the actions of the North Vietnamese regime have become steadily more threatening...

As I have repeatedly made clear, the United States intends no rashness, and seeks no wider war. . . "

Link (http://www.hbci.com/~tgort/johnson.htm)

...we all know how that worked out....

...meanwhile, anyone remember the liberty? (http://judicial-inc.biz/a._ttack_on_the_uss_liberty.htm)

[boutons_]

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Israel_to_brief_Bush_on_options_0107.html

US nut-case Jew war mongers/neo-cunts and Israelis pushing dubya/dickhead to attack Iran.

[remingtonbo2001]

While The American People have been scared stupid by dubya/dickhead/rove/neo-cunts (eg, the 2004 prez election), it looks like the Iranians aren't scared at all about poking the US military.

Could it be because the Iranians see the US military exhausted physically and logistically, tied down, and about to "break" in April (according to US generals) in Iraq and back-sliding Afghanistan?

The Iranians know they can't win militarily, so I guess they were just having a little fun tweaking the American nose.

Congrats to the Navy for not shooting over a trivial incident. dickhead would have fired his shotgun and missed.

Any more gratuitous aggression by dickhead will certainly cost the Repugs the WH, and Congress, and we know dickhead is all (oil) politics, all the time, and never about US security.

Your commentary is completely and utterly destructive and offers nothing which might be considered constructive and useful.

Good job :clap ....Wanna COOKIE!

[01Snake]

Your commentary is completely and utterly destructive and offers nothing which might be considered constructive and useful.

Good job :clap ....Wanna COOKIE!

I see you've met Croutons. :lol

[smeagol]

Who was the president when the Bay of Tonkin incident occured?

[AFBlue]

Who was the president when the Bay of Tonkin incident occured?

LBJ

[E20]

Lebron James????

[clambake]

it's a good thing that this was at sea, because this whole story smells fishy.

the iranian revolutionary guard has been labeled a terrorist organization, so we let this "known" group of terrorist within what amounts to a 5 or 6-iron of our navy vessels and they are sending radio messeges about blowing them up, and we do nothing while we're at such high alert?

i also smell a rat.

[01Snake]

it's a good thing that this was at sea, because this whole story smells fishy.

the iranian revolutionary guard has been labeled a terrorist organization, so we let this "known" group of terrorist within what amounts to a 5 or 6-iron of our navy vessels and they are sending radio messeges about blowing them up, and we do nothing while we're at such high alert?

i also smell a rat.

I wonder what your reaction would have been if we had infact opened fire on the Iranian vessel?

Something tells me its a damned of you do and damned if you don't scenario in your eyes.

[DarkReign]

Lebron James????

I love your sig. Love that movie.

[George Gervin's Afro]

I wonder what your reaction would have been if we had infact opened fire on the Iranian vessel?

Something tells me its a damned of you do and damned if you don't scenario in your eyes.


do you blame people for questioning this administration?

[Yonivore]

do you blame people for questioning this administration?
Yes, they're idiots.

[clambake]

I wonder what your reaction would have been if we had infact opened fire on the Iranian vessel?

Something tells me its a damned of you do and damned if you don't scenario in your eyes.
I highly doubt this story to begin with, much less the idea that Iranian vessels carrying Iranian revolutionary guards that are now regarded as terrorist would be allowed to approach our ships within 200 yards.

[01Snake]

do you blame people for questioning this administration?

Not my point Cheech.

[Nbadan]

Rawstory breaks an important aspect of the original Tonkin incident....


But he said that probably the "most historically significant feature" of the declassified report was the retelling of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident.

That was a reported North Vietnamese attack on American destroyers that helped lead to president Lyndon Johnson's sharp escalation of American forces in Vietnam.

The author of the report "demonstrates that not only is it not true, as (then US) secretary of defense Robert McNamara told Congress, that the evidence of an attack was 'unimpeachable,' but that to the contrary, a review of the classified signals intelligence proves that 'no attack happened that night,'" FAS said in a statement.

"What this study demonstrated is that the available intelligence shows that there was no attack. It's a dramatic reversal of the historical record," Aftergood said.

Rawstory (http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Report_reveals_Vietnam_War_hoaxes_f_01082008.html)

JFK Would never Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!.....but LBJ certainly did.....

[boutons_]

Another myth/pretext that led to war the US wanted anyway: "Remember the Maine!"

[Gerryatrics]

Well, you guys called it. Turns out these "Iranian Patrol Boats" were actually a combination of random radar blips and the destroyer's own engine noise.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=4105110&page=1

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

With those boats as close as they were in that video, I'm actually pretty surprised (after what happened to the USS Cole) that we didn't blow those little fuckers out of the water.

What's weird to me is the part about the white boxes dropped in the water. That almost sounds like it was a trial run to see if they could get close and drop explosives in or something like that.

[boutons_]

With the Cole as example, I support firing on any boats that approach within a couple 100 yards, maybe more.

WTF are the Iranians up to?

dubya's in the region faking statesmanship and involvement, maybe he can fix up everything. Maybe they'll let him suit up in a flight suit, fire off a few rounds and play faux cowboy.

[clambake]

Well, you guys called it. Turns out these "Iranian Patrol Boats" were actually a combination of random radar blips and the destroyer's own engine noise.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=4105110&page=1
yeah, that's really some terrifying video. looks more like cigarette boats practicing a cocaine run, or the remake of a scene from Miami Vice.

Either way, we look about as prepared for consequences as our white house is for their actions.

[Nbadan]

...a lot of people in the know are saying the video and audio are faked...

Gulf Video "Fabricated," Iran Says
The Associated Press
Wednesday 09 January 2008


Iran on Wednesday called video and audio released by the Pentagon showing Iranian Revolutionary Guards boats confronting U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz "fabricated," an English-language state-run television station reported.

State TV did not give the name of the Revolutionary Guard figure and did not offer more details about how the official knew the footage was "fabricated."

The Pentagon on Tuesday released a four-minute, 20-second video that included audio showing small Iranian boats swarming around U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf. In the recording, a man speaking in heavily accented English threatened, "I am coming to you.... You will explode after ... minutes."

The Iranian boats appeared to ignore repeated warnings from the U.S. ships, including horn blasts and radio transmissions, according to the video, which was shot from the bridge of the destroyer Hopper.

Truthout (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010908F.shtml)

Hooman Majd of Huffington post writes (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hooman-majd/its-a-fake_b_80682.html)...Any Iranian can immediately identify Persian-accented English, particularly if the speaker has had little contact with the West, as is the case with Revolutionary Guardsmen and sailors. Iranians, you see, have difficulty with two consonants such as "p" and "l" next to each other; even Iranians who have lived in America for years will often pronounce "please" as "peh-leeze", or in this case, "explode" as "exp-eh-lode". On the tape, "explode" is pronounced perfectly, albeit as if the speaker was a villain addressing a superhero. Further, it is unimaginable, given what is known about the Revolutionary Guards (and I have met many), that one of its corps would speak in a such a manner, even if the accent were correctly Persian...

[Yonivore]

What would be the point, Dan? Especially if we didn't use the incident to escalate the confrontation a la' Gulf of Tonkin? (Which, by the way, is a stupid analogy).

[Nbadan]

Who knows...escalation maybe, or maybe they are planning an incident which more closely resembles Tonkin and they are laying the ground-work....

[ChumpDumper]

Didn't we already invade Iran last Labor Day? (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76832)

Around the time Cheney resigned? (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76726)

[SouthernFried]

Yeah...let's side with IRAN govt controlled TV on this one. The US musta faked it.

Fucking morons.

[01Snake]

Yeah...let's side with IRAN govt controlled TV on this one. The US musta faked it.

Fucking morons.

Thats the way it works for some people on here. It's really pretty pathetic isn't it?

[Nbadan]

No one is siding with the Iranians on anything, all I'm saying is listen to the voices on the mic yourself and how robotic they sound...

[Nbadan]

Even the navy doesn't know where the voices came from anymore...

U.S.: Voices on Recording May Not Have Been From Iranian Speedboats
Chilling Threat Could Have Come From the Shore or Another Ship, Navy Says



Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.

The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes."

The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.

Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else.

We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there," said the spokesperson. "It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we're not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we're not saying it absolutely didn't."

ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4115702&page=1)

Apology accepted....

:hat


too bad it's to late for the M$M to take back their sensationalist headlines....

[George Gervin's Afro]

No one is siding with the Iranians on anything, all I'm saying is listen to the voices on the mic yourself and how robotic they sound...


come on dan..if you don't blindly believe bush & company you obviously side with the enemy.. that's common knowldge now. For the record why would Iran do this considering there are people (tricky dick) in this administration itching to start a fight...

[SouthernFried]

Who knows...escalation maybe, or maybe they are planning an incident which more closely resembles Tonkin and they are laying the ground-work....

When you are listening and quoting IRANIAN state controlled media, and then giving possible reasons why the Americans could be faking this event, like you did above....

Then your a fucking moron.

Apology denied.

[clambake]

they faked Tonkin. i bet there were americans outraged that anyone would think their government faked tonkin.

[Nbadan]

...yeah, cause the U.S. would never provoke war with Iran....

:rolleyes

...but now it seems more like it was some pole-jockey on another ship with a mic jackin around...

[SouthernFried]

Now if you wanna take back your idiocy (not a chance)...and look into ALTERNATIVE reasons, I could go with that.

And I'll give you a legitimate alternative....

Al Queda could have sent these boats to harass American ships, under the guise of Iranian boats to escalate a conflict between them. Logical.

To immediately state the case of the Iranians saying the US is faking these events...and IMMEDIATELY come up with reasoning to support the IRANIAN's...

...shows everyone here more about you, than anything about the Iranians or this administration.

So, in simple terms....fuck you.

[clambake]

were you outraged when you found out about Tonkin?

[Holt's Cat]

...a lot of people in the know are saying the video and audio are faked...

:lol Within the Iranian theocracy, perhaps.

Bush may be rattling the sabre with Iran right now, but he's trying to salvage whatever he can of his presidency. Right now he's taking the obligatory stab at ME peace.

[Nbadan]

BBC releases Iran's video of U.S. Navy Encounter...


4DSlKlv6h0Y

[boutons_]

US now says it's not sure of the origin of the voices.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7181929.stm

[boutons_]

Iran: Bush's Tonkin Gulf Tale Unravels

By Gareth Porter, IPS News
Posted on January 11, 2008, Printed on January 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/73455/

Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to U.S. ships from Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a "battle at sea," new information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no U.S. commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.

The new information that appears to contradict the original version of the incident includes the revelation that U.S. officials spliced the audio recording of an alleged Iranian threat onto to a videotape of the incident. That suggests that the threatening message may not have come in immediately after the initial warning to Iranian boats from a U.S. warship, as appears to do on the video.

Also unraveling the story is testimony from a former U.S. naval officer that non-official chatter is common on the channel used to communicate with the Iranian boats and testimony from the commander of the U.S. 5th fleet that the commanding officers of the U.S. warships involved in the incident never felt the need to warn the Iranians of a possible use of force against them.

Further undermining the U.S. version of the incident is a video released by Iran Thursday showing an Iranian naval officer on a small boat hailing one of three ships.

The Iranian commander is heard to say, "Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian navy patrol boat." He then requests the "side numbers" of the U.S. warships. A voice with a U.S. accent replies, "This is coalition warship 73. I am operating in international waters."

The dramatic version of the incident reported by U.S. news media throughout Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that Iranian speedboats, apparently belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard navy, had made moves to attack three U.S. warships entering the Strait and that the U.S. commander had been on the verge of firing at them when they broke off.

Typical of the network coverage was a story by ABC's Jonathan Karl quoting a Pentagon official as saying the Iranian boats "were a heartbeat from being blown up."

Bush administration officials seized on the incident to advance the portrayal of Iran as a threat and to strike a more threatening stance toward Iran. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley declared Wednesday that the incident "almost involved an exchange of fire between our forces and Iranian forces". President George W. Bush declared during his Mideast trip Wednesday that there would be "serious consequences" if Iran attacked U.S. ships and repeated his assertion that Iran is "a threat to world peace."

( come on, dubya, put that crotch-padded flight suit, go hide in the basement of the WH and declare war on Iran. Your time as CiC is running out, unless you declare yourself President-for-Life.)

Central to the depiction of the incident as involving a threat to U.S. warships is a mysterious pair of messages that the sailor who heard them onboard immediately interpreted as saying, "I am coming at you…", and "You will explode after a few minutes." But the voice in the audio clearly said "I am coming to you," and the second message was much less clear.

Furthermore, as the New York Times noted Thursday, the recording carries no ambient noise, such as the sounds of a motor, the sea or wind, which should have been audible if the broadcast had been made from one of the five small Iranian boats.

A veteran U.S. naval officer who had served as a surface warfare officer aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Gulf sent a message to the New York Times on-line column "The Lede" Wednesday pointing out that in the Persian Gulf, the "bridge-to-bridge" radio channel used to communicate between ships "is like a bad CB radio" with many people using it for "hurling racial slurs" and "threats." The former officer wrote that his "first thought" was that the message "might not have even come from one of the Iranian craft."

Pentagon officials admitted to the Times that they could not rule out that the broadcast might have come from another source

The five Iran boats involved were hardly in a position to harm the three U.S. warships.

( This I don't buy. A little fishing loaded with explosives punctured the Cole )

Although Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman described the Iranian boats as "highly maneuverable patrol craft" that were "visibly armed," he failed to note that these are tiny boats carrying only a two- or three-man crew and that they are normally armed only with machine guns that could do only surface damage to a U.S. ship.

( but they could carry explosives for a suicide attack )

The only boat that was close enough to be visible to the U.S. ships was unarmed, as an enlarged photo of the boat from the navy video clearly shows.

The U.S. warships were not concerned about the possibility that the Iranian boats were armed with heavier weapons capable of doing serious damage. Asked by a reporter whether any of the vessels had anti-ship missiles or torpedoes, Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, Commander of the 5th Fleet, answered that none of them had either of those two weapons.

"I didn't get the sense from the reports I was receiving that there was a sense of being afraid of these five boats," said Cosgriff.

The edited Navy video shows a crewman issuing an initial warning to approaching boats, but the footage of the boats maneuvering provides no visual evidence of Iranian boats "making a run on U.S. ships" as claimed by CBS news Wednesday in its report based on the new video.

Vice Adm. Cosgriff also failed to claim any run toward the U.S. ships following the initial warning. Cosgriff suggested that the Iranian boat's maneuvers were "unduly provocative" only because of the "aggregate of their manoeuvres, the radio call and the dropping of objects in the water."

He described the objects dropped by the Iranian boat as being "white, box-like objects that floated." That description indicates that the objects were clearly not mines, which would have been dark and would have sunk immediately. Cosgriff indicated that the ships merely "passed by them safely" without bothering to investigate whether they were explosives of some kind.

The apparent absence of concern on the part of the U.S. ships' commanding officers about the floating objects suggests that they recognised that the Iranians were engaging in a symbolic gesture having to do with laying mines.

Cosgriff's answers to reporters' questions indicated that the story promoted earlier by Pentagon officials that one of the U.S . ships came very close to firing at the Iranian boats seriously distorted what actually happened. When Cosgriff was asked whether the crew ever gave warning to the Iranian boats that they "could come under fire", he said the commanding officers "did not believe they needed to fire warning shots".

As for the report circulated by at least one Pentagon official to the media that one of the commanders was "close to firing", Cosgriff explained that "close to" meant that the commander was "working through a series of procedures". He added, "[I]n his mind, he might have been closing in on that point."

Despite Cosgriff's account, which contradicted earlier Pentagon portrayals of the incident as a confrontation, not a single news outlet modified its earlier characterization of the incident. After the Cosgriff briefing, Associated Press carried a story that said, " U.S. forces were taking steps toward firing on the Iranians to defend themselves, said the U.S. naval commander in the region. But the boats -- believed to be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's navy -- turned and moved away, officials said."

That was quite different from what Cosgriff actually said.

In its story covering the Cosgriff briefing, Reuters cited "other Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity" as saying that "a U.S. captain was in the process of ordering sailors to open fire when the Iranian boats moved away" -- a story that Cosgriff had specifically denied.

=======

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/73455/

==============

A (news) mountain out of molehill. Very tricky, delicate to be in command of one of these ships. I hope the commanders can keep their fucking cool, becasue dubya, dickhead, neo-cunts, and Israel are ready bomb the fuck out of Iran on the slightest, even imagined provocation.

[Clandestino]

imagined??? Terrorist loving piece of shit

[xrayzebra]

Gee, I wonder if a dimm-o-crap was in the WH if all the
nay-sayers would be so quick to blame the United States and
claim it was all fake. If it was fake, how did the BBC get
the pictures of the bad guys in their boats? Bush had that
spliced into the video I guess.

[clambake]

Gee, I wonder if a dimm-o-crap was in the WH if all the
nay-sayers would be so quick to blame the United States and
claim it was all fake. If it was fake, how did the BBC get
the pictures of the bad guys in their boats? Bush had that
spliced into the video I guess.
were you angry when you found out about Tonkin?

[boutons_]

"Terrorist loving piece of shit"

I love how you right-wing fucktards get upset when I expose your and YOUR fucktard govt's bullshit. :lol

The govt, ESP this govt, lies to us non-stop.

The military works for the govt, so they are liars, too.

The MSM also looks like a bunch of melo-dramatic, ratings/revenue chasing assholes, too.

Thanks to the lying, we'll probably NEVER know what really happened, but it sure ain't looking like the speedboats were the provocation initially described.

[LaMarcus Bryant]

boutons stop jacking it to anti-government blogs for once

doesn't anybody think for one second that it may be possible, as far as the transcripts go, that both are lying? What if there was an encounter and some third party did radio in to the US ship "you're going to blow up in two minutes"
anything could have happened and i think you're overestimating the stupidity of this administration if you think they even think they have a chance at starting a war with Iran

[boutons_]

That's the problem with lying. You never know who's telling the truth. The best, most well-financed, loudest liars win.

In general, no matter who's in power, it's the people out of power who work to uncover the lies and truths, while the people in power work to hide their lies and truth. The a fundamental role of the "press", to be in opposition. I'm sure Fox will start fulfilling that role as soon as the Dems win big in November. :lol

Lying NOT aside, this isn't the first incident, nor the last, according to ex Navy men, but what do they know?

Maybe dubya forgot all the other incidents, or maybe his staff didn't want to break his bubble of ignorant fantasies with such trivial shit. The Greatest Military Power in the History of the Universe getting its chains yanked by a couple speedboats? :lol

And where's dickhead's stick stirring this pot?

The JCoS is on record AGAINST attacking Iran. A mutiny against an order to bomb Iran would make for great TV.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

So I don't get it. How do the events in the strait of hormuz make boutons happy?

[Cant_Be_Faded]

How predictably predictable. God damn the fucking marriott-jewish voting bloc of this country.
pro jewish rhetoric in a presidential election is about as american as apple pie

[ChumpDumper]

I agree that US support for Israel has been over the top, but pulling out of the process completely is completely unrealistic.