Tonkin Bay II or USS Cole II?

The evidence is pointing to the former.

The Pentagon has admitted the hoax.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/tapes-to-answer-doubts-on-confrontation-with-iran/#comment-281887

"Indeed, the video and the audio were merged after the original recording, according to the Pentagon."

The audio has no ambient noise as one would expect during confrontation. Check it out for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRbYKKM5cAE

In the final years of the Cold War, the Russians and the Americans sometimes engage in games of chicken, and that is what you may be seeing here. But it may even be less than that-- a complete fabrication engineered as a prelude to the president's trip to the Middle East.

"All ships at sea use a common UHF frequency, Channel 16, also known as “bridge-to bridge” radio. Over here, near the U.S., and throughout the Mediterranean, Ch. 16 is used pretty professionally, i.e., chatter is limited to shiphandling issues, identifying yourself, telling other ships what your intentions are to avoid mishaps, etc.

"But over in the Gulf, Ch. 16 is like a bad CB radio. Everybody and their brother is on it; chattering away; hurling racial slurs, usually involving Filipinos (lots of Filipinos work in the area); curses involving your mother; 1970’s music broadcast in the wee hours (nothing odder than hearing The Carpenters 50 miles off the coast of Iran at 4 a.m.)"

I wonder who would have the most to gain by publishing this.

"As the U.S. government continues to demonstrate its inability to learn from history, an alarming report from the Strait of Hormuz was broadcast to the world on January 7. The Associated Press reported the following: "In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels." These Iranian ships are believed to part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's navy, the organization that the U.S. Congress officially decreed a 'terrorist' organization."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7760

If the commanding officers and entire crews of three naval vessels verify the authenticity of this incident I believe them.

If the usual suspects choose to believe the Iranians that is their choice.


(sigh)

After a century, nothing has changed. War mongers reign supreme as I hear the bleating of sheep.

1898 2008
Remember the Maine Remember the Cole
Yellow Journalism The O'Reilly Factor

Well, the U.S.I. is now saying that the Iranian videotape was accurate!

So I believe BOTH the Iranians AND the Americans! It's nice to see that we all now agree.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4115702&page=1 -- US Admits Edited Tape of Iran Incident 'Flawed'

http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=12191 -- Navy's Version of Iran Incident Starts to Unravel

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23036718-5005961,00.html -- US Navy: Threat May Not Have Been Iranian

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-01-10-iran-us-navy_N.htm -- Iran Airs Video Showing No Standoff With US Ships

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-01-09-iran-us_N.htm -- Iran: US Faked Video of Gulf Incident

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12189 -- Neo-cons try to lie us into war AGAIN!

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,159657,00.html -- U.S. "media" sensationalize a tempest in a teapot

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7755 -- Iranians said "explore", not "explode"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7177946.stm -- BBC video shows no aggressive maneuvers

It looks like you dittoheads have been CONNED yet again!

"Nothing Has Changed"

said the president in response to the most recent NIE that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program.

Three questions.

First, what set of facts does the president need so that something will change?

Secondly, why should we trust the NIE when it has been wrong before?

Thirdly, is World War III on hold?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071204/bush/

California Burning

It must be terrifying for so many people in California. But kudos to governor for evacuating almost a million people out of harm's way. The test as to whether this will be New Orleans 2.0 will be the follow-through from the Federal, state, and local government and the response from the insurance companies. All of those liberterians who saw their homes go up in flames have just be mugged by reality and may now have a little more fondness for what the government can do. I'm sure that Hollywood will also mount a fund-raiser as well.

The tribulations facing California tonights reminds me of the challenges that faced my ancestors in more than a century ago. Death in the form of fire would race over the dry bristle. The shifting line of fire would sometimes cover 30 miles or more. In 1873, in Saline County, Nebraska, the wind swept the smoke of a great fire toward a schoolhouse. One mother, against the teacher’s most earnest objections, took her children and those related to her away. The ten children tried to run before the fire and fell, one after the other, the mother too in her efforts to save them. The teacher and pupils who remained with her were safe on a nearby plowed field. Ironically, the schoolhouse was untouched by the fire.

I had a glimse into what Californians are enduring in 1983. A fire in the apartment complex where I was living that took the life of a seven-month-old girl in the unit beneath me and left the father critically injured. My cat Rex woke me up at about two a.m. and I remember the utter horror of the moment when I saw billowing clouds of orange come towards me from the first floor, a horror that was compounded when I had to fight through thick, black smoke in an apartment that had no sprinklers or alarms. Little Jaclyn Wallace’s clothes, toys, and crib lay twisted in a puddle of ashes and glass. I was amazed that the soot and the stench penetrated everything, through cupboards and under and between stacks of clothes.

You can always count on Fox News to spread misinformation.

For the second straight day, Fox News stood virtually alone in advancing thinly supported speculation to raise fears that the wildfires ravaging California are not the result of a confluence of arid heat and high winds but were set deliberately by al Qaeda terrorists bent on destroying America.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Fox_hypes_Qaeda_plotted_fires_theory_1025.html

The "facts" in this case is a four-year old memo from the FBI. No doubt al Qaeda was responsible for Hurricane Katrina as well.

But it may be that with the hindsight of history, the fires in California are a sideshow. The more scary event occurred before a congresisonal committee this morning where Condi "mushroom cloud" Rice announced new financial sanctions on Iran, even while Turkey is poised to invade Iraq.

The Bush administration today imposed a series of new sanctions on Iran to punish Tehran for weapons proliferation and supporting terrorism throughout the Middle East.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usiran26oct26,1,7832443.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo

I doubt that the factual basis for taking this action is any stronger than is the factual basis for assuming that al Qaeda is responsible for global warming. The administration has demonstrated its eagerness and shamelessness in inventing facts to align with policy as they did in the run up to the war in Iraq. So I am hoping that Congress has the stomach to ask the hard questions before committing our troops to yet another front in the "war on terror".

The Case For Bombing Iran

Here are excerpts from Norman Podhoretz's article in the June, 2007 Commentary.

Although many persist in denying it, I continue to believe that what September 11, 2001 did was to plunge us headlong into nothing less than another world war. I call this new war World War IV, because I also believe that what is generally known as the cold war was actually World War III, and that this one bears a closer resemblance to that great conflict than it does to World War II.

As the currently main center of Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11 . . . Iran too is a front in World War IV. Moreover, its efforts to build a nuclear arsenal makes it the potentially most dangerous one of all. The Iranians . . . wish to dominate the greater Middle East, and thereby control the oilfields of the region and the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf . . . extending the power and influence of Islam throughout Europe . . . (through Islamo)Findlandization.

In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force-- any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938. Since a ground invasion of Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done at all, by a campaign of air strikes.

Iran (could) retaliate by increasing the trouble it is already making for us in Iraq. It would attack Israel . . . There would be a vast increase in the price of oil, with catastrophic consequences for every economy in the world . . .

Nevertheless, there is a good response (to the scenarios) . . . The only thing worse than bombing Iran, McCain has declared, is allowing Iran to get the bomb.

Yet for all (the Europeans) retrospective remorse over the wholesale slaughter of Jews back then, the Europeans seem no readier to lift a fingfer to rpevent a second Holocaust than they were the first time around. Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willigness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It remains to be seen whether this President, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraw in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both towards us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will.

My response to Podhoretz's "case" is in the following essays, written on September 23 and September 30, 2006:

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/index070.html

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/index077.html

An Iranian Win

The disappointment from the American right in the peaceful end of the Iranian hostage crisis is palpable. For example, John Bolton, the Bush administration's fromer UN ambassador, castigated the British government for its lack of resolve. There is little doubt that the administration would have preferred that this incident escalate if not into a shooting war at least into a protracted cold war. And the best way to do that, evidently, is to posture and to disengage-- the diplomatic equivalent of spoiled three-year old with her hands over her ears shouting "la la la la".

The ancient Iranians invented what we recognize today as the game of chess, although early forms of the game originate in India and other countries. One of the earliest literary reference to chess is found in the Persian book Karnamak-i Artaxshir-i Papakan, between the third and seventh century. Chess is a game of pure logic, where information is assumed to be equally available to both sides, where there is no bluffing, and where victory is determined on the last move. The Iranians played the hostage game like chess masters and won decisively, a conclusion I wish I didn't have to make as I consider Iran to be an exceeding dangerous country.

As in the Carter hostage crisis, the key mistake the British made, apart from the tactical errors that allowed for their capture, was to elevate the capture of the 15 sailors into a matter of national importance. This alone increased their price, as it were, allowing Iran to wring behind-the scenes concessions from Britain and the United States-- the release of a captured Iranian diplomat by Iraqi forces, the admission of violation of Iranian soveregn waters, and an agreement not to violate its borders again. In exchange, Iran gave nothing, but cultivated considerable goodwill in Europe and increased respect from its Middle Eastern neighbors for asserting its interests in the face of the British and U.S. naval forces. During the 1979-81 crisis, Iran released its hostages after 444 days, on the day that Ronald Reagan took office. I doubt that the Iranian government thought that Reagan would take immediate military action to free the hostages. Rather, as the administration changed hands, the price of the hostages dropped to zero as opportunities to further needle the Carter administration evaporated. Like rug hagglers, they played their final move at the most optimum time, effectively checkmating the Carter presidency.

One of Iran's goals is keep the United States embroiled in the Iraqi conflict while they continue to develop a nuclear offensive capacity. And why not, so long as the United States has declared a national policy of regime change and preemptive war. The bluffing and go-for-broke Texas-hold-'em poker that the Bush administration has employed cannot work in the case of Iran, for Iran will counter such techniques with its diplomatic grandmaster chess playing skills. A good example of that is the apparent leverage that Syria played in resolving the standoff, that coincided with the visit of House Speaker Pelosi. The Syrian Information Minsiter Mohsen Bilal said that "Syrian efforts culminated with the release of the British sailors." Maybe not. I also somehow doubt that Pelosi's entreaties had much to do with the situation. But Syria is a rook that Iran is using to check the United States, and Pelosi perhaps was also an Iranian pawn, due in no small part to the singular incompetence, incoherence, and ineffectiveness of U.S. diplomatic policy in the Middle East.