NYT: Iran Accuses U.S. of Faking Persian Gulf Video = Gulf of Tonkin Deja Vu

Iran Accuses U.S. of Faking Persian Gulf Video
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10iran.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

By NAZILA FATHI
Published: January 10, 2008

TEHRAN — Iran’s Revolutionary Guard accused the United States on Wednesday of fabricating a video showing Iranian speedboats confronting United States Navy warships in the Persian Gulf ......

“Images released by the U.S. Department of Defense about the Navy vessels were made from file pictures, and the audio was fabricated,” an unnamed Revolutionary Guard official said,.... the first time Iran had commented on the video that the Pentagon released Tuesday.

The audio includes a statement that says, “I am coming to you,” and adds, “You will explode after a few minutes.” The voice was recorded from the internationally recognized channel for ship-to-ship communications, Navy officials have said.

The Pentagon immediately dismissed the assertion .... Naval and Pentagon officials have said that the video and audio were recorded separately, then combined. On Wednesday, Pentagon officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak officially, said they were still trying to determine if the transmission came from the speedboats or elsewhere.

The unnamed Revolutionary Guard official quoted in the Iranian news media asserted that the video of the speedboats had been released to coincide with a trip by President Bush to the Middle East and “was in line with a project of the Western media to create fear.” The official said the sounds and images on the video did not go together, adding, “It is very clear that they are fake.”

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Please tell me you aren't using Iran as a credible source.

where have you been the last 8 years?

sheesh. I guess you still there are WMDs in Iraq?

If this was about us blowing up 3 small boats then I would be questioning what happened. But we did not fire upon them. The IRG is known for pulling shit like this and act upon the orders of the ayatollah and not the Iranian military and sometimes they don't even bother to check with the Ayatollah.

So in this case... I will side with our Sailors rather then the water-skiing IRG who claim they mistook the identity of the ships....

and enough people coming forward to say the voice, which is a separate file from the video, is not consisten with Iranian pronunciations.

And its not our sailors I don't trust.

:hi:

especially when they try to use this as a pretext for cheney's war.

I'm not that gullible.

This happened

propaganda news machine is telling us. for damn sure. been there done that too many times.

This is not a sailor's story, but a message from the corporation government to soften up our heads even more to the idea of invading Iran.

I consider everything thrown at us, like this so called event, to be 95% false if it comes from the yaps of the military industrial complex - which to media is. The 5% I believe from their lieing maws is stuff like Britney shaving her head - and only with video as proof.

:shrug:

On this particular case I will side with our Sailors.

but it just may be the alzheimers kicking in though ;-)

Monday Iran was saying that it did happen and that "incidents" like this happen all the time and that it wasn't a big deal. Now, apparently, it didn't happen at all, and it was just the Iranian Olymic Water Skiing team out practicing.

which could be true and the incident still have happened.

"The unnamed Revolutionary Guard official quoted in the Iranian news media asserted that the video of the speedboats had been released to coincide with a trip by President Bush to the Middle East and “was in line with a project of the Western media to create fear.” The official said the sounds and images on the video did not go together, adding, “It is very clear that they are fake.”


concide with *'s trip smart response, yes, and the West is instilling fear as usual.

I don't know if the video or recording is genuine or fake but it's clear that the *timing* and *prominence* given to this story was deliberate.

That doesn't even make any sense. I have no doubt our sailors were made nervous by the presence of Iranians, but come on. Official armed forces aren't going to engage warships like that with tiny boats. The story about Customs seems to square with the "armor" brought to the "battle". Either way, what do you suppose we'd be doing with foreign warships near our waters?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/ships.htm

Iran does not have many capital ships capable of taking on a US battle group. These speedboats used by the IRG are often outfitted with torpedo tubes or guided missile packages and our ships are really not designed to deal with this sort of threat. These little boats are the water-borne version of IEDs.

As I said in another thread, it has nothing to do with the size of the ship but what's on the ship that goes BOOM! when it hits our ships.

Foreign warships near the US in international waters are often taken under survaillance, but if this incident is true, it was a lot more than survaillance. Our warships, as I'm sure you know, were in international waters, not in Iranian waters, and there doesn't appear to be anything to suggest that our ships were doing anything more than a routine transit of the Hormouz.

Given the rhetoric of our president and other party officials our presence there can't be construed as anything other than hostile. Imagine Russian warships off our coast during the Cold War. I hope we don't enter into a similar period only in reverse. The fear of Americans in the USSR at that time was even more irrational than being made to hide under a school desk so as to keep nuclear bombs from entering our skin. This time with us the aggressor that same irrationality is creeping its way into foreign policy in dangerous ways. The same irrational fears that lead us into Iraq. We're supposed to be scared by what a weak country is doing to our warships with speed boats near its own waters (in international waters.)

Iranians know that and they know we are not going to interfer in the Strait.

The Navy isnt that dumb.

Given the rhetoric of our president and other party officials our presence there can't be construed as anything other than hostile

Our presence where? In the international waterway that connects the Indian Ocean to some of the US-friendly countries in the middle east? Thousands of ships a day transit the Hormuz from 150 year old wooden dhows to oil supertankers to warships from dozens of countries. Yeah, there's probably a degree of dick-waving going on on our part and possibly even electronic surveillance or intercept going on, but our ships have a right to be in international waters.

There were Russian naval vessels near the US in international waters during the cold war. All the time. Especially in the northern Pacific where the Bering Straight separates the US and Russia by only a few 100 miles (less than that if you count the Aleutian Islands). Russians used to fly Bear-class Bombers and Recon planes along the edges of US airspace near Alaska all the time. That's the rub though...near US airspace doesn't mean in US airspace.

You keep saying we are the aggressor and while Bush does spout a pretty constant stream of non-sense about Iran, in this particular incident, I don't see any evidence of US aggression.

they have the sunburn missile.

If they wanted to "explode" those ships, they would have.

geez people, have the last eight years meant absolutely nothing to you? lulled to sleep by constant lies?

Not sure what your point is. Believe it or not, Iran has more enemies than just the US. I seem to recall something about a war between them and Iraq in the not to distant past. Is your argument that because Iran has Sunburn missiles that they don't need a navy? Your claim also seems to suggest that a Sunburn is capable of defeating US anti-missile systems, phalanx defense systems and that the Iranians have a working knowledge of how to use the Sunburn because it takes a lot more than "push the button and the missile hits what you want it to hit." I'm not saying that the Sunburn system isn't capable of hitting a US warship, but you make it sound a lot less complicated than it is.

The IRG "fast boats" have been around awhile now, even back as far as when the US and Iran were friendly under the Shah.

No, I have not been lulled to sleep by the last eight years of lies, but neither have I put on my blinders that go the other way that say "if the Bush Administration says it, it must be a lie." So while yes, I think the Bush regime is completely capable of fabricating total bullshit, that doesn't mean I'm automatically going to discount this either because to pretend that Iran is not capable of something like this is tragically stupid.

It is a much more powerful version of Blackwater, answerable only to the Ayatollah.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080110/wl_afp/iranusmilitary_080110122541

The video broadcast by Iran's English-language channel Press-TV showed an Iranian commander in a speedboat contacting an American sailor via radio, asking him to identify the US vessels and state their purpose.

"Coalition warship number 73, this is an Iranian patrol," the Iranian commander is heard to say in English, asking for the vessel to confirm its number.

"This is coalition warship number 73. I am operating in international waters," replied the American voice.

State-run Press-TV said the footage had been released by the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological force involved in the incide

Man, I mist be a psychic or something...

Pyschic, maybe in the late night tele kind of way.