Never Mind
Another Emily Litella moment for the Hedgemony from Danger Room: U.S. Navy Unsure Iranians Made Threat
The spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News:
“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.”
The supposed threat was part of a US Navy agitprop mash-up video released to the media, but we now know that the “threat” was on an open radio channel used by every ship and shore installation in the area. It would certainly have been embarrassing if we had launched an all out air attack on Iran, and then had to apologize. 😈
Update: It wouldn’t be the first time.
8 comments
Right. I was reminded of the IR655 incident, too.
I’m glad the U.S. did not overreact this time, or if it did, at least it didn’t initiate hostilities. Jeez, why do we even have to worry about such things. If the Shrubbery didn’t issue ranting threats, and if his speech writers didn’t make up crap phrases like Axis of Evil, we wouldn’t necessarily have these problems. I am by no means forgiving Iran all the trouble it has made in the region over a couple of decades, but is it too much to ask that the U.S. get it right before it starts issuing accusations and threats?
Well Iran lives there and was once a nice little democracy until the UK and US decided it didn’t like the elected government. Things have been a bit disturbed since then.
Since the NIE the Iranian moderates have been able to complain about Ahmadinejad again and it doesn’t look good for his allies in parliament, because without an outside threat “it’s the economy, stupid”, and the Iranian economy has problems.
Iran is a bit like the force fields Frank Herbert described in Dune – if you press too hard and too quickly they become rigid, but with the proper technique you can penetrate them and affect change.
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the threat came from some guy playing “Battleship” or some such war game over the ‘net.
We haven’t heard the entire tape, which might have included the reply – “Oh, yeah?!! Take THAT!”
now that’s a chilling thought, andante, that we could have come within a cat’s whisker of of starting yet another war, and all because a couple of bored people playing a game too near a radio.
thanks for that. i used to like that game, but i’ll never again be able to play it with quite the same enjoyment now.
In later reporting it turns out that there’s an annoying jerk on that channel in the Persian Gulf area who breaks into communications all the time hurling insults at one and all. Mideast linguists are now saying the voice is not a Persian speaker based on the accent, and probably not on a ship, based on the lack of background noise. So you have some ship-watching on land seeing if he can start an international incident for his amusement.
oh lovely. there are lots of times and places in this world where troublemakers are useful, and possibly required, but i’m thinking this isn’t it.
I just posted a link to a news conference by the 5th Fleet commander which seems to indicate that the only people who thought this was “special” and the people probably responsible for the video mashup were the idiot agitprop clowns in Baghdad. Another group of troublemakers.
It’s probably a friend of one of the rightwing nutters like Goldberg etc. They want a war with Iran so bad, it’s better than sex for them! (They can’t breed can they? What a horrifying thought!)
If the USA ended up in a war with Iran, the rightwingnuts would have an Epiphany! Or at least, multiple orgasms (whilst hiding under the bed in their Mom’s basement).