Narrow Escapes

We Missed a Bullet Here

Not By a Lot, Though

I blogged a little this week about the revelation that we were lied into the Vietnam War, as the official reports on communications at the time prove, without a doubt, that there was in fact no attack upon American ships, and in turn, that the entire Gulf of Tonkin justification was a shame.

See here.

But it seems that history has a bad habit of repeating itself, or at least, that warmongers aren't terribly creative. This week, our own idiot in chief, Bush, tried to stage his own Gulf of Tonkin. Only something went wrong; or from the perspective of those of us who don't want to see yet another bloody, pointless conflict, something went *right*.

It began with a bizarre story from the Pentagon; Iran sent speedboats to drop mysterious white boxes in front of powerful US naval assets, then sent them a radio call, in unaccented English, threatening to make them 'explode'

The Pentagon's initial account of the Jan. 6 confrontation said the Iranian boats "charged" the US ships, dropped boxes in the water that were thought to be mines and threatened to set up "explosions." An unnamed US Defense Department official told the Associated Press the day after the incident that it was "the most serious provocation of its sort" in the Gulf, although Iranian officials tried to downplay the incident as a simple misunderstanding.

The US released a recording of this 'threat', and immediately, however, suspicions began to be raised by people who, err, knew what they were talking about.

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.

That's from Iranian expert Hooman Majd, who has, amongst other things, served as a translator to two Iranian Presidents on their US trips.

So he might, might, just know what he's talking about.
(Source: Huffington Post)

But this is the video age, and audio just won't do. So the US released a tape.

Of course, this IS the video age, so the Iranians had one too. The funny thing... the tapes don't match. Even the US tape doesn't show the actions we'd described, in particular, no funny white boxes.

And then the backpedaling began.

It was not until Thursday, after the Pentagon and Iran had each released videos of the encounter, that the US acknowledged the verbal threats they had associated with the Iranian speedboats from day one could have been broadcast from virtually anywhere.

Well, that's good. Now we've got a complete pantsdowner. Again. Nice job, Bush.

The consequences? We all look like tools. Again. But for now, we avoid war.

Barely.

Aftergood said the information should have been more fully vetted before the White House began warning Iran of "serious consequences" of future showdowns.

"What you hear talking is the child on the schoolyard, not the sober national leader," he said. "And i don't think that serves anyone's interest."

Well put sir. Well put indeed.

Source: Raw Story