-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Official Version of Naval Incident Unravelled Fast
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by MichaelP
IPS - Jan 10, 2008
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40747
Analysis by Gareth ****ter
WA****NGTON, Jan 10 (IPS) - Despite the official and media ****trayal of
the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious
threat to U.S. ****ps 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.
war****p, 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. war****ps 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 ****ps.
The Iranian commander is heard to say, "Coalition war****p 73, this is
Iranian navy patrol boat." He then requests the "side numbers" of the
U.S. war****ps. A voice with a U.S. accent replies, "This is coalition
war****p 73. I am operating in international waters." The dramatic
version of the incident re****ted 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. war****ps 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
****trayal 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. ****ps and repeated his assertion
that Iran is "a threat to world peace".
Central to the depiction of the incident as involving a threat to U.S.
war****ps 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 ****ps "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.
war****ps. 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. ****p.
The only boat that was close enough to be visible to the U.S. ****ps was
unarmed, as an enlarged photo of the boat from the navy video clearly
shows.
The U.S. war****ps were not concerned about the possibility that the
Iranian boats were armed with heavier weapons capable of doing serious
damage. Asked by a re****ter whether any of the vessels had anti-****p
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 re****ts 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. ****ps" as
claimed by CBS news Wednesday in its re****t based on the new video.
Vice Adm. Cosgriff also failed to claim any run toward the U.S. ****ps
following the initial warning. Cosgriff suggested that the Iranian
boat's manoeuvres 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 ****ps 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. ****ps'
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 re****ters' questions indicated that the story
promoted earlier by Pentagon officials that one of the U.S . ****ps 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 re****t 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
****trayals of the incident as a confrontation, not a single news outlet
modified its earlier characterisation 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 ****ter 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.]
*
=================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
Our main website: http://www.blythe.org
List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
=================================================================
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)
iD8DBQFHhv4wiz2i76ou9wQRAs34AJ9FiITEnS8PNqW2t8QWRdY+8L5ffQCeKBt8
UWZahHwEjpo8e6TtRa5m6pQ=
=Ef+o
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
