MEDIA COMPLICIT IN
CRUDE ATTEMPT TO WAG THE DOG

 

 

Official version
of naval incident starts to unravel

"It was archive footage — possibly two years old. The incident was
merely a routine patrol whereby the Iranian coastguards verify by
sight and by conversation, the details — number, type, etc., of
shipping off their coast, as is their right in law and as they have
been doing all along.

"Expect the Jews to instigate a false flag sinking of an US ship with
massive, well filmed, and broadcast loss of US lives, soon, so as to
engineer a US war against Iran which they must start before Bush
leaves office." — J. Bayldon

Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel
IPS, Thursday, 10 January 2008

Analysis by GARETH PORTER*

WASHINGTON — Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to US ships 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 US 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 US 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 US warship, as appears to do on the video.

Also unraveling the story is testimony from a former US 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 US 5th fleet that the commanding officers of the US warships involved in the incident never felt the need to warn the Iranians of a possible use of force against them.

Further undermining the US version of the incident is a video released by Iran Thursday showing an Iranian naval officer on a small boat hailing one of three ships.

FOR MORE OF THE STORY SEE:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40747

*Gareth Porter 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.