all these lies and half truths. ,the iranian situation is getting interesting.

[Mauser 98K]

this has a few sources so nematode doesnt start to beat the drums that this is one sided and therefore wrong.

bush, wants to attack iran so bad he cant see streight, and under the idea they are making nukes and are gona kill every1 he is gona push this plan, and it is not beyond him to actualy fabricate something like an iranian agression aganst a us ship to further his plan.

he has done said that b4 he is out of the whitehouse he is going to go into iran, with or without aproval, and i figure it will be within the next 5 or 6 months.

lets just hope he is just full of hot air, because Russia and China are already aligning themselves with iran and Russia has already said an attack on iran would be a mistake on the part of the US.
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U.S.: Voices on Recording May Not Have Been From Iranian Speedboats
Chilling Threat Could Have Come From the Shore or Another Ship, Navy Says
By MARTHA RADDATZ and JONATHAN KARL
Jan. 10, 2008—

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4115702

Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.

The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes."

The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.

Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else.

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 Iranians have denied using the threatening language and are saying U.S.-released video is fabricated. Today, the Iranian government aired its own video of the event on state-run TV there. On the audio, the voice that the Iranians say is the communication from their vessel can be heard identifying itself to the American ship, "Coalition warship No. 73 this is an Iranian navy patrol boat."

The incident ended without shots being fired, but senior defense officials told ABC News that the USS Hopper's gunners were within seconds of firing on the Iranians.



Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures


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Doubts Grow Over Iranian Boat Threats

>>>>>>>>LINK<<<<<<<<<<

Doubts intensified last night over the nature of an alleged aggressive confrontation by Iranian patrol boats and American warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, after Pentagon officials admitted that they could not confirm that a threat to blow up the US ships had been made directly by the Iranian crews involved in the incident.

Several news sources reported that senior navy officials had conceded that the voice threatening to blow up the US warships in a matter of minutes could have come from another ship in the region, or even from shore.

The concession came on the day that a formal American complaint was lodged with Iran over the incident, and just 24 hours after President George Bush, on tour in the Middle East where he will be discussing policy towards Iran, warned Tehran to desist from such aggression and said any repetition would lead to "serious consequences".

The Pentagon alleges that the confrontation lasted about 20 minutes and took place in the Strait of Hormuz, where the US ships were in international waters. Five Iranian patrol boats swarmed around three US warships and came within a threatening 200 metres, prompting US personnel to be put on alert.

The US navy has said that its gunners came within seconds of firing on the speedboats.

On Tuesday, the US administration released video footage that it said showed the Iranian speedboats harassing the American vessels. A voice in English with a strong accent was heard to say: "I am coming at you - you will explode in a couple of minutes."

Yesterday the Iranians put out their own four-minute video that showed an Iranian patrol officer in a small boat communicating with one of the US ships. "Coalition warship number 73, this is an Iranian navy patrol boat," the Iranian said. An American naval officer replied: "This is coalition warship number 73 operating in international waters."

The voice of the Iranian sailor in Tehran's footage was different to the deeper and more menacing voice, threatening to blow up the warships in the US version. Nor was there any sign of aggressive behaviour by the Iranian patrol boats.

The Strait of Hormuz is a particularly sensitive stretch of water, both economically as a key shipping route for oil from the Gulf, and militarily. The location, together with memories of the arrest of 15 British sailors by the Iranians last year and their detention for two weeks, is likely to have heightened nerves on both sides.

But the mystery remains of where the voice that apparently threatened to bomb the US ships came from. The Pentagon has said that it recorded the film and the sound separately, and then stitched them together - a dubious piece of editing even before it became known that the source of the voice could not, with certainty, be linked to the Iranian patrol boats.

A post on the New York Times news blog yesterday from a former naval officer with experience of these waters said that the radio frequency used in the Strait of Hormuz was regularly polluted with interfering chatter, somewhat like CB radio. "My first thought was that the 'explode' comment might not have come from one of the Iranian craft, but some loser monitoring the events at a shore facility."

Despite growing doubts about what happened, the Bush administration continued to stand by claims of Iranian hostility. The defence secretary, Robert Gates, said the concern came from the "fact that there were five of these boats and that they came as close as they did to our ships and behaved in a pretty aggressive manner".

Further attention will focus on Tehran from today when Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, begins a two-day visit for talks on Iran's nuclear programme.

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>>>>>>LINK<<<<<<

Iran showdown has echoes of faked Tonkin attack

A dramatic showdown at sea. Crossed communication signals. Apparently-hostile craft nearby. Sketchy intelligence leading to ratcheted up rhetoric.

The similarities between this week's confrontation between US warships and Iranian speedboats and events off the coast of North Vietnam 44 years ago were too hard for many experts to miss, leading to the question: Is the Strait of Hormuz 2008's Gulf of Tonkin?

On Aug. 2nd and 4th, 1964, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, patrolling off the North Vietnamese coast, intercepted signals indicating they were under attack. Within days, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which paved the way to the escalation of the Vietnam War. However, as some intelligence agents suspected at the time, the Aug. 2nd attack took place after the USS Maddox fired first, according to a National Security Agency report released in 1995.

This week another NSA report surfaced, confirming suspicions that the Aug. 4th attack never happened.

The researcher who uncovered the most recent NSA assessment tells RAW STORY that the Strait of Hormuz confrontation, and the immediate saber-rattling from the Bush administration and its allies, demonstrates the extent to which officials must be wary about politicizing shaky intelligence in times of war.

"The parallels (between Tonkin and Hormuz) speak for themselves, but what they say is that even the most basic factual assumptions can be made erroneously [or] can prove to be false," Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, told Raw Story. "Therefore extreme caution is always appropriate before drawing conclusions ... that might leave to violent conflict. That's almost so obvious that I feel embarrassed saying it, but there is a history of mistaken interpretations of these kinds of encounters that ought to teach us humility."

Humility and caution, of course, don't seem to be the most popular buzz words in the Bush White House.

"It is a dangerous situation. ... I think it was a provocative act," Bush warned two days after a handful of small Iranian speedboats spooked a fleet of US Navy warships.

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.

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.

"I am coming to you .... You will explode after a few minutes," a voice says on the audio recording but Farsi speakers and Iranians have said the voice did not sound Iranian.

Aftergood said he was surprised at the uncertainty regarding the origin of that message, which was broadcast on a public communication channel and superimposed onto the end of the Pentagon video.

"One might've thought that they would be able to pinpoint it exactly, but it turns out that's not so," said Aftergood, who runs FAS's Project on Government Secrecy. "It's also surprising that President Bush was permitted to get so far out in front on this issue, even though there were significant uncertainties on what transpired."

Others have questioned the supposed mines that were claimed to be dropped form the Iranian boats.

"The bit about the 'white boxes' being dropped into the water seems almost equally dubious," writes Glenn Greenwald. "Neither the video of the incident released by the U.S. military, nor the video version released by the Iranian government, includes any such event, nor are there any references to it at all on the audio."

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."

Aftergood noted that America is less poorly equipped to avoid international incidents than it was during the Cold War.

"The credibility at least of the administration has taken a hit by the way this episode played out," Aftergood said, but the near-confrontation could provide an opportunity for Bush to learn from his mistakes.

The US has largely given Iran the diplomatic silent treatment during the Bush years, which Aftergood said increases the likelihood that the next Strait of Hormuz-type incident won't de-escalate so quickly.

"If we could have a hotline with the Kremlin while they had thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at our country, one would think we could do the same for Iran," he said. "With some skillful statesmanship ... this could serve as the impetus for that, but it would be one way to turn a negative into a net positive

[Hellfighter]

one vs all the heads of state they say go to war not much we can do to stop it, yea lay it on bush, bottomline he don't have that power to say we go to war it up to the heads fo state to ok it.

getting real tire bush this bush that, he not the only fool in Wishington Dc doing things backwards ether! there are so many fool running around it easy to point at Bush do to you can't name them all for doing dirty deeds.

[Mauser 98K]

your not getting the point.

they cant prove anything hostile happened in the gulf but bush is on the tv warning iran to stop doing things that the evidence says never happened, the same drums beat then are being beat now, like the WMD, remember this, dismantle your WMD,dismantle your WMD, stop doing this or we will take action, remember that, iraq, now it is , dismantle your nuke program, dismantle yout nuke program, stop doing this or we will take action. same crap

if it wasnt the same things being done and said b4 we went into iraq that are being said now about iran i could shrug it off as something else, but as for all these huge WMD stockpiles we have never seen that were suposed to be all over in iraq, whatever happened to that? and where is the proof, if there was WMD when we went in toiraq why arnt we being showed them, and if it was the right thing to do then why for all the hush hush?

like i said, all the heads of state arnt the point, and bush does have the power to declair war, he has done it and if you didnt see it then where you been?
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How can the U.S. fight wars when Congress doesn't declare one first?

How many times has Congress declared war?
Congress has officially declared war 5 times: [1] The War of 1812; [2] The Mexican War, 1846; [3] The Spanish-American War, 1898; [4] World War I; [5] World War II.

There is a distinction between Congress officially declaring war on another nation, under Article 1, section 8 of our Constitution and the other option: when Congress passes what is known as a "war powers resolution," which grants the President the authority to commit armed forces in combat.

The war powers option is controversial because some Presidents have felt that they already have that authority on their own and don't wait for a resolution to be passed by Congress first. Article 2, section 2 of the Constitution names the President as Commander-in-Chief, with control over the armed forces. Citing this authority, Presidents have sometimes used force without waiting for Congress to act. For example, the Korean War was begun by President Truman without any congressional sanction. In the Persian Gulf War, troops were already on the ground when Congress passed a resolution in 1991 sanctioning the use of force.

What also confuses the issue is that major armed conflicts become known as "wars"; however, officially they are so only if Congress passes a declaration of war. For example, war was never declared against Vietnam


stop watching westwing and get with the program.