From Meriam-Webster online:

1: a minor fight in war usually incidental to larger movements

2 a: a brisk preliminary verbal conflict b: a minor dispute or contest between opposing parties

Probably intended in the sense of 2(a).

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!” - George W. Bush

Semantics? Or a replay of the Gulf of Tonkin?

Hey, it worked before, why not again?

Iranians! Conflict! Shiiiiiiinyyyyy! Pretty!

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}

Vizzini as a metaphor to compare Iran and the US for what purposes? Am baffled by this use of the old gangster legend of WWII in this context, please do explain.

Navy Fighter Jets Crash in Persian Gulf

Monday January 7, 2008 7:16 PM

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two U.S. Navy fighter jets plunged into the Persian Gulf Monday, after what initial reports suggest was a mid-air collision, a defense official said.

All three pilots ejected safely from the planes and were headed back to the USS Harry Truman, the aircraft carrier they were operating from, according to the official, who requested anonymity because the information was preliminary and not yet released publicly. No other details or the crash were released.

One of the F-18 jets that crashed held two pilots, the other held just one.

The crash occurred at about 1 p.m. EST.

---

On the Net:

US Navy: http://www.navy.mil

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran on Monday played down an incident between Iranian forces and US naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, describing the event as an "ordinary occurrence" that ended without any disturbance.

The assurances by Iran that the weekend encounter was unremarkable were in stark contrast to statements by Pentagon officials that Iranian speedboats swarmed three US navy ships, radioing a threat to blow them up.

"This is an ordinary occurrence which happens every now and then for both sides," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told the state-run IRNA agency of the incident.

When such incidents take place, he said "the issue is resolved after both sides recognise each other."

The Revolutionary Guards, Iran's elite ideological force, confirmed that their naval forces were involved in the incident with US naval ships but said "nothing out of the ordinary" took place, the Fars news agency reported.

"Nothing out of the ordinary happened between Guards' patrol forces and the US boats in the international waters in the Strait of Hormuz," the agency quoted an informed source in the Guards' naval force as saying.
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I mean, it's not as if they shot down one of our civilian airliners while violating our territorial waters.

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!” - George W. Bush

My apologies, Sean-Paul, I have no idea why I was thinking "John." =)

Iran is once again on the front burner. Perfectly timed because everyone has their noses buried deep in the selection process. When you occupy the newsbandwith the impending Iran war won't get covered much less noticed.

The US and Iran have engaged in their most serious military confrontation in recent times, with American warships on the verge of opening fire on gunboats of the Revolutionary Guards which had threatened to blow them up.
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Fariborz Haghshenass, a former Iranian military officer using an alias, on Iranian naval tactics:

Iranian naval swarming tactics focus on surprising and isolating the enemy’s forces and preventing their reinforcement or resupply, thereby shattering the enemy’s morale and will to fight. Iran has practiced both mass and dispersed swarming tactics. The former employs mass formations of hundreds of lightly armed and agile small boats that set off from different bases, then converge from different directions to attack a target or group of targets. The latter uses a small number of highly agile missile or torpedo attack craft that set off on their own, from geographically dispersed and concealed locations, and then converge to attack a single target or set of targets (such as a tanker convoy). The dispersed swarming tactic is much more difficult to detect and repel because the attacker never operates in mass formations...

In wartime, Iranian naval forces would seek to close the Strait of Hormuz and destroy enemy forces bottled up in the Persian Gulf; therefore speed and surprise would be key. Iranian naval forces would seek to identify and attack the enemy’s centers of gravity as quickly as possible and inflict maximum losses before contact with subordinate units were lost as a result of enemy counterattacks. Geography is Iran’s ally. Because of the proximity of major shipping routes to the country’s largely mountainous 2,000-kilometer coastline, Iranian naval elements can sortie from their bases and attack enemy ships with little advance warning. Meanwhile, shore-based antiship missiles can engage targets almost anywhere in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. To achieve the latter capability, and to improve the survivability of its shore-based missile force, Iran has devoted significant efforts to extending the range of locally produced variants of a number of Chinese shore-based antiship missiles such as the HY-2 Silkworm and the C-802 (from 50 to 300 kilometers and from 120 to 170 kilometers, respectively). It has also introduced the use of helicopter-borne long-range antiship missiles.

To ensure that it can achieve surprise in the event of a crisis or war, Iran’s naval forces keep U.S. warships in the region under close visual, acoustic, and radar observation. The Iranian navy commander—Rear Adm. Sajad Kouchaki, one of the architects of the country’s naval doctrine—recently claimed that Iranian submarines continually monitor U.S. naval movements, frequently at close range, and have even passed underneath American aircraft carriers and other warships undetected. Iranian UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] also frequently shadow U.S. carrier battle groups in the area.

Thursday’s raid on the Iranian consulate is more evidence that President Bush is ready to escalate the conflict, says Juan Cole

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5cf_1199836752

Strange how the 'threat' comes in clear as day, when earlier it was all static and distorted, at the end of the tape...on a black screen.

Washington stepped up its war of words against Iran last night as the US military released video and audio recordings of the confrontation between a three-ship Navy convoy and five small Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf.

As President George Bush prepared for a nine-day, six-country tour of the Middle East, the US Navy released just over four minutes of recordings from the two countries' most serious military confrontation in recent times. Mr Bush described the stand-off, in the Strait of Hormuz, as "a provocative act" by the Iranians.

The jerky footage, shot from one of the US ships, shows several small Iranian boats approaching at high speed as a voice apparently threatens: " I am coming at you. You will explode." This is followed by an American voice saying: "Inbound small craft: You are approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters. Your identity is not known; your intentions are unclear. You are sailing into danger and may be subject to defensive measures."

The recording begins with a crew member speaking into a ship-to-ship radio after the Iranian boats are spotted. He says: "This is coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law ... This is coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law. I intend no harm. Over."

The tense scene – which the US says lasted 20 minutes – occurred on the same stretch of water where a 15-strong group of British naval officers were taken hostage by the Iranian Military Guard last year. Iran dismissed the latest incident as a "routine" encounter.

The Pentagon has described the incident as "the most serious provocation of this sort we've seen yet."
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Here

Contrary to the Independent's assertion - "The tense scene – which the US says lasted 20 minutes – occurred on the same stretch of water where a 15-strong group of British naval officers were taken hostage by the Iranian Military Guard last year." - the incident manifestly did not occur on the same stretch of water. Last year's incident occurred near the Shatt al-Arab at the other end of the Gulf from the Straits of Hormuz, a distance of over 500 kilometers away.

Might be worth adding a clarification, given that most folks aren't necessarily that familiar with the geography of the Gulf.

A game of chicken in the Persian Gulf

By David Isenberg, January 10

WASHINGTON - Was it "harassment", "confrontation", "a needless provocation", a game of nautical chicken, or much ado about nothing? More than three days after the Pentagon accused Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) boats of harassing US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz early on Sunday morning, it is still not clear what exactly happened.
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An attack by speedboats would have been quite an act of daring, considering the nature of the American ships.

# The guided missile cruiser USS Port Royal (whose weapons include six MK-46 torpedoes, two MK-45 five-inch/54 caliber lightweight guns, and two Phalanx close-in-weapons systems).
# The guided missile destroyer USS Hopper (whose weapons include six MK-46 torpedoes, one five-inch gun, and two Phalanx close-in-weapons systems).
# The guided missile frigate USS Ingraham (whose weapons include one three-inch/62 caliber gun, six MK-46 torpedoes, one Phalanx close-in weapons system and machine guns).

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the IRGC naval forces have at least 40 light patrol boats and 10 Houdong guided missile patrol boats armed with C-802 anti-ship missiles. Which type of boat approached the American ships has not yet been established.

Though in a Monday video-conference briefing given by Vice Admiral Kevin J Cosgriff, commander of US Naval Forces Central Command, from his headquarters in Bahrain, there was this exchange:

Bloomberg News: A lot of people are going to wonder why was the US Navy afraid of five small speed boats when the vessels encountered were fairly large and well-equipped. Can you give the public a sense of the potential damage these vessels, these small vessels, could have caused. Did they have any anti-ship missiles on them, for instance, or torpedoes?
Much more

TEHRAN: Iran's Revolutionary Guard accused the United States on Wednesday of fabricating a video showing Iranian speedboats confronting United States Navy warships in the Gulf over the weekend, according to a report carried by the semiofficial Fars news agency and state-run television.

"Images released by the U.S. Department of Defense about the Navy vessels were made from file pictures, and the audio was fabricated," an unidentified Revolutionary Guard official said, according to Fars, which has close links to the Revolutionary Guard. It was the first time Iran had commented on the video that the Pentagon released Tuesday.

The audio includes a statement that says, "I am coming to you," and adds, "You will explode after a few minutes." The voice was recorded from the internationally recognized channel for ship-to-ship communications, navy officials have said.

The Pentagon immediately dismissed the assertion that the video, which shows Iranian speedboats maneuvering around and among the navy warships, had been fabricated. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Iran's "allegation is absurd, factually incorrect and reflects the lack of seriousness with which they take this serious incident."

Naval and Pentagon officials have said that the video and audio were recorded separately, then combined. On Wednesday, Pentagon officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak officially, said they were still trying to determine if the transmission came from the speedboats or elsewhere.

The unidentified Revolutionary Guard official quoted in the Iranian news media asserted that the video of the speedboats had been released to coincide with a trip by President George W. Bush to the Middle East and "was in line with a project of the Western media to create fear." The official said the sounds and images on the video did not go together, adding, "It is very clear that they are fake."

The Fars news agency had said that the confrontation had been fabricated to present Iran as a threat to its neighbors before Bush's trip so he could justify United States forces in the gulf.
Source