... no ambient noise or wind and waves that one would expect from a transmission from a small boat speeding across the water...

How the hell did I miss that?

Seem,s that new technoloogy is enabeling citizens to debunk and debugg lies and fallacies from that most trustworthy Bush-Chenney imperium.

here.

I did see video that showed Iranian speed boats within what looked like a couple hundred yards of one of the ships, but other than that, it sounds like the whole "incident" was faked by the US military. Who would be motivated to order such a boneheaded scheme?
.
"Adapt or perish." Murphy's Law? Nope, Darwin's Guarantee.

Lets get on it Wolfie, and Brian, and you other bozos:

Who created this lied? Why did they lie? Who asked them to lie? What was the purpose in creating this lie?

rubber hose's criminally under-read 'blog got got some love from the Agonist. Very cool.

January 11, 5:12pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A tense encounter between U.S. Navy ships and Iranian boats in the Gulf shows Iran poses a threat and the United States is ready to counter it, the top U.S. military officer said on Friday.

"There's no doubt in my mind that shots would have been fired, had the situation demanded it," said Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"The incident ought to remind us all just how real is the threat posed by Iran and just how ready we are to meet that threat if it comes to it," Mullen told reporters.

"We will defend ourselves and our ships, and we will do so with deadly force if need be," he said at the Pentagon.
More

WASHINGTON: There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships.

In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.

"The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack," said Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer who served in the war game as commander of a Red Team force representing an unnamed Gulf military. "The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes."

If the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, proved to the public how terrorists could transform hijacked airliners into hostage-filled cruise missiles, then the "Millennium Challenge 2002" war game with Van Riper was a warning to the armed services as to how an adversary could apply similar, asymmetrical thinking to conflict at sea.

Van Riper said he complained at the time that important lessons of his simulated victory were not adequately acknowledged across the military. But other senior officers say the war game and subsequent analysis and exercises helped to focus attention on the threat posed by Iran's small, fast boats, and helped to prepare commanders for last weekend's encounter.

"It's clear, strategically, where the Iranian military has gone," Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Friday. "For the years that this strategic shift toward their small, fast boats has taken place, we've been very focused on that."
More

So....when do we get to kick Boosh off the planet? He's over there to whip up a war, let no one be fooled as to his intentions.Boosh will spend his last year trying to get us into another, bigger Vietnam-style quagmire, and using Gulf of Tonkin tactics to start the whole thing. Our job, as the 70% who don't want that, is to sure we prevent all his infantile shenanigans. Nuff said on that for now.

The last post about the war games was interesting. It highlights the plight of all huge, conquer-oriented empire armies: they are massively expensive organizations built to prevail in traditional warfare against enemies who have other huge armies.

Throughput history the huge, beaurocratic, massively expensive, and slower-moving armadas have always fallen prey to asymmetrical warfare by locals who can appear out of nowhere, strike quickly and devastatingly, then melt back into the local woodwork.

While I agree that the US Military needs to be studying and adapting to handle these kinds of attacks, the way to do that is NOT by starting a war with Iran.

Whatever those speedboats may or may not have been doing, the correct counter-tactic is not massive bombing of civilians in Tehran.

But the Iron Triangle, the people who make huge profits when the Empire's Armada launches lots of huge sophisticated weapons at traditional targets such as major population centers, needs precisely that to boost the quarterly profits.

Bush is over there to make war because the businesses his family and their mafia have investments in are the businesses of war, weaponry, and the exploitation of unregulated business opportunities made available by war.

In other words, he's over there to whip up some business since the big bombing and stuff is over in Iran, and the Iron Triangle cannot have such a major source of profits dry up.

I think the public has to start realizing this, and that when we debate about war, the Iron Triangle and its interests in war should always be a central part of the discussion.

People need to start having conversations about the real reasons we go to war. It is not because of Osama bin Boogeyman. It's to support our war economy, and to enrich the elite Iron Triangle interests of politicians, military and the manufacturers and contractors who produce the products and services needed for huge wars.

Why do our kids die in Iraq? It is to make profits for Halliburton, to make Carlyle Group investments pay off huge percentage returns. It is to make money for the huge international banking firms that simply finance, without prejudice, the companies who invest in the products needed for huge wars.

War is business. Business is about making money. That's where the discussion needs to be. Do you work for a corporation that makes products designed to kill people? Do you even ask yourself that question when you go to work every morning?

Now is the time to start talking openly about these things in the public sphere of debate, here on the internet.

While we still can.