Thursday, January 10, 2008

Showdown In The Gulf - Clumsy Propaganda?


The Bush/Cheney regime's contentions about a provocative charge against three US Navy, "armed to the teeth" warships by plainly gunless Iranian "gunboats" is beginning to spring a lot of leaks.

The US Navy's own video shows a small flotilla of speedboats, not gunboats, as is apparent from this Navy close-up of one of the boats released to the media. But the navy also released a video on which someone with a heavy accent is supposed to have threatened the US warships, saying "I am coming to you... you will explode ...after minutes."
From the New York Times:
The audio includes a heavily accented voice warning in English that the Navy warships would explode. However, the recording carries no ambient noise — the sounds of a motor, the sea or wind — that would be expected if the broadcast had been made from one of the five small boats that sped around the three-ship American convoy.
A commentator who claimed to be a former US Navy officer with experience in the Gulf wrote to the paper warning against putting much reliance on anything heard in that region on Channel 16 UHF:

"But over in the Gulf, Ch. 16 is like a bad CB radio. Everybody and their brother is on it; chattering away; hurling racial slurs, usually involving Filipinos (lots of Filipinos work in the area); curses involving your mother; 1970’s music broadcast in the wee hours (nothing odder than hearing The Carpenters 50 miles off the coast of Iran at 4 a.m.)

"On Ch. 16, esp. in that section of the Gulf, slurs/threats/chatter/etc. is commonplace. So my first thought was that the “explode” comment might not have even come from one of the Iranian craft, but some loser monitoring the events at a shore facility."
This episode is beginning to sound an awful lot like the Bush/Cheney agitprop that has been the signature of this administration. We know Cheney is squirming in his pants to get at Iran and we know these charlatans are entirely willing to lie right into the faces of the American people to get their way.

6 comments:

Bill Longstaff said...

Shades of the Gulf of Tonkin?

The Mound of Sound said...

Bill, are you suggesting that this has happened before? My goodness.

Anonymous said...

I don't think it was a gunboat that hit the USS Cole. It amazes me that you are more willing to believe Iran (originally said it was a training exercise, then said U.S. was using stock footage).
Oh right, Mypajamason is not evil if he is standing up to the U.S.

The Mound of Sound said...

No, anon, it wasn't a gunboat that hit the Cole, it was a hard-hull inflatable that crept up alongside the warship as it sat at dock. Why don't I believe the US? Look at the photo, watch the video. This is US Navy media, not Iran's. I guess only the Iranians have gunboats that have no guns. Besides was it Iran that lied through its teeth to justify invading Iraq? I don't think so. And were the reprobates who lied America into conquering Iraq - at a loss of at least 150,000 civilian lives ever brought to justice? No, of course not. They're the same bunch still in power, the gang that are beside themselves wanting to attack Iran and just need an excuse. C'mon Anon,get real.

Anonymous said...

I think that anyone who has a brain, not counting the right, knows that the chimp and his minions are at it again...no one in their right mind, can defend this speed boat kaos as genuine, only low brow idiots will believe this shit, but then these same low brows and there was many, believed them before the Iraq fiasco, so they know they have numnuts who will believe them again, the point is, how many will this time...we will see...

Anonymous said...

"..yellowcake.."