• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Iranian boats threaten US ships

A

Anonymous

Guest
We saw that headline a few times this past week, didn't we. And Bush jumped on it to war monger. But now that the actual facts are coming out, it's not quite so cut and dried. In fact, the Navy says they spliced the "I'm coming at you" audio onto the video!

A man-made storm in a strait
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early on Monday 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 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 it 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 on Thursday showing an Iranian naval officer on a small boat hailing one of three ships.

The Iranian commander is heard to say, "Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian navy patrol boat." He then requests the "side numbers" of the US warships. A voice with a US accent replies, "This is coalition warship 73. I am operating in international waters."

The dramatic version of the incident reported by US news media throughout Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that Iranian speedboats, apparently belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps navy, had made moves to attack three US warships entering the strait and that the US commander had been on the verge of firing at them when they broke off.

Typical of the network coverage was a story by ABC's Jonathan Karl quoting a Pentagon official as saying the Iranian boats "were a heartbeat from being blown up".

George W Bush administration officials seized on the incident to advance the portrayal of Iran as a threat and to strike a more threatening stance toward Iran. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley declared on Wednesday that the incident "almost involved an exchange of fire between our forces and Iranian forces". Bush declared during his Mideast trip on Wednesday that there would be "serious consequences" if Iran attacked US ships and repeated his assertion that Iran is "a threat to world peace".

Central to the depiction of the incident as involving a threat to US warships is a mysterious pair of messages that the sailor who heard them onboard immediately interpreted as saying, "I am coming at you ...", and "You will explode after a few minutes." But the voice in the audio clearly said, "I am coming to you," and the second message was much less clear.

Furthermore, as the New York Times noted on Thursday, the recording carries no ambient noise, such as the sounds of a motor, the sea or wind, which should have been audible if the broadcast had been made from one of the five small Iranian boats.
A veteran US naval officer who had served as a surface warfare officer aboard a US Navy destroyer in the Gulf sent a message to the New York Times online column The Lede on Wednesday pointing out that in the Persian Gulf, the "bridge-to-bridge" radio channel used to communicate between ships "is like a bad CB radio" with many people using it for "hurling racial slurs" and "threats". The former officer wrote that his "first thought" was that the message "might not have even come from one of the Iranian craft".

Pentagon officials admitted to the Times that they could not rule out that the broadcast might have come from another source

The five Iran boats involved were hardly in a position to harm the three US warships. Although Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman described the Iranian boats as "highly maneuverable patrol craft" that were "visibly armed", he failed to note that these are tiny boats carrying only a two- or three-man crew and that they are normally armed only with machine guns that could do only surface damage to a US ship.

The only boat that was close enough to be visible to the US ships was unarmed, as an enlarged photo of the boat from the navy video clearly shows.

The US warships were not concerned about the possibility that the Iranian boats were armed with heavier weapons capable of doing serious damage. Asked by a reporter whether any of the vessels had anti-ship missiles or torpedoes, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, Commander of the 5th Fleet, answered that none of them had either of those two weapons.

"I didn't get the sense from the reports I was receiving that there was a sense of being afraid of these five boats," said Cosgriff.

The edited navy video shows a crewman issuing an initial warning to approaching boats, but the footage of the boats maneuvering provides no visual evidence of Iranian boats "making a run on US ships" as claimed by CBS news Wednesday in its report based on the new video.

Cosgriff also failed to claim any run toward the US ships following the initial warning. Cosgriff suggested that the Iranian boat's maneuvers were "unduly provocative" only because of the "aggregate of their maneuvers, the radio call and the dropping of objects in the water".

He described the objects dropped by the Iranian boat as being "white, box-like objects that floated". That description indicates that the objects were clearly not mines, which would have been dark and would have sunk immediately. Cosgriff indicated that the ships merely "passed by them safely" without bothering to investigate whether they were explosives of some kind.

The apparent absence of concern on the part of the US ships' commanding officers about the floating objects suggests that they recognized that the Iranians were engaging in a symbolic gesture having to do with laying mines.

Cosgriff's answers to reporters' questions indicated that the story promoted earlier by Pentagon officials that one of the US. ships came very close to firing at the Iranian boats seriously distorted what actually happened. When Cosgriff was asked whether the crew ever gave warning to the Iranian boats that they "could come under fire", he said the commanding officers "did not believe they needed to fire warning shots".

As for the report circulated by at least one Pentagon official to the media that one of the commanders was "close to firing", Cosgriff explained that "close to" meant that the commander was "working through a series of procedures". He added, "n his mind, he might have been closing in on that point."

Despite Cosgriff's account, which contradicted earlier Pentagon portrayals of the incident as a confrontation, not a single news outlet modified its earlier characterization of the incident. After the Cosgriff briefing, the Associated Press carried a story that said, "US forces were taking steps toward firing on the Iranians to defend themselves, said the US naval commander in the region. But the boats - believed to be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' navy - turned and moved away, officials said."

That was quite different from what Cosgriff actually said.

In its story covering the Cosgriff briefing, Reuters cited "other Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity" as saying that "a US captain was in the process of ordering sailors to open fire when the Iranian boats moved away" - a story that Cosgriff had specifically denied.



http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA12Ak01.html
 

Steve

Well-known member
gp
every time Bush has had the opportunity to tell the truth or lie, he has chosen to lie..

so Bush spliced the tape? :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

must of been the real reason why he went to the Middle east.. :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
T99 said:
You're right. I'm sure we'll have a few more of these "incidents" in the next few months.



I'm guessing binLaden will show up before GW leaves office! He's prob got him cutting brush in Carwford...and will prance him out last thing!

For the legacy and all........ :roll: :roll:
 

backhoeboogie

Well-known member
Goodpasture said:
every time Bush has had the opportunity to tell the truth or lie, he has chosen to lie.....and always for political reasons.

Absolutely for political purposes. He's tried to remain high in the polls his whole career :roll:
 

don

Well-known member
how far up is the authority to pull a boneheaded stunt like this? is there no one with the integrity to stop it? makes the whole administration look like a bunch of morons.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
don said:
how far up is the authority to pull a boneheaded stunt like this? is there no one with the integrity to stop it? makes the whole administration look like a bunch of morons.

That's a good question about how far up this thing went. Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, Commander of the 5th Fleet, is mentioned in the article above as trying to calm things down with some facts not mentioned in the newstories. Apparently it was below his rank. Hopefully, the Navy will find out who did the splicing and who approved releasing it to the media. IMO, there should be some sort of discipline imposed.

This administration is a bunch of morons.
 

Steve

Well-known member
ff
This administration is a bunch of morons.

Maybe you can explain how someone below "Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff," became "part of the administration" ? :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:
 

woranch

Well-known member
ff said:
don said:
how far up is the authority to pull a boneheaded stunt like this? is there no one with the integrity to stop it? makes the whole administration look like a bunch of morons.

That's a good question about how far up this thing went. Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, Commander of the 5th Fleet, is mentioned in the article above as trying to calm things down with some facts not mentioned in the newstories. Apparently it was below his rank. Hopefully, the Navy will find out who did the splicing and who approved releasing it to the media. IMO, there should be some sort of discipline imposed.

This administration is a bunch of morons.



So you get your news from the Asia Times?




So I guess you are backing this candidate.

Everone can read this at the link ff posted .It's good to know where you stand ... :lol:




Putin for president ... of the United States
By Spengler

Flying across the vast Russian plain in 1944, the future French president Charles DeGaulle cursed the destiny that made him a Frenchman; if only he could rule a country the size of Russia, he mused, think of what he might accomplish! A similar thought must have occurred to Vladimir Putin, the most talented political leader of our time: what might he have done at the helm of the world's only superpower, instead of salvaging the hulk of the defeated Soviet Empire? Why not give him the chance? Watching the last round of American political debates, it occurred to me that it's time to think out of the box.

Putin will finish his second term of office as Russian president



early in 2008, just when the next American president takes office. There is plenty of time to naturalize him as an American citizenand amend the constitution to permit a foreign-born president. The alternative is to elect another incarnation of the political type that got America into trouble in the first place.

"God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America," German statesman Otto von Bismarck is famously alleged to have said. I have only one New Year's forecast, namely that God will take a holiday, at least as far as America is concerned. The year just passed would be viewed as America's annus horribilis by any normal standard, that is, any standard except that of 2008, which will be the worst year for the US since 1980, when Jimmy Carter left office. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in American policy, but not as wrong as it will go now. As in 1980, a lame-duck administration will confront economic and strategic reverses. But it is worse than 1980, for no Ronald Reagan is waiting in the wings to set things right.

America needs leadership, and none of available candidates can provide it. Politicians prevailed during the past generation by flattering American complacency. Precisely the opposite is needed. Putin has the requisite tough-mindedness, with only one important deficiency: he is a nasty piece of work. His youth movement, Nashi (Ours) should frighten anyone who knows the political history of the 20th century.

Then again, nobody's perfect. Russia is no country for nice men. But Putin's personal nastiness is beside the point. Washington has willfully misunderstood Russia's most basic requirements (What they didn't say at Kennebunkport, July 3, 2007). No Russian leader could survive without doing more or less what Putin has done.
 

hopalong

Well-known member
Asia times????
Do you have any other sources that has this information?? If so please share.
Or is this merely DIS-INFORMATION to further the discrediting of out military?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
hopalong said:
Asia times????
Do you have any other sources that has this information?? If so please share.
Or is this merely DIS-INFORMATION to further the discrediting of out military?

What information? That the Navy spliced the audio onto the video? Or that they don't know where the claimed "threat" came from? Or that Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff is the Commander of the 5th Fleet? There are articles about it all over the net. Here's something from the Navy Times. Do you consider them credible? The Bush Administration is trying their slight of hand again. It worked to use 9/11 to get us into a war with Iraq. Now they want to use something to take American's attention away from the total failure of that. Saddam is gone so now Iran is the boogyman. As you'll see in the article, a Navy spokesman said they spliced the audio over the video---even though they had no real idea where it came from---to show the “totality” of the situation and helped show the “aggressive behavior.” In other words, to make it look like the ships were in more danger than they were. To make the Iranians look bad. Now who looks bad to the rest of the world? The USA. Thanks, George. The media made a big deal about the boxes dropped in the water near the ships, but the ships sailed right by them. Obviously they didn't feel threatened or they would have sent a boat to inspect them.


Filipino Monkey’ may be behind radio threats, ship drivers say

By Andrew Scutro and David Brown

The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the “Filipino Monkey.”

Since the Jan. 6 incident was announced to the public a day later, the U.S. Navy has said it’s unclear where the voice came from. In the videotape released by the Pentagon on Jan. 8, the screen goes black at the very end and the voice can be heard, distancing it from the scenes on the water.

We don’t know for sure where they came from,” said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for 5th Fleet in Bahrain. “It could have been a shore station.”

While the threat — “I am coming to you. You will explode in a few minutes” — was picked up during the incident, further jacking up the tension, there’s no proof yet of its origin. And several Navy officials have said it’s difficult to figure out who’s talking.

Based on my experience operating in that part of the world, where there is a lot of maritime activity, trying to discern [who is speaking on the radio channel] is very hard to do,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead told Navy Times during a brief telephone interview today.

Indeed, the voice in the audio sounds different from the one belonging to an Iranian officer shown speaking to the cruiser Port Royal over a radio from a small open boat in the video released by Iranian authorities. He is shown in a radio exchange at one point asking the U.S. warship to change from the common bridge-to-bridge channel 16 to another channel, perhaps to speak to the Navy without being interrupted.

Further, there’s none of the background noise in the audio released by the U.S. that would have been picked up by a radio handset in an open boat.

So with Navy officials unsure and the Iranians accusing the U.S. of fabrications, whose voice was it? In recent years, American ships operating in the Middle East have had to contend with a mysterious but profane voice known by the ethnically insulting handle of “Filipino Monkey,” likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets.

Navy women — a helicopter pilot hailing a tanker, for example — who are overheard on the radio are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment.

Several Navy ship drivers interviewed by Navy Times are raising the possibility that the Monkey, or an imitator, was indeed featured in that video.

Rick Hoffman, a retired captain who commanded the cruiser Hue City and spent many of his 17 years at sea in the Gulf was subject to the renegade radio talker repeatedly, often without pause during the so-called “Tanker Wars” of the late 1980s.

“For 25 years there’s been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats,” he said. “He could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship.”

And the Monkey has stamina.

“He used to go all night long. The guy is crazy,” he said. “But who knows how many Filipino Monkeys there are? Could it have been a spurious transmission? Absolutely.”

Furthermore, Hoffman said radio signals have a way of traveling long distances in that area. “Under certain weather conditions I could hear Bahrain from the Strait of Hormuz.”

Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, could not say if the voice belonged to the heckler.

“It’s an international circuit and we’ve said all along there were other ships and shore stations in the area,” he said.

When asked if U.S. officials considered whether the threats came from someone besides the Iranians when releasing the video and audio, Roughead said: “The reason there is audio superimposed over the video is it gives you a better idea of what is happening.”

Similarly, Davis said the audio was part of the “totality” of the situation and helped show the “aggressive behavior.”

Another former cruiser skipper said he thought the Monkey might be behind the audio threats when he first heard them earlier this week.

“It wouldn’t have surprised me at all,” he said. “There’s all kinds of chatter on Channel 16. Anybody with a receiver and transmitter can hear something’s going on. It was entirely plausible and consistent with the radio environment to interject themselves and make a threatening comment and think they’re being funny.”

This former skipper also noted how quiet and clean the radio “threat” was, especially when radio calls from small boats in the chop are noisy and cluttered.

“It’s a tough environment, you’re bouncing around, moving fast, lots of wind, noise. It’s not a serene environment,” he said. “That sounded like somebody on the beach or a large ship going by.”

He said he and others believe that the Filipino Monkey is comprised of several people, and whoever gets on Channel 16 to heckle instantly gets the monicker.

“It was just a gut feeling, something the merchants did. Guys would get bored, one guy hears it, comes back a year later and does it for himself,” he said. “I never thought it was one, rather it was part of the woodwork.”

The former skipper noted that he warned his crew about hecklers when preparing to transit Hormuz. “I tell them they’ll hear things on there that will be insulting,” he said. “You tell your people that you’ll hear things that are strange, insulting, aggravating, but you need to maintain a professional posture.”

A civilian mariner with experience in that region said the Filipino Monkey phenomenon is worldwide, and has been going on for years.

“They come on and say ‘Filipino Monkey’ in a strange voice. They might say it two or three times. You’re standing watch on bridge and you’re monitoring Channel 16 and all of a sudden it comes over the radio. It can happen anytime. It’s been a joke out there for years.”

While it happens all over the world, it’s more likely to occur around the Strait of Hormuz because there is so much shipping traffic, he said.

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/01/navy_hormuz_iran_radio_080111/
 

Steve

Well-known member
What information? That the Navy spliced the audio onto the video?

time to actually get a fact in... or at least show how "conspiracy theory" your opinion sounds..

I doubt they spliced the audio into the video...

when an event is happening the ship would record it's video, and audio.. and with out disclosing to much it would be done at two sources.. on similar pieces of equipment... sort of a black box type situation..

so instead of using the false term splice to indicate some one actually did something wrong...

the truth would be the audio from one source and the video were feed to a recorder... and the raw data was sent after the incident to the pentagon... via fleet commanders...

when the first disclosure was made it was from that same raw data recorder..

and sources that commented on it drew a wrong conclusion that it was one event..happening at one time frame... instead of two events happening at one time frame..

I even doubt the Navy has a video/audio splicer...
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
You can twist and squirm all day. But the fact remains someone in the Navy released a video to the media with the voice on the same tape as the Iranian boats. The navy admits the voice might have come from several sources, yet they chose to put it on the tape before they released it to the media as if it came from the boats circling the US ships. The Iranians called them on it with their own video and honest men still in uniform and retired stepped up to point out the problems with the tape. It shows the world that under the Bush Administration, the US is not a trustworthy nation. It's more fodder for Americans to chew as they try to decide if the Iraqi War was necessary.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”
Sir Walter Scott

Credibility once lost-- is very hard to regain......GW's administrations' "tangled web" will take us years to overcome.... :( :mad:
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Oldtimer said:
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”
Sir Walter Scott

Credibility once lost-- is very hard to regain......GW's administrations' "tangled web" will take us years to overcome.... :( :mad:

I think you're right. :(
 

Goodpasture

Well-known member
For the most part, the world likes Americans. What they do not like or respect is the current administration. If we elect an independent or a Democrat, we have a chance to say "We are changing....bringing back credibility" Then if we DO make the effort, it will be welcomed throughout the world. If we elect McCain or worse (Guilliani or Romney) we confirm their worst fears.....THEN it will take years for us to regain what has been lost.
 

Steve

Well-known member
ff
The navy admits the voice might have come from several sources, yet they chose to put it on the tape before they released it to the media as if it came from the boats circling the US ships.

that is an assumption you and the liberal media made...

but I can see that in you effort to support your anti-American agenda your not reading what I was saying..

The only reason the Navy recorded the incident was to be able to report it to thier superiors.. not for release to the press...Commanders would not have released the tape.. so they would have no reason to do anything but record the raw data...

they didn't fire a shot... so no reason to cover it up.. in fact the only action they seemed to taken was to hit the record button..

Why is it that some people (such as you) after they assumed to much out of nothing want to say they were misled?
 
Top