PDA

View Full Version : U.S. Radically Changes Its Story of the Boats in Iranian Waters




Lucille
01-18-2016, 11:27 AM
http://wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.6910


From the Intercept: U.S. Radically Changes Its Story of the Boats in Iranian Waters: to an Even More Suspicious Version (https://theintercept.com/2016/01/15/the-u-s-radically-changes-its-story-of-the-boats-in-iranian-waters-to-an-even-more-suspicious-version/) [Ed: must read]


The U.S. government itself now says this story was false. There was no engine failure, and the boats were never “in distress.” Once the sailors were released, AP reported, “In Washington, a defense official said the Navy has ruled out engine or propulsion failure as the reason the boats entered Iranian waters.”

Instead, said Defense Secretary Ashton Carter at a press conference this morning, the sailors “made a navigational error that mistakenly took them into Iranian territorial waters.” He added that they “obviously had misnavigated” when, in the words of the New York Times, “they came within a few miles of Farsi Island, where Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps has a naval base.” The LA Times conveyed this new official explanation: “A sailor may have punched the wrong coordinates into the GPS and they wound up off course. Or the crew members may have taken a shortcut into Iranian waters as they headed for the refueling ship, officials said.” The initial slogan “inadvertently drifted” — suggesting a disabled boat helplessly floating wherever the ocean takes it — has now been replaced in the script by “inadvertently strayed,” meaning the boats were erroneously steered into Iranian waters without any intention to go there.
[...]
What we know for certain is that the storyline of “mechanical failure” and “poor U.S. boat in distress” that was originally propagated — on which Lake exclusively relied to blame the Iranians — was complete fiction. At least according to the government’s latest version, the boats were working just fine. But, as always, the bulk of the U.S. media narrative was built around totally unverified, self-serving claims from the U.S. government, which, yet again, turned out to be completely false.
[...]
This happens over and over. A significant incident occurs, such as the U.S. bombing of an MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The U.S. government makes claims about what happened. The U.S. media uncritically repeat them over and over. And then the U.S. government just blithely changes its story repeatedly, implicitly admitting that the tales it originally told were utterly false. But the next time a similar event happens, there is no heightened skepticism of U.S. government claims: its media treat them as Gospel.
[...]
All you need to know about the U.S. media is this: Just imagine what they would be saying and doing if two Iranian ships had entered U.S. territorial waters with no warning or permission, and then the Iranian government lied about why that happened. And that’s to say nothing of the massive apologia that spewed forth in 1988 when, in roughly the same areas as these ships “misnavigated” into, the U.S. Navy blew an Iranian civilian jet out of the sky, killing 290 passengers, 66 of whom were children, and then tried to cover up its responsibility.

So, to recap the U.S. media narrative: when the U.S. Navy enters Iran’s territorial waters without permission or notice, and Iran detains them and then releases them within 24 hours, Iran is the aggressor; and the same is true when Iran aggressively allows one of its civilian jets to be shot down by the U.S. Navy. And no matter how many times the U.S. government issues patently false statements about its military actions, those statements are entitled to unquestioning, uncritical treatment as Truth the next time a similar incident occurs.

Ronin Truth
01-18-2016, 11:46 AM
Deja vu, Gulf of Tonkin?

ChristianAnarchist
01-18-2016, 11:53 AM
Want to know how you can tell if the goons are lying?? Their lips are moving...

Dr.3D
01-18-2016, 11:56 AM
I have to wonder what else they were doing there.

Brian4Liberty
01-18-2016, 11:57 AM
A normal day in the news-propaganda cycle. In any incident, "officials" pull self-serving explanations right out of their asses, and the media reports it as fact. Happens all the time. The vast majority of "news" deviates in some degree from reality, often intentionally, but just as often due to sheer human nature (gossip and hear-say).

enhanced_deficit
01-18-2016, 12:35 PM
This is very surprising, Obama adminstartion and its operatives are known to be one of the most honest in US history. Honest, transparent leadership inspires such values through chain of command also that brightens US image in the world.
America is still great (despite what some casino mogul says) and Americans are truly blessed.

navy-vet
01-18-2016, 01:27 PM
:rolleyes:

charrob
01-18-2016, 02:41 PM
I have to wonder what else they were doing there.

I agree. There is no way they navigationally made an error. As a recreational boater that has spent more time working on our 1970s sailboat than actually sailing her in the 4 years we've had her, we've several times made our way through waters on moonless summer nights to our destination without any problems. And this is in a shallow bay where we have a 4 foot fixed keel and would easily ground in several places if we went a few feet to the left or to the right of a narrow channel. We plot the course before we leave and follow it via Garmin's Bluecharts which is a simple iPhone app that contains noaa's charts. If we, who are completely untrained and are pretty new to this, can do it these highly trained sailors with most likely state of the art equipment on their riverine boats can surely do this in broad daylight.

I'm not buying the official explanation.

Feeding the Abscess
01-18-2016, 08:05 PM
Not as bad as the continuous changes in the leaks regarding the bin Laden raid. How many times did the official story change in 12 hours? 4? 5?

jmdrake
01-18-2016, 08:25 PM
Deja vu, Gulf of Tonkin?

Yeah...except this time prisoners get released instead of war breaking out? Can't put my finger on this one. Unless someone inside the Obama adminstration is trying to undermine his policy or Iran. Or we gave Iran a chance to look good twice in a row by releasing U.S. prisoners? I dunno. At a loss as to motive here.

jmdrake
01-18-2016, 08:27 PM
Not as bad as the continuous changes in the leaks regarding the bin Laden raid. How many times did the official story change in 12 hours? 4? 5?

And ultimately the Pentagon "loses" the DNA evidence it said it had to prove they had really killed OBL.

And then, months after one Navy SEAL wrote No Easy Day, another SEAL came out and said "No. I was the one that fired the fatal shot." And nobody comes out and says one of these guys had to be lying?

pcosmar
01-18-2016, 08:55 PM
I have to wonder what else they were doing there.

or what they were going to try to do.?

Maybe just seeing if they could ?

Contumacious
01-18-2016, 09:29 PM
Deja vu, Gulf of Tonkin?


We are being governed by criminals.

LBJ tried to sink the USS Liberty and its sailors in order to invade Egypt in 1967 , then a Soviet satellite. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRZSzdQuOqM)

Dianne
01-18-2016, 10:25 PM
I think it was just the prelude to the release of the hostages. Obama's working on creating some type of legacy. Certainly all the lies he said on camera will not be part of it. But story line is, Obama reigned in Iran with his beautiful and intelligent negotiation skills. Iran, once a rogue nation captured our sailors and immediately released them for fear of Obama's great wrath if they did otherwise. The Iranians were so intimidated by Obama's wrath, within a few days they released prisoners, held in captivity for years. Yes, Obama is the greatest warrior of all times. He is a statesman, a constitutionalist, a warrior, a genius. Great timing, in how his staff always manufactures things for Obama to take credit for. Hell, Obama still trying to find those extra seven states in the U.S.

Lucille
01-20-2016, 12:29 PM
The Riverine Mysteries
Unanswered questions about how US sailors wound up in Iran’s hands – and how they got out
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/01/19/the-riverine-mysteries/


The events surrounding the interception of ten American sailors in two US riverine boats who somehow wandered into Iranian waters continues to baffle the curious. Not that the American media is to be included among those asking questions: aside from the outraged shrieks of the neoconservative outlets over the alleged “appeasement” of Iran and the so-called “humiliation” of the sailors, no one is asking the most pertinent question of all: how did they get there in the first place?

I raised the most obvious questions here: simultaneously, both Glenn Greenwald and Rachel Maddow made similar observations. Now the mystery grows deeper as the ever-changing Official Story – which is, currently, that a “navigational error” was made – collapses under its own weight. This story line was never all that convincing to begin with – after all, did both boats fall victim to the same “error”? Was this not a routine journey undertaken hundreds of times? [...]

If the reason for the course deviation was “navigational error,” then why is any investigation necessary? And as it turns out, there was no error: the GPs devices on board were working just fine. To make matters worse for Washington, the Iranians returned everything on the ships with the exception of “two SIM cards that appear to have been removed from two handheld satellite phones," as the Pentagon statement avers. Those cards will tell the Iranians whom the crew members were communicating with on their sojourn, when those communications took place – and, perhaps, what the Americans’ real mission was all about.
[...]
Just as those freed Iranians were working to procure sanctioned products for Tehran, so the American prisoners in Iran were no doubt engaged in intelligence-gathering on behalf of Washington – although Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian’s “crime” appears to have been writing letter to President Obama, seized on by Iranian hard-liners (as eager as our neocons to spike the nuke deal) as evidence that he was collecting information and handing it to “hostile governments.”

The “prisoner swap” was in reality a spy exchange, as anyone with a lick of sense would have to conclude. Yet the US media won’t breathe the word “spy” in connection with anything having to do with our activities overseas: in this, like Mr. Trevithick’s SREO, they can be considered “a valuable partner” by our State Department.