Re: SC57

Thats a good one Rick :-) Today the Iranians produced a video ( from their perspective ) of parts of their conversation with the US ships, also showing the US warship in the background of the video to counter the US claims that " an extreme provocation " had occured. Here is a description of the US warships involved in this " harrowing " incident with 5 HIGHLY DANGEROUS speedboats:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7767

U.S. war provocation against Iran: Another Tonkin Gulf?

..............Even the video released to the media - if looked at closely- belies the very story that is being drummed up by the Bush administration. It shows five small open-air Iranian speedboats buzzing in the distance, far from the USS Hopper. Iranian boats have every right to patrol and defend their own coastal waters.

It should be noted that, according to the Pentagon’s own description, the USS Hopper is a guided-missile destroyer. It carries an M240 machine gun that can fire 10 armor-piercing projectiles per second and is capable of carrying nuclear missiles that can destroy whole cities. This high-tech ship weighs 8,373 tons and measures 504 feet in length. It was traveling in convoy with the USS Port Royal--a guided-missile cruiser that weighs 9,600 tons fully loaded and has a length of 567 feet and is also capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles--and the guided-missile frigate USS Ingraham, weighing 4,100 tons and measuring 445 feet in length.

These three deadly ships are just a small part of the U.S. Navy armada arrayed off the Iranian coast............

For whats really going on:

...........On Jan. 6, 2008, the U.S. Navy alleged that a "confrontation" took place between three massive guided-missile U.S. attack vessels and five small, open Iranian speedboats at the entrance to the Persian Gulf in the world's most important and busiest sea lanes. The Navy even produced a video purporting to show the Iranian speedboats approaching the U.S. warships.


But the Iranian media on Jan. 9 quoted an Iranian official as saying, “Images released by the U.S. Department of Defense about the Navy vessels were made from file pictures, and the audio was fabricated."

Nearly five years ago, the Bush Administration, with active collaboration from Congress and the media, led the U.S. into war, claiming that Iraq possessed chemical and nuclear weapons and that the people of Iraq were behind the attacks on 9/11. Now the Bush Administration is clearly grasping for some excuse - any excuse - to attack Iran. Once the National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Bush has been lying about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, the hawks in his Administration have begun looking for any justification, real or fabricated, to sell a military attack they have been planning for years.

The real provocation here doesn’t come from Iran. The U.S. currently has half of its Navy off the coast of Iran, including nuclear-armed aircraft carriers, guided-missile destroyers, frigates, cruisers and submarines.

Meanwhile, Bush is spending eight days visiting Kuwait, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. The purpose of his trip is to convince these corrupt, feudal regimes, which are dependent U.S.-client states, that Iran represents a dangerous threat, in preparation for a U.S. attack...............

............... Even after 16 of the top U.S. spy agencies publicly released a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran has no nuclear program, at least since 2003, nor nuclear weapons, the Bush administration has continued to threaten Iran.

It is important to remember that the massive U.S. bombing of Vietnam and the Johnson administration's escalation of the war was preceded by reports of an attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam - which years later was finally admitted to be phony.

On Aug. 2 and 4, 1964, the Pentagon claimed that small Vietnamese boats had fired on the USS Maddox and another destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. Lyndon Johnson used this "attack" as pretext for ramming a resolution through Congress giving him the power and funds to wage war on Vietnam.

Johnson's own papers later revealed it was a fraud, and later Defense Secretary Robert McNamara admitted in the film "Fog of War" that the whole incident had been phony.

Nearly all the Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress, including the present major contenders for the presidential nomination, voted for resolutions against Iran. In a staged or fraudulent confrontation with Iran, with wild charges from the corporate-owned media, Congressional opposition is highly unlikely. The only force that will stop an attack on a Iran is a massive, grassroots campaign................