http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40747

Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (IPS) -

Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait
of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to U.S. ships from
Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a "battle at sea", new
information over the past three days suggests that the incident did
not involve such a threat and that no U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S.
warship, as appears to do on the video.

Also unraveling the story is testimony from a former U.S. 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 U.S. 5th fleet that the commanding officers of the U.S. warships
involved in the incident never felt the need to warn the Iranians of a
possible use of force against them.

Further undermining the U.S. version of the incident is a video
released by Iran 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 U.S. warships.

A voice with a U.S. accent replies, "This is coalition warship 73. I
am operating in international waters."

The dramatic version of the incident reported by U.S. news media
throughout Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that Iranian speedboats,
apparently belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard navy, had made
moves to attack three U.S. warships entering the Strait and that the
U.S. 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".

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 Wednesday that the
incident "almost involved an exchange of fire between our forces and
Iranian forces".

President George W. Bush declared during his Mideast trip Wednesday
that there would be "serious consequences" if Iran attacked U.S. 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 U.S.
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 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 U.S. naval officer who had served as a surface warfare
officer aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Gulf sent a message to the
New York Times on-line column "The Lede" 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 U.S. 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 U.S. ship.

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

The U.S. 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 Adm. 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 U.S. ships" as
claimed by CBS news Wednesday in its report based on the new video.

Vice Adm. Cosgriff also failed to claim any run toward the U.S. ships
following the initial warning.

Cosgriff suggested that the Iranian boat's manoeuvres were "unduly
provocative" only because of the "aggregate of their manoeuvres, 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 U.S. ships'
commanding officers about the floating objects suggests that they
recognised 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 U.S . 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, "[I]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 characterisation of the incident.

After the Cosgriff briefing, Associated Press carried a story that
said, " U.S. forces were taking steps toward firing on the Iranians to
defend themselves, said the U.S. naval commander in the region.

But the boats -- believed to be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's
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 U.S. captain was in the process of ordering sailors to open fire
when the Iranian boats moved away" -- a story that Cosgriff had
specifically denied.

______________________________________________

Harry

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40747

Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (IPS) -

Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait
of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to U.S. ships from
Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a "battle at sea", new
information over the past three days suggests that the incident did
not involve such a threat and that no U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S.
warship, as appears to do on the video.

Also unraveling the story is testimony from a former U.S. 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 U.S. 5th fleet that the commanding officers of the U.S. warships
involved in the incident never felt the need to warn the Iranians of a
possible use of force against them.

Further undermining the U.S. version of the incident is a video
released by Iran 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 U.S. warships.

A voice with a U.S. accent replies, "This is coalition warship 73. I
am operating in international waters."

The dramatic version of the incident reported by U.S. news media
throughout Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that Iranian speedboats,
apparently belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard navy, had made
moves to attack three U.S. warships entering the Strait and that the
U.S. 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".

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 Wednesday that the
incident "almost involved an exchange of fire between our forces and
Iranian forces".

President George W. Bush declared during his Mideast trip Wednesday
that there would be "serious consequences" if Iran attacked U.S. 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 U.S.
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 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 U.S. naval officer who had served as a surface warfare
officer aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Gulf sent a message to the
New York Times on-line column "The Lede" 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 U.S. 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 U.S. ship.

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

The U.S. 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 Adm. 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 U.S. ships" as
claimed by CBS news Wednesday in its report based on the new video.

Vice Adm. Cosgriff also failed to claim any run toward the U.S. ships
following the initial warning.

Cosgriff suggested that the Iranian boat's manoeuvres were "unduly
provocative" only because of the "aggregate of their manoeuvres, 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 U.S. ships'
commanding officers about the floating objects suggests that they
recognised 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 U.S . 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, "[I]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 characterisation of the incident.

After the Cosgriff briefing, Associated Press carried a story that
said, " U.S. forces were taking steps toward firing on the Iranians to
defend themselves, said the U.S. naval commander in the region.

But the boats -- believed to be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's
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 U.S. captain was in the process of ordering sailors to open fire
when the Iranian boats moved away" -- a story that Cosgriff had
specifically denied.

______________________________________________

Harry

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=3D40747

Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel

The new information that appears to contradict the original version of
the incident includes the revelation that U.S. officials spliced the
audio recording of an alleged Iranian threat onto to a videotape of
the incident.