Meanwhile Back At the Ranch

I wonder what Iran/Rev. Guards were thinking with this kind of confrontation. Screwing around with tons of warships is a recipe for disaster for both sides. Those things don't turn on a dime and it's easier than you think for collisions to occur when one side is being stupid. Kudos to the US forces for not over-reacting. Still, Bush was waiting for something like this and Iran served it up for him. Doesn't make a lot of sense.

I almost don't believe it did happen. The bit about how they "disappeared" just as the US ship was about to fire on them sounds kind of funny. How do boats "disappear" on the open water. Turned and fled, maybe? Or possibly just an odd choice of words.

Iran rejected the footage as fake and accused Washington of trying to stir up tension in the region. Iran's Revolutionary Guards said the images were archive pictures.

I saw the pictures....
Gimme a break....you probably can't even barefoot behind one of those little things much less "threaten" a US war ship.

Chilling Threat Could Have Come From the Shore or Another Ship, Navy Says

Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.

The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes."


The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.

Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else.

We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there," said the spokesperson. "It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we're not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we're not saying it absolutely didn't."

Naval and Pentagon officials have said that the video and audio were recorded separately, then combined. On Wednesday, Pentagon officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak officially, said they were still trying to determine if the transmission came from the speedboats or elsewhere.

To further challenge the U.S. version, Iran yesterday released what it asserted was an abridged video of the same incident, which shows a calm exchange. "Slowly get a little closer . . . can't make out the ship number," says a Revolutionary Guardsman on a small patrol boat, speaking in Farsi. "I hear something being announced from its loudspeakers; what is it saying? I think they're talking to us."

"Which channel?" says a second Iranian. "Coalition warship 73," he says, speaking in English through his radio mike. "This Iranian navy patrol boat. Request side number . . . operating in the area this time."

A U.S. ship radios back: "This is coalition warship 73. I read you loud and clear."

The five-minute video, released by Iranian television yesterday, offers no indication of the tensions that supposedly sparked the encounter between U.S. and Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz -- and no indication of an intention to attack. The Pentagon said it does not dispute anything in the Iranian video.