Because You’d All Be Sad without a “Borat Visits the Straits of Hormuz” Update

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Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered the following explanation to defend the Pentagon’s escalation of the incident between five Iranian motorboats and the US ships that took place earlier this week:

Quoting former defense secretary William S. Cohen, Gates said: " ‘Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?’ I think that aptly characterizes and appropriately characterizes the Iranian claim."

I see. Gates just wanted to offer visual proof to the rest of the world that Iranian acted aggressively, so the Pentagon kluged its video evidence together with audio, um, what? elaboration? to bolster that video evidence. He ought to be asking, "Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes and justifiably dubious ears?" Though speaking of lying eyes, I have yet to see those boxes the Iranians allegedly threw into the water, though the Pentagon renews that claim in this story, while offering no visual evidence.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has backed further away from the strong implication it originally gave that those Borat threats came from the Iranians.

Pentagon officials insist that they never claimed Iran made the threat. "No one in the military has said that the transmission emanated from those boats. But when they hear it simultaneously to the behavior of those boats, it only adds to the tension," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

Uh huh. You just kluged together the two, but really, that wasn’t meant to imply that Borat was on the blue speedboat.

Iran has released what it claims is a video of the incident, though Fred Kaplan thinks that’s fake.

Meanwhile, the Iranians’ footage shows an American vessel in the distance. An Iranian, speaking through a radio, says, "Coalition warship 73. This is Iranian patrol boat." We hear the American say, "I read you loud and clear." A bit later, the American says, "We are in international waters." In short, nothing momentous is going on at all. It is, as the Iranian foreign ministry shrugged afterward, "ordinary."

The likely explanation for the differences is this: The two videos are of two different incidents. During his Jan. 7 news conference, Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, noted that American and Iranian ships have many interactions that are usually civil and peaceful, then he said:

In fact, this group [of U.S. warships] had passed an Iranian navy ship earlier in its transit and exchanged quite correct radio communications with that Iranian ship.

This earlier contact—with its "quite correct" communications—is probably the one depicted in the Iranian video.

Me, I think they’re both fake. Until I hear (or don’t hear, as would be the case) audio that sounds like it comes from an open boat with an outboard on the open sea, I’ll just assume it’s more propaganda, from both sides.

But that still raises my question. If this is all about visual images, then why are we fighting over a bunch of laughable audio tracks?

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49 replies
  1. emptywheel says:

    Okay. I’d be sad. And bmaz would have to come up with his own material. But it’s all an effort to help klynn laugh as she tries to get her kids healthy.

    • klynn says:

      And laugh I did! It’s been the running joke in the house today! Thank you EW! And I’ll just thank bmaz now, because I trust he’ll have PLENTY to add to this running punch line!

  3. bobschacht says:

    I still think we’re in “run it up the flagpole, and see if anyone salutes it” mode.

    So far, our preznit seems to be saluting it. Anyone else?

    Bob in HI

  4. phred says:

    EW, has anyone reported who actually released the tape? This whole absurd episode just smacks of another Doug Feith (or some other Pentagon Cheney mole pimping this out to gullible reporters like Judy Judy Judy or Michael Gordon). I think knowing the source would at least clarify whether we’re dealing with morons or Cheney’s propaganda mill. Obviously, I highly suspect the latter.

    • bobschacht says:

      This whole absurd episode just smacks of another Doug Feith (or some other Pentagon Cheney mole pimping this out to gullible reporters like Judy Judy Judy or Michael Gordon). I think knowing the source would at least clarify whether we’re dealing with morons or Cheney’s propaganda mill. Obviously, I highly suspect the latter.

      Hi, phred! This “absurd episode” certainly has all the earmarks of a Feith production: the clumsiness, the hysteria, the failure to check up on and critically evaluate sources, the tendency to accept the worst of all possible interpretations. Isn’t that pretty much Feith’s M.O.?

      Bob in HI

      • phred says:

        Hi Bob! Yep, it sure does. You just have to wonder why on earth anyone at DoD would release this tape. It’s crappy video, the audio is a joke, and seeing the US Navy wet its pants over a handful of speedboats makes us look ridiculous. Someone was obviously trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill. The only obvious reason I can think of to do that is to gin up support for attacking Iran and that sort of nonsense has Cheney’s fingerprints all over it.

      • BlueStateRedHead says:

        A thought. Are there pentagon mavens among us? Is there a ways of checking if Feith’s shop is still in business there? he may be gone, but he may have left some tentacles behind.

        • bobschacht says:

          “A thought. Are there pentagon mavens among us? Is there a ways of checking if Feith’s shop is still in business there? he may be gone, but he may have left some tentacles behind.”

          Well, last I knew Rummy still has an office in the Pentagon. I think he works for Darth Cheney now. Remember that since Darth has declared himself the 4th branch of government, he doesn’t need to report who’s on his staff, or where they’re working, or how much he’s paying them. Of course there’s some disagreement about this, but last I knew, Darth was playing out the string and won’t report to nobody about nothing. So, for all we know, Feith is still holed up somewhere, purveying the same nonsense as before. He has his own web site, but it hasn’t been modified since May 5. According to the Wikipedia, Feith is now on the faculty of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. That article was still being edited last month. But his scope of work, I am willing to bet, allows for continuing consultations with our Government.

          Bob in HI

        • klynn says:

          Speaking of Wikipedia, this latest incident in Hormuz is listed as event #4. With only the “first” breaking news propaganda as the entry.

          Wish I could link for all but when I link the link breaks but you can try this:

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Hormuz

          30% of the world’s oil supply goes through Hormuz. That alone would explain all this nonsense to me.

          The incident with US submarine, USS Newport, hitting a Japanese tanker is also interesting.

  5. bmaz says:

    Aw fuck it, lets just go all in here. This whole incident is the work product of shape shifting aliens from Alpha Centauri. Aliens with an excellent sense of humor though, and I find that very encouraging for the future….

    • klynn says:

      O/T …OMG bmaz, the kids are watching Buzz Lightyear (on Friday’s -for you bmaz- Buzz Lightbeer)! How did you know? Boy, the FISA surveillance is awesome! Realtime delivery and to your tube no doubt!

      It’s an episode with funny aliens from Alpha Centauri…Dark forces, Evil Zurg, Commander Nebula, the uni-mind stating, “We are united and we are powerful..”

      Evidently, Star Command is on the job and we need not be afraid.

      OOps. Got to goooo…The unimind grows and evil Zurg captured it. The “little ones with the right stuff just cried, “We are not one!”

      “I don’t think they know how to do anything anymore,” said Buzz.

      “I think Zurg is hatching his most diabolical scheme yet,” said Buzz.

      “It’s evil ‘puppet snatching’ of the people through video,” cries Zurg in an all-powerful voice.

      “A single ranger from the inside could take on the evil Zurg,” said Buzz.

      I can’t make this up folks. This is the honest dialogue. Amazing. Disney had this Administration captured in animation years ago.

      To infinity and beyond…Borat Burlesque? Please, no family pictures bmaz.

  6. JimWhite says:

    More disappointment. Some of us had hoped that Admiral (No Attack on Iran on My Watch) Fallon would keep the Bushies sane over this. He weighed in today with this:

    Fallon said Friday that the U.S. was still trying to determine the source of the threatening radio call but remained convinced that it was related to the actions of the Iranian boats.

    “The voice is very strange. I don’t know whether it came from the boats or one of the shore stations,” he said in a telephone interview from Central Command headquarters in Florida. “But the timing of it is pretty suspicious. In my mind it is related to the maneuvers.”

    He also lamented that the actions of the Iranians could lead to a “mistake”.

    This is so sad that I think I’m past laughing about it now.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..PaWEms0NUE

  7. Rayne says:

    Too funny.

    My ten-year-old, while watching the news the other evening, watched the video, listened to the breathless descriptions of the Borat-like narrative. He turned to me, wide-eyed and said, “Somebody is playing with our heads! That’s scary stuff!“

    I laughed and said, “The trick is knowing who it is that’s playing with our heads.” We spent a few minutes talking about what he’d really seen, what he’d heard; then I asked him how hard it would be for him to make a video presentation like the one he’d seen.

    He laughed and said it would only take a few minutes.

    Now if only the talking heads on the evening news programs would do the same thing, point out how easily we are gamed.

    • phred says:

      Rayne — my step son is a huge fan of Red v. Blue, and I’ve gotta say that’s what I thought of when I heard that voice. It sounds for all the world to me like adolescent boys cracking themselves up.

    • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

      Agree. The kids at my local junior high could do a better job with iMovie.
      Plus, they’d probably use GarageBand to create some nice music loops as background sound.

      This craziness puts Fallon and his trusted officers in a very precarious situation. Sooner, or later, someone’s going to make a quick misjudgment.

      • Rayne says:

        And that, besides the point masaccio makes at (46), is why this happened as it did.

        They might be trying to test the mettle of Fallon to its limits; if Fallon were to snap, we wouldn’t question him as much as another naval officer because of his previous statements. But push him they will, and in an attempt to enlist the support of Gulf countries for an assault on Iran.

        Wonder what shows up on Google Earth in regards to coordinates…

  8. Phoenix Woman says:

    The thing is that if you look at those damned overgrown bass boats, there’s no flipping ROOM for the sort of boxes to be carried, not where they could be readily accessible. Not unless they were matchboxes.

    There’s no protection against the elements, certainly no screening against ambient noise, nothing except enough room for a motor, a fuel tank and a couple of passengers.

    • Funnydiva2002 says:

      We have to keep reminding people that this is all happening right after we were reminded yet again just how bogus the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” was. That’s the one where US warships were allegedly attacked twice by the North Vietnamese — except the first attack was deliberately provoked by the US and the second attack never happened.

      Thanks, PW.
      And here I was thinking that the Gulf of Tonkin was somewhere near the Bay of Pigs…NOT!

      FunnyDiva
      Oh, Dana…

  10. earlofhuntingdon says:

    This incident bears the hallmark of the political consultants who gave us the “Mission Accomplished” banner, Jeff Gannon, and the planted questioners from the EPA, GSA, etc., pressers.

    Whatever its source(s), the controversy is now great enough that Gates should come clean with where the separate audio and video components came from, who put them together, under whose orders, and why they were released like a Wag the Dog promotional video.

  11. LS says:

    My new theory…it was a diversion from Operation Phantom Phoenix…the 40,000 tons of bombs they dropped in 10 minutes in part of Baghdad…I have been investigating the “Phoenix” programs, they are usually assassination programs…it could be that this “operation” was wipe-out of political opposition or eradication of prison camps…which is interesting if it is, because it comes on the heels of W saying Auschwitz should have been “bombed”…something was up the other day when W showed up with his Pet Goat face…I suspect they wiped out a bunch of innocents…while distracting us with the Borat crappola….just sayin’.

    • brendanx says:

      The “Auschwitz should have been bombed” line is constent with Bush’s needy pandering to his hosts, whether Latvians or Likudniks. It helps that he’s peddling right wing revisionism and taking jabs at FDR and Truman at the same time.

  12. oldtree says:

    Pretty soon Geraldo Rivera (or, Horrendo Revolver for those of you that remember before he changed his name) is going to open Al Capone’s secret glove box in one of those speedboats, just you wait!
    it’s a teevee world, and the new replacement masters are at work. shhh!. (there are no writers working right now to smooth all these rough edges)

  13. Scarecrow says:

    It’s reassuring that there are adults in the administration who are suggesting that our people and the Iranians should meet to figure out what happened and agree on a set of procedures to ensure there are no misunderstandings. Our side said that, didn’t they? Hello?

    • JimWhite says:

      meet to figure out what happened

      We don’ talk ta ter’ists!
      And see my number 7 on the one adult I thought we had there.

    • bmaz says:

      I just got off the phone with Borat. He said he would “like make diplomacy good with Amayrikun friends; but would be most honored if Amayrikun friends would send real diplomat instead of Condi Manolo Blahnik Rice”.

      OOps gotta go now, I promised EW I would not let my attention be diverted by Borat Burlesque until Trash Talk was done and up. Arrividerci…..

  14. biggerbox says:

    I’m waiting for a new video, in which we hear a voice over the image of the blue boat screaming “Don’t taze me, bro!”

    I’m thinking “You will exPLOOODE in two minutes” will make an excellent humorous catchphrase in everyday conversation. “See you at the pub? Sure, if you don’t exPLOOODE in two minutes!”

  15. leinie says:

    You know, I have twin sons, both in the Navy, both spent time in the Gulf last summer, one on a destroyer, one on a carrier. They both came back with stories of Iranian vessels and planes playing chicken with the Navy ships and planes in the Gulf. It apparently happens all the freaking time. It’s apparently compounded by disagreements about what is, actually, international waters (remember the incident with the British?)

    So I don’t doubt that there was an Iranian vessel that got close – the question is, why highlight this one? And apparently manufacture crap to make it More Ominous, so we’d all get concerned?

    I’m so tired of this government making my country look like idiots.

    • phred says:

      I think you hit the nail on the head. This happens all the time and not just involving surface ships. This sort of thing has gone on for decades with submarines as well (read Blind Man’s Bluff for a good history of this sort of cat and mouse taunting underwater). That’s why I find this all so ludicrous. Why highlight this particular occasion, when it seems so benign (as such things go)? I smell a rat.

      • freepatriot says:

        I smell a rat.

        come on man

        even rats don’t smell this bad, even when they’re dead

        that’s george w bush that you smell

  16. der1 says:

    I come away from watching both videos with the same thought and that is there was some confusion and disagreement as to the exact location of the US ships. The navy video, to my untrained eye, shows the Iranian speedboats “boxing” (crisscrossing each others paths and going to the 4 corners of the navy group) the co-ordinates of the US ships and to me watching the Iranian video and listening to the audio exchange confirms it. The Iranian asks for the ships “bearing and co-ordinates” and the answer back is “we are operating in International waters” (in other words fuck off!). As it has already been said many times this is being manufactured by the Administration for some reason not yet revealed.

  17. der1 says:

    If what I speculate is true then the Iranians were being provoked by our Navy and not the other way around. More realistically though from a comment elsewhere what are the Iranians going to do with a speedboat, 3 sailors, and a can of gasoline? But as GG posts don’t mean shit to the badasses we got running the show. Oh, Hillary cried. My head hurts. Go Pats!

    • bmaz says:

      Yeah, I think that might have been me, or someone channeling my skepticism about the boats. Three man? I only saw two. I don’t know if Iranian sailors drink like their compatriot Russian sailors or not, but I hardly saw room for their liquor flasks, much less any kind of evil ship destroying missiles. they sure as hell didn’t have room for any “white box” bombs…..

      Trash Time!

  18. nomolos says:

    But that still raises my question. If this is all about visual images, then why are we fighting over a bunch of laughable audio tracks?

    Because of the writer’s strike. Obviously the conflicting stories from all sources are a fault of those Union Writers. Had they not chosen this vital time to America to go on strike the nation would have had one, standard, story and none of this confusion. It is the fault of the unions.

  19. merkwurdiglieber says:

    The last time something like this happened in Hormuz we ended up shooting
    down an Iranian airliner full of civilians in self defense. Not a good
    sign with Junya at bible camp.

    • nomolos says:

      If I remember correctly Sen. Warner was certain sure it was a suicide mission by the airliner personnel.

      • bmaz says:

        Yeah, that genius also thought marrying Elizabeth Taylor would result in a Ward and June Cleaver like stable relationship….

  20. BlueStateRedHead says:

    OT, Romney in Michigan and the Wingnuts related–a thread from yesterday I believe.
    Huckabee makes instant inroads in MI through the evangelicals and more:

    http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITI…..topstories

    1/3-1/5 of Repub primary voters are self-identifed evangelicals.

    Does this make Kos’s idea of the need for a Romney win more compelling?
    Any thoughts, EW?

    • emptywheel says:

      Huck can and will do well here. Do I think Dems will respond to robocalls asking for their votes? I doubt it. Do I think Mitt is in serious danger of being knocked out here? Absolutely.

      I just don’t know that gaming cross-overs is the way to approach it. Besides, I think the timing of Huck knocking Mitt out here might benefit us, though I’m not totally decided on it.

  21. mainsailset says:

    The simple explanation is that the Rep presidential hopefuls needed a new topic to go off on, can’t talk Iraq, Afghanistan, economy, God forbid science, employment, gas prices, immigration. So, Bush’s folks just blew them a kiss and they’re off and running. Unfortunately for the ‘leaders’, their crazy cohort, Ron Paul, didn’t jump with both feet into their nuke ‘em talk so he spoiled the effect.

  22. freepatriot says:

    so who was it that said:

    “all We’ve proved here is that any halfwit with a trailer hitch and a dock can threaten the US Navy”

    sums up the bushco DOD

    • phred says:

      Glad you liked that ; )

      And my most sincere apologies to rats the world over, you are correct that I was quite unfair to them.

  23. freepatriot says:

    can we have a “STOOOOOPID” contest here ???

    nominations could include our secretary of defense (and panty wadding) robert gates, and the two idiot who wheeled the dead guy to the check cashing business

  24. masaccio says:

    Juan Cole gets into the act:

    The Gulf monarchies in particular are very afraid of the Iranian navy, and the Bush administration video would have been useful for pushing the Kuwaitis, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia into agreeing with the Bush grand strategy of surrounding Iran and then cutting it off.

    This explains why the events are being released now.

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