http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2IrelAO52M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_A8PFcwtsk

looks like they're upping the ante on getting war started with iran. looks like they'll be out of office in a year so they really need to create another quagmire while they can.

one story says the "provocation" happened saturday, the other says sunday. i assume these are supposed to be two incidents? anybody else hear about this?

ALL YOUR BASES ARE BELONG TO US.
:D

Would it be unpatriot for me to ask what our naval vessels were doing there in the first place?

If the U.S. wants to set herself up for bigtime humiliation, we should attack Iran.  As they used to say back in the old neighborhood, "don't let your mouth write checks your ass can't cash."
::)

While it is true that we've been beating the war drums for a while now, Iran's Revolutionary Guard isn't exactly known for its sanity.  Remember the British hostages?

I think Iran has more to worry about than us.  We might go into deep debts from fighting Iran, but Iran will likely lose thousands upon thousands of lives if we actually go to war with them.  theran would likely be a crater by the end of it all.  If the Ayatollah wants to remain alive, he'd better rein in his crazy forces.

  Wow.  Tonkin II is right...

  The US probably wants to be on record as being "threatened", so they can take-out any boat they feel like taking-out in the future...and so the Iranians know they have reserved the privilege...

  War with Iran, though?  With exactly WHAT troops are we supposed to carry out an invasion?  You've got to be kidding...

I definitely hope it doesn't come to war either.  It would basically mean we would just have to ditch what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

and what was that, exactly?

  Wow.  Tonkin II is right...

  The US probably wants to be on record as being "threatened", so they can take-out any boat they feel like taking-out in the future...and so the Iranians know they have reserved the privilege...

  War with Iran, though?  With exactly WHAT troops are we supposed to carry out an invasion?  You've got to be kidding...
if you believe seymour hersh they're gonna try and do it all with air power, sorta like kosovo.

if you believe seymour hersh they're gonna try and do it all with air power, sorta like kosovo.

Journalist covering the Giuliani and Romney campaigns: Seymour Dix.
:-\\

if you believe seymour hersh they're gonna try and do it all with air power, sorta like kosovo.


  Okay, had to look this dude up and I read the New Yorker article.  We've had covert SpecOps teams in there for over 2 years now?  I guess he has his sources...

  What the hay, who cares if a small scale tactical nuclear weapons strike happens half way around the world.  As long as the sun keeps glowin' and the brews keep a flowin'.  I could use a little radiation anyway, I thought I felt a lump in my grundle... :P


 

   

and what was that, exactly?


Well, in Afghanistan, it's actually fighting terror.

In Iraq....  well, you know the deal there.

Well, in Afghanistan, it's actually fighting terror.

In Iraq....  well, you know the deal there.
but they claim to be fighting terror in iraq, too. if they were lying there, why should we believe their claim when they say they're fighting terror in afghanistan?

Hate to be a Debbie Downer here, but to the extent we can trust the video/transcripts released today, this looks like nothing more than normal saber-rattling and intelligence-gathering.  We did it to the Soviets (and the Soviets did it to us) with aircraft skirting the edges of each other's airspace.  To this day, the air defense forces of the West, the Russians, and the Chinese still play these sorts of games with each other on a regular basis.

The rules are simple:  You see how close you can get your aircraft to the other guy's borders.  The other guy gets a look at your aircraft.  If you don't get shot down, you probably learn more about the other guy's air defenses than he learns about your airplanes, and you win.  If you do get shot down, you don't learn much about the other guy's air defenses and his best engineers get a close-up look at the bits of your busted-up plane, and you lose.  Both sides are mutually aware that the other exists and has the capability to lay down some form of smack on each other.  In the long run, it defuses tensions.

The Iranians are using boats instead of aircraft, but the game is the same; for the Iranians, to figure out our rules of engagement (and assuming they exist and depending on what was in the white boxes everyone's so tight-lipped about, perhaps to figure something out about our ships' automated defense capabilities), and for us, to get some free intel about the Iranians' ability to use swarming tactics.

Yes, there's a game being played between the US and Iran, but this incident gets filed under "everything under control, situation normal" from a military standpoint. The only reason it's being played up publicly is political, because under normal circumstances, this wouldn't receive news coverage.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/degrees-of-confidence-on-us-iran-naval-incident/index.html?ex=1357621200&en=e45fafeb6410b481&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Pentagon doubts authenticity of the tapes... pretty bad when even the military doesn't want to play along with Bush's Rovian maneuvering now.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/degrees-of-confidence-on-us-iran-naval-incident/index.html?ex=1357621200&en=e45fafeb6410b481&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Pentagon doubts authenticity of the tapes... pretty bad when even the military doesn't want to play along with Bush's Rovian maneuvering now.


“I am coming to you. … You will explode after … minutes.”

That's what reminded me of "All your bases are belong to us!"
::)

but they claim to be fighting terror in iraq, too. if they were lying there, why should we believe their claim when they say they're fighting terror in afghanistan?

Good point...  I think there is a major difference between these 2 conflicts, both in leadership and in rationale.  I completely supported and still support our presence in Afghanistan, because the Taliban was a valid threat.  It still is a valid thread, but they've unfortunately used Pakistan as a refuge.

Iraq was just the mother of all screwups.  This kind of incompetency hasn't been shown since the Vietnam War.  I was against it from the beginning, and I want us out as soon as possible.

I can't give you an all-encompassing answer on why I believe the government on Afghanistan and why I don't on Iraq, but so far, the track record in Afghanistan is much better.  We've accomplished a lot more there, and there is much stronger evidence of a valid threat.  Iraq has failed to provide enough evidence for me to believe it was necessary for us to enter (or to even remain there).

Granted, anything is possible.  You might very well be right about Afghanistan.

This is a threat to America. Bush is trying to make peace in the Middle East and try to end the war in Iraq. But the big reason is to have Palestine be a country which Arafat dreamed of.

And Iran isn't a Middle Eastern country. They may have the same Religion and practices, but it's more tied to Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than Saudi Arabia.

This is a threat to America. Bush is trying to make peace in the Middle East and try to end the war in Iraq. But the big reason is to have Palestine be a country which Arafat dreamed of.

And Iran isn't a Middle Eastern country. They may have the same Religion and practices, but it's more tied to Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than Saudi Arabia.



  He can start by giving us Bin Laden in an orange jumpsuit...

 

 

But the big reason is to have Palestine be a country which Arafat dreamed of.


I'd be all for that. 

Day 1: Palestinian Statheood.

Then it's either:

Day 2: a free trade agreement is signed between the two nations (and as long as I'm gambling, a thousand rainbows fly out of my butt...)

Or:

Day 2: War is declared.  Not a "conflict", not a "dispute", an honest-to-God war between two nation-states who really don't like each other, with two armies and two civilian populations.


Day 3: War escalates from "Geneva-convention-respecting combat between uniformed combatants of each side taking great risks to avoid bringing civilians into the mix" into "Total War", the WW2-era doctrine (arguably goes back to Sherman's US Civil War march to the sea) that ignores the distinction between civilian and combatant.

It's long been said "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight".

Day 4: We add "Don't bring unguided rocket artillery to a nuke fight" to the phrasebook.

Day 5: Peace breaks out.  OK, it's a blue glowing peace, but it's an improvement over Day 4.

Let's get real here - We got sold on it at the idea of $20/bbl "we came, we saw, we kicked their asses and took their oil" as the best-case scenario, but $100/bbl oil was the "everyone goes nuts, worst-case scenario" price.  It's not like the markets haven't already priced it in.  We're already paying the price of the worst-case scenario -- what's $150/bbl oil if it at least gets the band-aid ripped off the proverbial wound.  Kick over a few anthills.  See who comes out on top.  At this point, the West doesn't really have much left to lose.

^that post is awesome. the thing it describes is about the most awful i can imagine but it's amusingly described. which is enough for me and is why i'm voting for huckabee. it's not that i dont think he'll run the country like a crazed religious fanatic, it's that i think he'll be funny when he does it. he was on "wait wait don't tell me" a few weeks ago and he was hilarious.

seriously, with global warming and peak oil and middle east meltdown i'm not exactly sure how we patch all this stuff together and look for a peaceful solution to all these problems but it sure would be nice. oo! is that the brisk sensation of a thousand rainbows coming out of my butt? ???