[Peace-discuss] another theory for the Persian Tonkin Gulf Incident

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Maybe the Iranians are taking it for what it is -- much ado about nothing -- because they can't believe that certain folks in Washington are still looking for any pretext to get on w/ their original agenda re Iran?
   --Jenifer

Stuart Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu> wrote:
  [Resending a message sent late Friday night which got lost...]

The Register (www.theregister.co.uk), a techie news & gossip column with
sometimes-interesting politics, posts a plausible explanation for
the near-conflict between a US ship and some Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf.

If true, it could well be that that both sides are correctly representing
what they said and what they heard, but that the threatening-sounding language
was coming from someone else with a radio transmitter, somewhere in the Gulf area,
who heard the routine radio interchange and decided to make mischief.
In other words, that the Navy was duped into thinking it was being threatened.
Apparently this is not that unusual. See the article:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/11/us_iran_navy_speedboat_row_filipino_monkey/

But, good grief. This is better than Milo Minderbinder's mimeograph machine.
Some yahoo with a radio could easily have given us the excuse our
Administration has been waiting for -- to go to war. Certainly
(most of) the Republican presidential candidates have taken full
rhetorical advantage of the story.

And next time it might easily succeed.

Puzzle (as the article notes): why aren't the Iranians suggesting
something like this as an explanation for the incident?

Stuart
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