Original story A lot of people have supected it was a lie for a long time, but this does tend to prove it. It tends to make you wonder how many other wars were intentionally started or escalated for political gain (think Cuban Missle Crisis)
Do you mean last Sunday or a previous incident? I can see this sabre rattling with Iran getting out of hand quite soon. Its all to easy when you have people pointing loaded guns at each other for someone to do something stupid and next thing you know all hell breaks loose. I just hope it doesn't go down that path.
I thought there was already abundant proof. I mean to say, it's in Wikipedia. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
We'd only have the US to blame. Five speedboats with machine guns against three huge state-of-the-art armoured military vessels (a destroyer and two frigates)? I think the US can afford to show a bit of restraint. Or is that one a fake as well?...
From what I've read the recent incident ended without a single shot being fired. If it took place as reported, it looks like the US did show a bit of restraint. I suppose we'll see whether or not the events are true. -monkey
Same here, I already had thought the Gulf of Tonkin was bull too, and was the first thing I thought of after seeing the Iran incident.
Yup, just like the only thing Africa is good at is being poor, the only thing the middle east is good at is exporting towel-head terrorists, and the only thing any of asia is good at is giving birth to people who're excellent at maths. As for the recent Iranian boaty aggression thing, are we all forgetting the Iranians captured and took hostage a number of British military personell not all that long ago? While I don't particularly trust the US, given that this gives them little real political gains I doubt that they were lieing.
And as I said, they could afford to. Depends. Bush' credibility is sagging and its administration is still gunning for Iran. If the Tonkin strategy worked before... Now if you want to talk about provocation, lets look back a little further... Pay particular attention to the note: Just what are the UK and US doing so far away from home again?
Just before Germany invaded Poland in WWII, the Germans actually fabricated an attack (by Poland) and used that for an excuse to go to war. I'm sure if you look into the history books there are many instances of this tactic being used as a ploy to "retaliate" against a nation to go to war. It doesn't make it right. It's part of warfare. Anybody remember when the US public believed that the sinking of the USS Maine, in Cuba, provided enough pressure to start the Spanish-American War? That was just before WWI for those not acquainted with US history. I think there was a Star Trek episode that had this plot line.
I wouldn't blame the USN for being a bit wary of an unknown speedboat approaching them - who knows if they were packed with explosives and intending to copy the attack on USS COLE. Modern warships do have enough protection against small machine guns, but they very little if any armour against missile or explosive attacks - the trend being for light, fast, stealthy warships armed with close in weapons systems. However, it seems the Iranians turned away just before the USN were about to fire on them, so cooler heads prevailed.
Pfft. Have you never read Snow Crash? It clearly explains that America is also the world leader in the important fields of music, movies, software (although that is quickly becoming questionable), and high-speed pizza delivery. Back to the topic at hand, though, this saber-rattling with Iran (and I'm rather sure we're rattling right back) has got to stop before someone does something stupid. For that matter, saber-rattling with Iran is stupid, and really needs to stop. We need to reach some form of acceptable use treaty over the Straits of Hormuz, and leave well enough alone. The thing is thirty miles wide, that should be enough space for everyone.
The preponderance of the evidence says it wasn't, but every time you hear about somthing like this it makes asking the questions seem a LOT more reasonable.
