Gee, Who'd a Thunk It?
Two days ago, the US Navy released a video tape of some Iranian Navy speedboats harassing a US Navy destroyer. Accompanying the video tape was some dialog, purported to be from individuals on the boats, making threatening comments directed at the ship, and its crew.
Something about the video cause Hooman Majd to question its authenticity at HuffPo yesterday.
Today, ABC News is reporting that Majd's concerns may have been justified:
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.
Majd asserted that the voices on the video could not have been Iranian, due to the accented English not resembling that of a typical Persian accent. Now the Navy spokesman says, he doesn't know where the voices on the tapes came from.
The authenticity of the tape aside, the timing of its release also has had people questioning the political ramifications. It seems to have been put out by the Pentagon, specifically to be timed with the New Hampshire primary election, and Bush's trip to Israel.
The point of all this is that this isn't the first time the Bush administration has had some issues with the truth, when it comes to publicity plays. Not to mention the games the Administration played with the terror alert level during the 2002 election.
None of this is to suggest that something didn't happen in the Straight of Hormuz. The video certainly seems to suggest that the Iranian Navy did have speedboats in some sort of contact with the US ship. However, it seems that the drama that we were subjected to the the Pentagon, and faithfully relayed to the public by the media, was not as it seemed.
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