In Latest Embarrassment For Obama, Iran Releases Footage Of Arrest, Apology Of 10 U.S. Sailors
With just hours to go before Obama's last State of the Union address, the US president suffered his latest foreign policy fiasco when around noon local time, Iran arrested 10 US sailors in a boat that has allegedly entered deep into Iranian territorial waters.
Needless to say, there was no mention of this in Obama's address and the scandal was quietly swept under the rug when the 9 young men and 1 woman were released earlier today, and all questions just why the soldiers were released only well after the SOTU's conclusion (were they a hostage bargaining chip in case Obama said something out untoward last night regarding Iran) were soundly ignored.
However, while there may have been some doubt as to Iran's intentions yesterday, all doubt was eliminated moments ago when Iran's state broadcaster just released photos not just of the 10 captured soldiers, which were shown earlier, but of their arrest as well as the seizure of the boat and their weapons.
Here is the just released TV footage, courtesy of Sobhan Hassanvand:
Fars news shows the video of capturing the US navy sailors pic.twitter.com/7kbsUe8kDR
— Zaid Benjamin (@zaidbenjamin) January 13, 2016
Here is a video of the US Commander apologizing (via Fox):
Video from Iranian state television shows a US Navy sailor apologizing while being detained. https://t.co/Ymr632ThF1
https://t.co/IlvSh46NLn
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 13, 2016
And here are excerpted photos, showing US sailors being treated as common Somali pirates:
Finally, putting Iran's aggression in context:
(42 votes)
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What's old (1979), is new again...
Must be more to the story. Because what I see in those pic is a bunch of Center Console Fishing boats taking down 2 US Navy craft.
And my Center Console boat looks bigger than those. Something does not compute here.
Pray for our troops! These all-volunteer heros were clearly defending America.
Just thinking logically -
1) What are the odds that both suffered a mechanical failure at the SAME TIME, and neither boat "maydayed" for help AND spent a few hours drifting into Iranian waters?
Seems unlikely. Thus I would venture to say the mechancial story is complete crap. Let's look at the "wrong GPS coordinates" idea.
2) If both the GPS systems were malfunctioning so as to show them both in international waters, then all 10 crew members, who were obviously heavily armed would have been unaware of their encroachment into iranian waters. Thus when the Iranians pull up along side them demanding to board "or else" -- and given our guys would have thought they were in international waters (e.g., every right to be there) why would they just surrender?
Thus, I think we can safely rule out "mechanical failure" and "GPS malfunction"
3) Seems to me we wanted to sneak-a-peak, got caught with our pants down, and when the Iranians showed up pointing their weapons at our boats, no one fired back or called for help, well, because they knew they were stuffed.
But I am not military expert, just a little logic applied to the story as I see it.
You cannot understand. We are good. Trust us.
The odds are very good that all 10 sailors, together, will be given a nice ride in a chopper.
At the very least they will be forced to sign a non disclosure agreement and threatened with life in Leavenworth if they ever talk about what REALLY happened.
Defeated.
Is it just me, or does it look like the Iranian boats are smaller than the US boats? Any opinions? I can't tell which boats are Iranian and which are US.
Smaller, those are perosnal leisure craft, dude. I got a bigger boat in my driveway. It's a joke.
Regarding the flashdrive in the US Navy sailor's pants pocket, I wonder if some Iranian will open the .exe file labeled "Kardashian Porn" on a PC connected to the Iranian power grid.
Here's a thought... what if these troops allowed themselves to be captured to embarrass the porch chimp?
Or maybe... their top brass masters sent them in to be caught in the hope that it would provide an incident to escalate matters?
"porch chimp" deserves a definate uptick.
Applauding "porch chimp" deserves a definite down vote.
But considering definate, I kinda get it...
Why were they carrying their passports during a routine mission?
As I said yesterday it looks like they were doing an insertion. By the time the rag heads showed up the team was long gone chasing Iranian hotties.
We will never know what really happened.
A few center console boats taking down US swift boats loaded to the teeth makes perfect sense. Let me explain...
Q: If you have 4 pencils and I have 7 apples, how many pancakes will fit on the roof?
A: Purple, because aliens don't wear hats
For more baffling bullshit, explain how our unborn grandchildren owe trillions to a secretive cabal in New York City?
A: Teapot!
Anyone else wonder what military genius sent them out there in an unarmed boat ?
Look at the gun mounting pods on the US boat in the vid ........ all empty
Possibilities:
1) It was loaded with an underwater SEAL team and their equipment and their insertion was completed successfully- the crew on the surface did great playing dumb upon getting caught.
2) They had something there but sent it to Davy Jones' locker upon realizing their mission had been compromised.
3) They were sent on a "very special mission" so they could die nobly.
4) What else should be on the news, but isn't because of this story? Maybe... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-12/demise-dollar-hegemony-russia-b...
The idea that two US Navy 1,500 HP fast patrol boats could be intercepted and boarded by Iranian "pleasure" boats is a joke.
Unless the Iranians had a helicopter gunship overhead the Americans fully intended to be boarded.
Demounted, and in Iranian possession now...
A: About eleven, Sir?
A: 42
nailguns
Q: "...explain how our unborn grandchildren owe trillions to a secretive cabal in New York City?"
A: Your grandparents were too cowardly, blind or stupid to roll out the wood-chippers and feed said NY cabal in feet-first... slowly. Instead, they attempted to vote their way out of their own mess back then and pretended that occasionally rotating psychopathic elected officials by fresh ones would actually make some kind of difference. Of course, it made no difference at all but gave them something to wag their tounges about for the next four years, at which time they did the same, exact thing again insisting that it would be different this time.
Worse of all, your grandparents taught your parents that voting made a difference - that a rigged popolarity contest could magically change the future. Just like when you voted for Prom king and queen. Remember how they changed the world for the better for you? Yeah, same difference.
Your grandparents told your parents that if they didn't vote, then they had no right to bitch about the government or the continuous transfer their rights from the people to the government. That's why the government has unlimited rights today, grandchildren, and why they are merely 'priveledges' for the government to grant or deny to you as they see fit. You don't get to vote on your rights today, you only get to vote on which elected officials get to strip any remaining rights away from you for priviledge, money or favors and enforce the law on you.
Then your parents had you and told you to keep doing the exact same thing when you got older in order to fix your horribly broken representative republic, thouroughly-usurped constitution and crony-oligarch led, psychopathic government. If you only voted for the right candidate/party, then some miracle would happen to relieve your trillions in debt. They didn't even mention the New York cabal; they simply figured the U.S. legally owed to somebody and it just had to be repaid.
Story time is over, kids. Snap your democracy shock-collars back on and get your dead-beat asses back to your minimum-wage part-time jobs as you bathe in the eternal sunshine of liberty and freedom.
Nope. The answer to that is chartreuse with some saffron..
That was my second choice.
NIce! I'm guessing this won't be posted to Facebook or CNN anytime soon ;)
Q: If you have 4 pencils and I have 7 apples, how many pancakes will fit on the roof?
Early on .. NCLB pondered the progressive, educational value of this currently sensitive question for its bullying incitement possibilities.
btw: no pancakes were allowed to sit near the front of the pencil
r
"Why were they carrying their passports during a routine mission?"
So they wouldn't be mistaken for Syrian terrorists, OBVIOUSLY. /s
You guys are so dumb. Everyone knows you need a passport to get into Parisian nightclubs.
They were just out for a quick cig run before partying.
As history teaches: Everybody carries his passport on his mission...
Definately something amiss with this whole thing. There is an entire aircraft carrier group in this area. USS Truman. Maybe the guys on the small craft were bait?
Wasn't the (almost) entire Pacific fleet close by when the sailors of the USS Liberty were murdered and the US Navy stood down and did f**king nothing?
Some say the carriers are just obsolete floaing bullseyes. (LIke battleships in WW2.) They say that modern ultra high speed anti ship misslies can easily send them to the bottom. I don't know. - Also there have been reports of new Russian electronic systems able to knock out onboard electronics rendering ships completely defenseless. Don't know about that either. Perhaps there's more to this story than the public knows.
Agree the whole thing is odd to the point of planned. Maybe without the knowledge of the sailors, they're only disposable pawns anyway.
Maybe they kinda sorta ended up there via remote control, like chum.
Persians honkin'?
Ednas...nothing happens by accident...now we're thinking in better directions...
Dinghy on my boat is bigger than the Iranians.
No, the IRGCN small boats could not have stopped those navy craft if the navy craft tried to run, those things REALLY haul ass. They were either taken completely by surprise and surrounded, unlikely because they, again, move very fast, or they were either broken down or pretending to be, something along those lines.
And as far as the other thing about the Iranians boats looking like center consoles, yes, I can tell you from personal experience that is exactly what they use. The USCG used similar boats until recently as well. You can just bolt gun mounts on a boston whaler, put larger engines on it, and they will perform better than you would think. The Iranians use these boats because part of their plan to sink US Navy ships is a "swarm attack" rather than a direct naval engagement. The US navy has run simulations about how well they would perform in such scenarios and weren't happy with the results. You can look up articles about it. What you see over there is Aegis cruisers/destroyers that are designed to fight against aircraft and other major surface combatants being potentially swarmed by a dozen of these little boats that will just ran them and blow up, which they are completely unequipped to handle. So, a while back, they began mounting .50's all over the ships to have something better to fight off such an attack other than the aegis system, which isn't equipped for that.
Another issue is that there are waters that both the iraqi and iranian govts claim to be their own. Could have been in that area as well. But yes, it is totally believable that these navy boats were captured by what amounts to civilian fishing boats with guns mounted to them. They would routinely send these thing out into the gulf near the Iraqi Oplats just to see what we would do. THey have a bunch of them
I don't know. A well set up quad rig on a good center console fishing boat is damn fast - speaking from experience.
https://youtu.be/L7jlRoiq7j0
Ha they don't have shit like that, not that i ever saw. Way to expensive. On a side note, if I was gonna spend that much on a boat, Id go for three 7 Marine 557's, those verados don't last....
But they have smaller boats, usually with 2 outboards, and none of those people know how to take care of fucking anything. They could break an iron anvil with a rubber mallet, all across hajji land, every country its like that. That absolutely desroy every piece of equipment they touch. ANd while a good, well equipped center console in the 25-30 foot range can indeed run down one of those Navy boats in a flat out race, they can't manuever like those navy boats, and they also can't go that fast in 3-5 foot seas, which would barely effect the Navy craft. Its typically kinda rough in that area this time of year.
Carl - when were you there?
You and I probably saw some of the same shit...
SBU-12, Wimbrown, April to September of 1988
And for the record there are a LOT of questions about this op that deserve to be answered, but probably never will be.
That would be shocking!
those leisure craft you are taking the piss out of are highly maneuverable, some are equipped with two surface to ship missiles.
People are assuming the few white hulled boats in the photo are those used to capture the US Navy guys. The Iranians may have just towed them to a berthing area.
Who knows what naval assets the Iranians used for the capture. Coulda been larger fighting vessels, aircraft, or dozens of small attack boats.
After seeing so many b.s. war movies, many American civilians will likely be shocked that our guys (SEALS ? Special Boat crews ? etc) could be captured. No, its not a movie. Put enough opposing force out there and you're in trouble, no matter how good the individuals fighting are.
Sometimes I think that maybe bringing back the draft is a good idea. Americans may actually come to oppose these wars if more of them had something at stake to lose in them - including their own loved ones.
The Iranians claim to have taken the US boats' GPS units. I do hope they don't have to send them to England to have the data decoded.
http://sputniknews.com/world/20160113/1033028625/Iran-US-navy-ships-deta...