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Strait of Hormuz Incident; Unexplained Transportation of Nuclear Missiles; False Flag Operations; Impeachment

January 14, 2008

JOE MILLER

Bush administration and media accounts of the encounter between five Iranian patrol boats and three U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz on January 6 continue to unravel.

The patrol boats were initially described by the administration and media as "attack craft" which aggressively threatened and "provoked" the ships, and almost caused them to open fire. A radio communication initially attributed to the patrol boats further intensified the situation, stating "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes" (1).

  1. Reuters: Iranian Boats "Provoke" US Navy Ships in Hormuz: CNN 1/7/08

Multiple lines of evidence emerging since the encounter indicate that the Iranian patrol behavior was much less threatening and provocative than the linguistic "framing" of the administration and media led the public to believe (2). There are also now a number of strong reasons to believe that the threatening radio communications did not come from the patrol boats, but instead from a heckler breaking into the radio transmission from a shore station or large ship (3).

  1. Gareth Porter: Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel 1/10/08
  2. The Navy Times: Prankster May Be Responsible for Radio Threats Against Navy 1/11/08

Given the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October, 2000, one can certainly understand how the Navy, administration and media initially described the incident as they did. The question remains, however, why Bush continues to frame the incident as an illustration of extreme Iranian provocation (4), and why the media have been so slow to challenge and correct the account (5).

  1. Associated Press: Bush Insists Iran Biggest Terror Sponsor 1/13/08
  2. Kristina Borjesson: Does The Hormuz Videotape Literally Produced by the Pentagon Mean Cue Up the War with Iran? 1/13/08

The question also remains -- could the encounter have turned into a Gulf of Tonkin (6) like manufactured excuse that could have been used by the administration to justify an attack upon Iran (7)?

  1. Wikipedia: Gulf of Tonkin Incident
  2. Amy Goodman: Sensationalist Media Did Pentagon's Bidding in Fake Naval 'Provocation' with Iran 1/14/08

Evidence is abundant that Bush, Cheney and their enablers have aspired to attack Iran for some time, and that they have been actively searching for and trying to create justifications for such an attack (see 8-10 for recent examples).

  1. Gareth Porter: Cheney, Lieberman and Iran War Conspiracy 8/16/07
  2. Gareth Porter: US Tags Iran for Casualties from Its Own Attacks 8/15/07
  3. Gareth Porter: US-IRAN: New Arms Claim Reveals Cheney-Military Rift 6/21/07

Could aspirations to attack Iran somehow have been involved in the unbelievable 36 hour sequence of violations of the military's nuclear weapon-handling regulations that occurred in the US last August 29 and 30? On those dates, and in violation of every procedural and chain-of command military regulation, six nuclear warheads were mounted on six Advanced Cruise Missiles at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, loaded on a B-52, flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, and left sitting on the tarmac for 10 hours (11-13).

  1. Dave Lindorff: The Air Force Cover-Up of That Minot-Barksdale Nuke Missile Flight 10/31/08
  2. Robert Stormer: Nuke Transportation Story Has Explosive Implications 10/9/07
  3. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: Missing Nukes - Treason of the Highest Order 11/29/07

Commenting on the massive breach of nuclear weapons security that occurred, Dave Lindorff (14) recently noted that:

"[The] incident only came to public attention because three as yet unidentified Air Force whistleblowers contacted a reporter at the Military Times newspaper, which ran a series of stories about it, some of which were picked up by other US news organizations.

An Air Force investigation into that incident, ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, claimed improbably that the whole thing had been an 'accident,' but many veterans of the US Air Force and Navy with experience in handling nuclear weapons, as well as experts in arms control, say that such an explanation is impossible, and argue that there had to have been a chain of orders from above the level of the base commander for such a flight to have occurred.

Incredibly, almost five months after that bizarre incident (which included several as yet unexplained deaths of B-52 pilots and base personnel occurring in the weeks shortly before and after the flight) in which six 150-kiloton warheads went missing for 36 hours, there has been no Congressional investigation and no FBI investigation into what happened."

  1. Dave Lindorff: 9-11 Cover-Up, Treason and The Bomb 1/7/08

Enlarging the focus somewhat, a number of compelling discussions are available about how a "false flag" attack or an attack by al Qaeda might be used by the Bush administration to justify an attack upon Iran (15-17).

  1. Gareth Porter: Could al Qaeda Attack Trigger War With Iran? 6/6/07
  2. Bruce Reidel: Al Qaeda Strikes Back, May/June 2007
  3. Wikipedia: False Flag Operations

The way to stop this madness, and to restore integrity to our government and hope to our country and world, is to impeach Bush and Cheney. As of today, almost 182,000 individuals have signed the Wexler, Gutierrez, Baldwin (and now Wiener; see 20) petition to begin impeachment hearings against Cheney (18, 19). Conservative "blue-dog" Democrat Rep. Mike Michaud of Maine has also recently called for hearings on Cheney's impeachment (20), and former Senator and Democratic Party presidential nominee George McGovern recently called for the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney (21).

  1. Join Wexler's Call for Cheney Hearings
  2. 117,000 Signatures in 6 Days to Impeach Cheney -- Add Yours 12/20/07
  3. Dave Lindorff: Tipping Point on Impeachment is Approaching 1/3/08
  4. George McGovern: Why I Believe Bush Must Go - Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse 1/6/08

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Joseph Miller
Department of Psychology
51 Madeleva
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556

St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN