Ok people, now pay attention this won’t be too difficult. (Rafael is excluded from this test as he clearly knows the answers in great detail).
Q1. Now who knows where the strait of Hormuz is?
A: Anyone…. it’s the narrow bit of water between Iran and the United Arab Emirates with a hint of Oman (see map)
Q2. How far away is this area of water from- a: Iran. b: the USA?
A: It is zero miles from Iran as it laps on the sandy shores of Persia, it is approximately 8,684 miles (as the crow flies) from the USA.
Q3. So which country’s naval forces are simply mooching around off their own coast defending their nation from attack (with occasional hilarious -and very irresponsible, ahem- pranks such as this) and which are thousands of miles from home belligerently occupying the area?
Hint: Come on, it really isn’t that hard, just go over the figures- 0 or 8,684 miles. Here let’s make it easy we’ll round down the large (extra hint) number to 8,000. So is 8,000 bigger…or smaller than 0?
A: Yes 8,000 is bigger than 0! It’s the USA who are occupying an area thousands of miles from home. Well done!
Now I understand that might have been difficult because of the media reflecting elite Imperial opinion-
US Navy warships over the weekend came “very close” to shooting at an Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels, which American officials say provoked US ships in international waters, according to CNN. “US officials are confirming to CNN that five Iranian Revolutionary guard boats, in their words, ‘harassed and provoked’ three US Navy warships sailing in the Strait of Hormuz,” reports CNN’s Barbara Starr. “One of those Iranian boats came within 200 yards of a Navy warship.”
But that’s what we have to do, unlearn the established nationalistic biases and see the world from eyes not tattooed in red, white and blue. (nb. this answer also applies to ‘which side of the line were the British sailors on?’ which was asked & debated by retards everywhere last year. They were thousands of miles over their line, m’kay?).
Three words: Gulf of Tonkin
Three words: Nail On Head.
Absolutely Justin (Nice to see you Mr Chicken/ Mr. Yoghurt??!?) I think the intertubes are alight with ‘Tonkin’ tonight. Have we relaxed too much after the NIE debacle?
PS. Fuck you got attacked again, if you find out any of the culprits do let on. One for all etc.
Off at a tangent- And I see the BBC used a microsoft watermarked map picture, how nice of them to advertise (after two microsoft execs -Jon Billings & Erik Huggers- joined the beeb, not to mention Daren Forsyth’s chumminess with Gates).
Throw in a good dose of the domino theory and its 1965-2002 all over again or maybe more like 1970-72 (Cambodia/Spring Offensive).
I get the feeling they might have an envelope stuffed with all the worst ideas they have had and figured they’d never get away with them, now with one year left they are opening it and saying- what the hell?
Some in the US Administration might be itching for an excuse to bomb Iran, but I just can’t see it coming somehow, especially not in an election year when many of Bush’s neocon advisors stand to lose their jobs if the Democrats get their nominee into the Whitehouse.
The NIE did show a strong establishment push against attacks but the cabal around the Whitehouse may see an attack as an act they can capitalise on when out of office (straight into think tank and corporate jobs), maybe they think it would help a repub candidate although I doubt Cheney is as loyal to party as he is to power and wealth. I sort of feel while we can see the edge of the treeline we are still in the woods, erm…eating Kendal mint cake from our cagoule pockets most likely.
Ahmadinejad looks to be in some trouble domestically which could work either way, he gets desperate and belligerent (although an Iranian President is not comparable to a US one, far fewer powers and not a supreme leader but he has the Rev Guard to play with) or he packs it in and a new President is less of a posturing publicity hound. But…both Hils and Barack have been pretty hawkish over Iran too and they are certainly not anti-imperialists hmmm, there is also Israeli disposition, for a while (90′s ish) being publicly belligerent they were in fact all for a diplomatic relationship but the current mob seem to be on the attack tip which is shared by the neo-cons who are often the same people (although dems are also big allies of the Israeli govt.). Maybe it is down to the power of Cheney’s faction versus the establishment who now resent going along on Iraq. And that resentment may hold a dem hawk too. Although… Throw in the recession looming and I think we have a volatile environment where anything may happen.
Conclusion: I haven’t got a frickin’ clue, it would be good if you are right, ideally Washington should also get talks going again. They cannot deny the power of Iran, they don’t like their sphere of influence endangered by it but they need to drop the fantasy (imperial arrogance, hubris?) they can make the world to their design.
This is just TOO funny to ignore!
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/degrees-of-confidence-on-us-iran-naval-incident/?hp
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