Posted on 01/14/2016 7:43:13 AM PST by shortstop
It’s unfathomable.
The account of two U. S. Navy vessels being seized by the Iranian navy earlier this week seems completely implausible.
No part of it makes any sense.
The story is that two river patrol boats – bristling modern-day incarnations of the Vietnam swift boats – were navigating south from Kuwait to Bahrain. At some point, via some means, the two boats, with their contingent of five sailors each, surrendered to the Iranians.
Two accounts have been offered as to how that happened. The first was that one of the vessels lost its engine and that they both then drifted into Iranian waters. The other was that the two boats had been operating fine, but inadvertently navigated into Iranian territory.
Simply put, they got lost.
Neither account seems possible.
First off, if one of the boats broke down, and the sailor aboard trained to tend the engine couldn’t fix it, the other boat would merely take it in tow and they would proceed on their way. That is not a novel maritime undertaking.
The second scenario – oops, we got lost – is even less likely. It turns out that navigation and navigation equipment are kind of a high priority for the Navy. Boats don’t get lost. Highly technical navigation equipment on both boats would have told crewmembers exactly where they were.
And in the unlikely event that both boats lost all electronic navigational equipment, and the compasses lost track of magnetic north, there is the simple fact that sailing from Kuwait to Bahrain pretty much involves nothing more complex than keeping the shore on your starboard side. And should you lose sight of shore, and can remember that the map has safety to the west and danger to the east, you’d think that the position of the sun in the sky or the fact that prevailing winds in the Persian Gulf in the winter are northwesterly, would somehow have allowed our sailors to find the Saudi shoreline instead of Iranian waters.
And all of that presumes that these two boats were operating alone in the open seas, which they presumably were not. There is, in fact, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle group operating in the Persian Gulf.
The USS Harry S Truman owns the Persian Gulf these days, and the significant American military presence in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – lands immediately proximate to the waters where our sailors were operating – makes us the biggest dog on the block.
And we’ve got radar and helicopters and airplanes and stuff like that.
And if an American vessel breaks down at sea, or strays from course, under those operational conditions, there are a lot of American assets that would both notice the problem and be able to offer relief.
Yet no one did.
We’re supposed to believe nobody radioed a couple of inexplicably lost boats to ask where they were going? When one of them supposedly broke down, a carrier battle group had no means to come to their assistance?
That makes no sense.
It’s completely unbelievable.
So is the apparent conduct of the sailors in the face of a supposed challenge by the Iranian military.
If one of the vessels was disabled, as is claimed, and hostile craft are approaching, bringing with them the prospect of capture and captivity, don’t you put all 10 sailors on the able boat, sink the disabled boat, and race the bad guys back to international waters?
From the Iranian video, it looks like two or three bass boats and four guys in mismatched uniforms, with a couple of AKs, captured two far-larger and better-armed American boats, both of which were bristling with mounted machine guns.
Here’s a fact: When you’re kneeling on the deck of your own boat, with your hands clasped behind your head, and some guy’s shouting at you in terrorist language, things didn’t go right.
And yet, that’s exactly what supposedly happened here. Ten American sailors, successors to Captain James Lawrence, are on their knees next to their unfired guns, in the face of a smaller and less well-armed opponent – with little American flags snapping in the breeze.
This is not the stuff of Commodore Perry and Admiral Farragut.
And you wonder whose call it was.
How far up the chain of command did they have to go to find the cowardly lion who ordered this genuflection before a bunch of savages? Did this get bounced all the way to the Pentagon, or the Situation Room? Which secretary of what made the decision not to put a squadron of naval aviators above those two boats to keep the camel jockeys at bay?
It is shameful, a worldwide embarrassment for the nation and the Navy.
And it is topped off by an obsequious videotaped apology, and pictures of our sailors, captive in hostile hands, the female with a towel over her head.
The president can ignore this.
But we can’t.
We got pantsed. We got humiliated. We showed either weakness or incompetence. And unfortunately either one only invites aggression against us.
It is inconceivable that you could find 10 Americans willing to surrender themselves and their equipment without a fight. It is not plausible that any young man or woman entering into the naval service would willingly kneel on the deck of a combat-capable ship.
Somebody told them to give up.
And that somebody, and the philosophy he represents, will be the death of us.
Were any of the crewmen JAGs?
If so, it could explain a great many things.
Sighted Ships
Surrendered To Same
I saw one picture where the Iranian navy types were looking at weapons laid out on the deck. I was surprised they gave back the boats.
Do not forget that the current State dept press spokesman is a retd Rear admiral, as well as being a turd..
What difference does it make?
Benghazi was a bigger lie.
Matthew Bracken sends:
I rarely pull out my dusty old trident, but in this case, here goes.
I was a Navy SEAL officer in the 1980s, and this kind of operation (transiting small boats in foreign waters) was our bread and butter.
Today, these boats both not only had radar, but multiple GPS devices, including chart plotters that place your boat’s icon right on the chart. The claim by Iran that the USN boats “strayed into Iranian waters†is complete [bovine effluvia].
For an open-water transit between nations, the course is studied and planned in advance by the leaders of the Riverine Squadron, with specific attention given to staying wide and clear of any hostile nation’s claimed territorial waters. The boats are given a complete mechanical check before departure, and they have sufficient fuel to accomplish their mission plus extra. If, for some unexplainable and rare circumstance one boat broke down, the other would tow it, that’s why two boats go on these trips and not one! It’s called “self-rescue†and it’s SOP.
This entire situation is in my area of expertise. I can state with complete confidence that both Iran and our own State Department are lying.
The boats did not enter Iranian waters. They were overtaken in international waters by Iranian patrol boats that were so superior in both speed and firepower that it became a “hands up!†situation, with automatic cannons in the 40mm to 76mm range pointed at them point-blank. Surrender, hands up, or be blown out of the water.
I assume that the Iranians had an English speaker on a loudspeaker to make the demand. This takedown was no accident or coincidence, it was a planned slap across America’s face.
Just watch. The released sailors will be ordered not to say a word about the incident, and the Iranians will have taken every GPS device, chart-plotter etc off the boats, so that we will not be able to prove where our boats were taken.
The “strayed into Iranian waters†story being put out by Iran and our groveling and appeasing State Dept. is utter and complete BS from one end to the other.
But somebody will.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven and has from the minute it hit the airwaves. When I saw pics of captured sailors laughing and eating food the captors gave them and not a mark on them I was like WTF?
Isn’t the new Navy boss an AA woman appointed by Obama who’s never been in command of a boat? Pathetic. Not only is the Navy run by a know nothing political hack but why were TWO boats broken down at the same time? What the hell is going on? Who is running the show?
The TREASON ESCALATES!!!
I'm more cynical.
How far up do we have to go to find the treasonous SOB who ordered this staged event to happen?
No remember he was preparing a very important speech and making travel plans to repeat that speech in two elementary schools the next two days. Super busy, could not have given the order to surrender.
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