Navy-Contracted Vessel Fires Warning Shots on Iranian Boats

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352579,00.html ^

[jhpigott]

A vessel contracted by the Navy in the Persian Gulf fired warning shots Thursday on two Iranian fast boats, FOX News has learned. The Westward Venture, a ship contracted by the Navy to carry military cargo to Kuwait, fired upon the boats Thursday after attempts to get Iranian boats' attention failed. The ship was about 50 miles off the coast of Iran when the fast boats approached. A Navy security team, armed with M16 rifles and .50-caliber machine guns, was onboard at the time the warning shots were fired.

[usmcobra]

Of course it looks like we are short on resources, the talking heads are saying we are. They are the same people that said we didn’t have enough troops to invade Iraq or could never win against the Taliban.

I wish I could say it is part of some grand scheme to give our enemies a false sense of security but in reality they say we cannot do these things because they don’t want us to because they don’t want us to win.

[RaceBannon]

Oh, Puleeze

Are you so ignorant to not understand capabilities and methods?

We would destroy Iran’s infrastructure within 3 days, they would be without power, without oil, and withut dams in the first day alone.

Their barracks filled with Basiji or Pasdaran would be filled with corpses and burnt wood and broken stone the same day or even beforehand.

Their airports would be non functional

Their sea ports would be taking on water

We would be rolling over them in a heartbeat, and if you think that Maliki wouldn’t enjoy the show, I think you’re wrong, knowing that Iraq would go from conquered to conqueror within a week, he would love the raise in status for his country

We just haven’t got the numbers to do it all on land, we would need a draft to do that, and THAT is why we would use the Iraqi Army as our surrogate land force and use our air power to back them up.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> wait until we start bombing Iran...

The scary part is that Iran is going to get harder — not easier — to knock over. Once they get the bomb it will be a very, very difficult thing to do. Now, it is only difficult.

MOVE ZIG! FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

[Alter Kaker]

they would be without power, without oil, and withut dams in the first day alone.

I don't dispute that.

Their barracks filled with Basiji or Pasdaran would be filled with corpses and burnt wood and broken stone the same day or even beforehand.

Yeah, no, I do dispute that. You'd get some of them, certainly, but there are more than half a million active duty Iranian soldiers.

We would be rolling over them in a heartbeat,

No actually, you would be doing no such thing. "Shock and awe" did damage Iraq's government and infrastructure, but the US still needed to invade Iraq, a country 1/3 the size of Iran, and the actual invasion involved nowhere near the number of troops necessary going against the remnants of a much-less capable army. If your goal is to assassinate an individual or bomb a building or group of buildings, an airstrike is totally worthwhile. But beyond that, I'm not sure what the objective is or how you would hope to achieve it. Does "rolling over them" involve an invasion? If so, how many troops are you talking about, and where would they come from?

[Alter Kaker]

THAT is why we would use the Iraqi Army as our surrogate land force and use our air power to back them up.

Oh, brilliant idea.

For your information, the bulk of the Iraqi Army -- including almost the entirety of combat ready units -- is composed of members of the Badr Organization, the Iranian based Shi'ite militia.

Many Badr members spent years in exile in Iran, were schooled in Iran, trained in Iran, are now armed, paid and equipped by Iran, and their loyalties are about as clear as anything can be.

Moreover, Iraq's own Defense Minister claims that the Iraqi Army won't be able to defend Iraqi borders (let alone project power) for at least THIRTY years.

What does that mean? Even if, by some miraculous feat, you somehow managed to persuade the Iraqi Army and the elected government to side with America against Iran (practically an impossibility at this point), they'd have approximately the force projection capabilities of the security force at the San Diego Zoo.

I think you need a new plan.

[Strategerist]

A lot of the military discussion here is on about an 8th-grader level and largely consists of the coolness of stuff gettin’ blowed up. (Not that I don’t like stuff blowing up as much as the next guy, and fortunately, I get paid to watch stuff blowing up at times.)

People need to go back to playing “Risk.”

[Quix]

I think there’s a lot of truth in what you say about greatest hour for The Church.

I don’t think anyone has The Rapture all figured out yet.

I still believe there’s likely to be more than one catching away harvest.

And, I think, at some point . . . only the relatively few remaining righteous meek will be left to inherit the earth in mortal bodies with every last sinner removed, destroyed from the planet.

Thx for your kind reply.

[American in Israel]

Another more extreme dictator will fill the power void if we strike and leave.

But he would have to take years to rebuild the toys broken by the air force. Before he reaches the power levels of the current regime, rinse, wash, recycle. Five or six air strikes having to be taken every decade or so and you end up with peace from lack of will or dictators. Beats the way we are doing it now... Islam, like child molesters is not reformable. It and they are eradicable.

[FARS]

By inference then you support expanding the “situation/mission” of nuclear Iran into the West by a do nothing profile? Sounds like Admiral Fallon at his worst.

Or like Christians being fed to lions in ancient Rome and dying with a song and prayer on their lips.

As far as chaos following a wiping out of the Mullahs and IRGC, Bassiji by aerial means and the people taking over, yes, without any clear leader to follow there would be internal warfare among small power groups. Some of them tribal like in Iraq.

However, an Afghan type of Tribal council of Iran’s major tribes (who uniformly detest the Mullahs) would lead to a national structure - however wobbly, till a leader arose.

In the meantime we would have to face off “Soviet” Putin and Communist China at top international levels to prevent them entering the game with ground troops.

An Iran in shambles would still present a better scenario than a nuclear, Hojatieh (12th Imam) suicide terror NATION with no qualms to use nukes to make their point. Israel would only a be a start and if they have 50 nukes instead of half a dozen aging ones they already own, THEIR future deterrence profile and ability to extort and blackmail rises exponentially.

Meahwhile Islamic Jihadists will have weakened the weave and waft of Western society with Sharia laws and demands for special treatment to a point where they can influence politics way beyond where they can now - and this is already at a dangerous though cloaked level.

Lastly it would take a decade to restructure the shambled Iran into a dangerous force against the west so we would have tons of time.

I would have prefered setting up a government in exile first, recognizing it and then going in but time factors may not allow this.

You appear - by inference - to prefer to see the deaths of millions of Westerners in the near future to the deaths of perhaps half a million paramilitary Islamic Iranians - to avoid the future slaughter.

Please don’t tell me Islam does not slaughter. Even in European Serbia and Kosovo the savage killings of Serbs is being done by Moslem sectors of society.

[1035rep]

Good post! Thanks for the ping.

[Chode]

bingo...

[mkjessup]

In an earlier episode, some deluded soul calling themselves 'mysterio' said:

"There's just no way to do the Iran thing successfully without occupation and a lot more feet on the ground. I don't support expanding the current mission into Iran."

Iran can be taken out without "more feet on the ground" and occupation isn't necessary. Once the mullahs and their regime have been turned into dead bodies and rubble, and that little runt Ahmadinejihad has been dispatched down the well where his 12th Imammy is hiding, we can just let the Iranian people do whatever they want to do, and whatever that is, it won't be with the modern implements of war. They've always aspired to return to the 9th century, we should make sure their military potential matches those aspirations.

If, in a hypothetical and alternate world of 1940, we were listening to Herr Hitler yabbering about Germany's impending nuclear capability and the League of Nations was doing what it's successor always does, i.e., nothing good, there would might be arguments that the the U.K. and the U.S. might not have enough "feet on the ground" but you can rest assured that would not have prevented the United States Army Air Corps and the Royal Air Force from plastering the Nazis night and day until that nuclear capability was eliminated.

Iran has been given a rare gift by the leftists, appeasers and the ostriches who prefer not to see a threat, and that gift is TIME, time spent getting closer to an operational nuclear weapons capability, and their daily sabre rattling ought to be taken seriously.

If not now, when? If not Iran, where do we draw the line?

[mysterio]

some deluded soul calling themselves 'mysterio'

Name calling certainly bolsters your argument. Anyway, I've said what I thought. I disagree that it can be as open and shut of an operation as some of you are arguing. Agree to disagree.

[FARS]

Well said!

[AmericanArchConservative]

If one fully trusts the results of various polls taken in Iran/Persia, then there is widespread distaste for Ahmedinehjahd, his coterie of bureaucrats, apparatchiks, and enforcers, as well as the mullahs, and moreover an extremely high general public opinion of the US and of Americans.

How then can we leverage this into a lower-impact {in terms of death, injuries, and destruction of socially desirable infrastructure} toppling of the current oppressive power structure?

Most of the people are so disarmed, so stripped of hope, so closely watched {spied upon} and living in such fear, that I can honestly see no easy resolution. Moreover, if so many Iranian citizens truly do love or at least respect and like the US, how do we deal with the inevitable bad press from collateral deaths amongst civilians who “love us”?

Jst a few semi-rhetorical questions on my mind, FARS.

I do support some kind of action to free the Persian people

A.A.C.

[1035rep]

Bingo!

[FARS]

Why does bad press worry you?

Bad death in the millions should - not whether the patient undergoing tough anti-cancer surgery will like his surgeon at the time or later?

Why does being loved play such an important part in your psyche when you are having to remove a virulent deadly cancer? Even if the surgery leaves disfiguring scars?

This same mindset prevented an assassination of Khomeini in Iraq and in France before he came to power and look what “being nice and civilized and worrying about being liked” brought in its wake.

The Iranian population will mourn their dead, some with endless enmity but they will also rejoice their otherwise impossible to attain freedom and release from the current situation you describe so vividly and accurately

There comes a time when you have to forget emotional obstacles and implement tough love. Even with your own children.

Specially if those children are about to arm themselves with automatic weapons and attack the whole neighborhood or schools (allegorical). With Iran iut is nukes and the whole world.

Definitely time for tough love, not soft consideration of feelings - theirs or yours.

[Jeff Chandler]

The Iranian should tow a whale behind them. The contractors would be forbidden to fire upon them.

[anymouse]

The Iranian agitprop types are running amok on this thread.

But I guess we better get used to it, if the libertards and religious conservatives think McCain is not worth coming out to vote for in November. An Obama presidency and an even more Democrat majority in Congress, would ensure that their appeasement towards Iran and other tyrannies would become official U.S. policy.

[mkjessup]

some deluded soul calling themselves 'mysterio'
Name calling certainly bolsters your argument

My argument didn't need any 'bolstering'. It isn't 'name calling' unless it's not the truth. Sorry if you took offense.

If you think this isn't the time to take out Iran, you never WILL think it's "time", for you'll continue to make excuse after excuse, right up to the point where Iran is able to deliver a nuke on it's neighbors, or put one on a cargo freighter bound for a target outside the region.

The rest of us prefer not to wait for the mushroom cloud to take action.