Posted on 01/17/2016 1:57:49 PM PST by Taxman
CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, January 18, 2016
Iranian coup: A tale of two U.S. Navy vessels
Last week, the U.S. Navy dispatched two of its fearsomely armed Riverine Command Boats (RCBs) to patrol between Kuwait and Bahrain. Somehow, the RCBs were seized by the Iranian Navy; the crewmembers arrested, and -- even though the U.S. and Iran are not technically at war -- treated as Prisoners of War (POWs). How could this happen?
The Swedish-designed, U.S.- manufactured RCBs cost $2.8 million per copy. Each RCB carries six machine guns, to include a .50 caliber Gatling gun, plus grenade launchers. Covered with armor plating able to deflect AK-47 fire, the RCB’s 49.4 mile-per-hour top speed means RCBs can outrun every known surface warship.
To guard against surprise attack, RCBs carry the Sea FLIR III infrared sensor system, thermal imaging, a laser rangefinder, and long-range radar. Navigation is by a top-of-the line GPS and chart plotter system, along with traditional chart and compass back-up. The RCB’s world-wide communications gear nets with ships, aircraft, and ground forces.
Operating in pairs, the RCBs provide each other with mutual fire support. If one RCB is disabled, the other RCB can tow it to safety. Thus, the question arises: How could two RCBs lose their ability to navigate at the same time and stray into Iranian waters? And how could two world-class weapons platforms be seized by the, arguably, inferior Iranian Navy?
Apparently, one of the RCBs had a propulsion problem and radioed U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain for assistance. Congressman Louis Gohmert (R) of Texas claims the Obama White House intervened, asked the Iranian Navy to provide assistance, and ordered the U.S. 5th Fleet to stand down.
By long-standing naval custom, disabled boats found in territorial waters are rendered assistance, and simply escorted back into international waters. Their crews are not subjected to POW treatment or put on world-wide video display, looking like criminals.
But, instead of being treated as distressed vessels exercising the mariners’ right of innocent passage, the Iranians arrested the crew members, treated them as POWs, and, somehow, got the officer-in-charge to make filmed statements praising the Iranians and saying the treatment the crew received was: "Fantastic."
Absent Congressman Gohmert’s explanation -- citing White House intervention -- it appears Articles II and V of the U.S. military’s Code of Conduct were violated. Article II states: "I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist." Article V reads: "When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the best of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause."
Alternatively, could it be that the White House-imposed Rules of Engagement (ROE) robbed the RCBs of their "means to resist"? Were the RCB’s awesome weapons even permitted to be loaded? Congress should demand to see the Operations Order under which the two RCBs left Kuwait for Bahrain and demand copies of all the communications between the RCBs, U.S. 5th Fleet, and the White House. Meanwhile, the RCB crews are left twisting in the wind.
Nationally syndicated columnist, William Hamilton, is a laureate of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma University Army ROTC Wall of Fame, and is a recipient of the University of Nebraska 2015 Alumni Achievement Award. He was educated at the University of Oklahoma, the George Washington University, the Infantry School, the U.S Naval War College, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University.
©2016. William Hamilton.
Obama is not a traitor to the USA - at least not in the classic sense of the term.
A traitor is generally considered to be someone who is not loyal to his own country.
Obama is not a US citizen.
He is a foreign agent who has weasled his way into the presidency with the assistance of the US media and other liberals.
That makes as much sense as any of the other guesses out there. We KNOW we have not been told the truth at this point.
You're being dangerously rational.
There’s still a year left. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Oh Yeah, I just woke up this morning and said, why did I vote for that guy two times, and why did I pay for his tuition at Occidental and Columbia? That wasn’t very smart. He was such a smart lad at Punahoe, it must have been the dope he was smoking.
It sure does!
My theory is he asked the Iranians for help and they agreed. It was going to be a bragging point in the SOTU address about how his diplomacy was working but the Iranians double-crossed him to use it for propaganda purposes. Another notch in the stupidity belt of the current regime.
Read the article posted on here yesterday by Travis Mcgee,, American thinker writes article about me..... is the title.
Who’s going to punish it? Bambi released seven Iranians in his “prisoner exchange” who has been imprisoned for giving Iran all the stolen techno secrets it needed for missle and targeting technology. So I’d say we’re up that famous creek...
In the absence of a clear distress call from the boats that loss of life was imminent, why would the U.S. call Iran for help?
They didn’t. The boats were a means of getting a secret high value terrorist to the Iranians without being included in the public prisoner swap. What are the odds that this happens just three days before we find out that there have been secret ongoing negotiations with Iran for a prisoner swap? Where the hell is the blind sheikh?
This subject is so much bigger than election squabbles.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DESERVE TO KNOW WHAT OUR SERVANTS HAVE DONE to these sailors. We need to know why they were used as pawns, why they were used as humiliating photo ops. We never made Abu Graib for our headlines. Those were made by and for a small group of bad men on our side. These humiliating photos were for the front pages and widespread dissemination by the Iranians.
And remember that scenes in Mogadishu during the Blackhawk Down incident gave Osama the motivation to attack us on our own soil because we were just a paper tiger. What will this kowtowing do to us in the future? How many innocent Americans will die because this emboldened our enemies?
Heads need to roll over this. We need to never stop firing questions about this. What the hell is going on? We need to march on DC with constitutions on sticks. This is OUR LAND and those were OUR SONS AND DAUGHTER on those boats.
Engine trouble? Maybe.
I think it’s more likely someone screwed up with the navigation system and put in a course too close to Farsi and the Revolutionary Guard intercepted.
With a very limited rule of engagement and being badly outgunned they surrendered.
That look on their faces looks more like a “Man, why didn’t I double check that?”
Oooh..!!! NICE ONE..!
I must say, THAT FITS..!!
I have the feeling YOU ARE RIGHT.
And the only other people enjoying those images as much as the mullahs IS OUR OWN NATIONAL LEADER...?????
Yes, as insane as this would sound to someone coming to the present from 100 years ago.
And here is where the two stories collide. If we had a precise definition of natural born citizenship in place, with verifiable documentation available to the People, we would never have had Historical Candidate Obama, because the only two documents he had to show he was a natural born citizen was a) a driver’s licence [probably from IL based on HI, which was so easy to get that my dad had one and he didn’t live in HI], and a US Passport made up for him as a US Senator. He used a false SS number and his Selective Service form was fraudulent.
This is one of those situations where nothing makes sense to me.
Maybe when more is known, it will.
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