Iran and the US: first, the abasement
Next, the self-abasement. (See also this.)
However, US officials have denied apologizing to Iran. Who’s telling the truth about that? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter to the world, which can easily perceive that the US has been humiliated.
Coming soon, the payoff.
[ADDENDUM: Ace has a post with more detail, including some footage that apparently shows the US commander of the sailors is shown issuing an apology while in captivity. I wonder whether any member of the press will point that out to administration officials who have said there were no offical apologies, and none from Kerry.]
Roll tape: Everything is just peachy, boss.
Outrage doesn’t begin to describe my feelings about this.
Iran is expected to add 500 kb/d while the US is taking 700 kb/d off the market. The oil money is moving from the US to Tehran.
Obama is no leader. He has sold us out to Iran. And Iran will have nukes in 3-5 years.
The deal should be called off.
On some order of truth Cornhead, as Michael Ledeen points out over and again, the NoDeal is in fact, no deal. Signatories? None.
Michael Ledeen is at best mistaken, the deal hands over as much as 150 BILLION to Iran. It deflects insistence that America actually do something about Iran’s pursuit of nukes. It hamstrings Israel. Signatories are NOT needed for any of those effects.
The West and Obama are literally paying the Mullahs to arm themselves with weapons of MASS destruction. Never have so many been betrayed by so few.
This is almost certainly another administration cover-up. The GPS units are the key.
The boat’s GPS units would not allow our ships to unintentionally stray into Iranian waters. Nor could a disabled boat ‘drift’ into Iranian waters, as the still functional boat could easily take the disabled boat under tow, keeping it out of Iranian waters.
Nor is there any possibility that the area’s US command authority did NOT know of the situation, as the sailors would have immediately radioed their situation to higher ups. So the Pentagon’s assertions that they don’t have all the facts is another bald faced lie.
Then there’s the Iranian refusal to release the GPS units, which would reveal where the ships actually were when seized. If the boats actually were in Iranian waters, the GPS units would reveal that, which would obviously be to the Iranian’s benefit.
So the only reason for Iran to hold on to them is because they would reveal that the US ships were NOT in Iranian waters and that would make this an act of war. A situation that the Obama administration would do anything to cover up.
The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran is obligated to do what? Nothing. Certainly PrezIWonPenPhone can and will carry on as if some quid will follow his quo, but in the ordinary English language meaning of deal? NoDeal.
Just ponder the photos that Iran’s been releasing today:
Iran’s Humiliation Of Barack Obama Is Now Complete
Iran’s Propaganda Victory in One Illegal Image
This whole story reeks of BS. As Geoffrey Britain said, there’s no possible way those boats could have drifted accidently into Iranian waters, and there’s no possibility the sailors would not have called higher command for assistance. And that two riverine patrol boats would even travel near Iranian waters without helo- or fixed-wing air cover, or at least backup, AND that one boat couldn’t tow the other, AND that there was no mechanic on either boat, defies credibility.
The best we can hope for is that this was a deliberate probe to test Iranian defenses. The worst is that even our military has become completely incompetent under Barry O.
I saw someone identified a leader of the Iranian military, who said that this was to send a signal to Congress to ratify the deal and stop the sanctions.
I’m nor usually a conspiracy type, but I wonder if Kerry wasn’t involved in this to highlight his own diplomatic prowess.
“Who’s telling the truth about that?”
Gosh, that’s a tough one.
Obama’s default position is, lie. (Also known as “The Obama Doctrine”.)
Iran? Heh. For them, “truth” is what’s expedient at any particular moment. Hey,come to think of it, that’s probaby why Obama has such a soft spot for ’em (that and their attitude towards the Zionist Entity).
So “Who’s telling the truth about that?”
Easy. They’re both lying. (And doing what they love best.)
Of course, the real usefulness of the incident is that it distracts once again from the monstrous capitulation that is at the core of Obama’s and Kerry’s foreign policy.
File under: I never had sex with the Iranian regime.
In a comment on the blog libertybellediaries.com/2016/01/13/america-on-its-knees/ I quoted Eric Hoffer in a perfect quote for this incident. It’s an important quote, I believe, so here it is. I knew that I had heard the brilliant Eric Hoffer say something that exactly captures this, and I found it quoted at WikiQuote. How appropriate:
“It’s disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals… You take a conventional man of action, and he’s satisfied if you obey. But not the intellectual. He doesn’t want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there’s soul-raping going on.”
–Eric Hoffer, Interview with Eric Sevareid (1967) quoted on (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer) Interview segment on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO1HqWUMxbs#t=2m23s
We have the largest and most powerful navy on earth. With all of our boats, planes, and satellites it’s hard to believe that we don’t know where those boats were.
It’s also hard to believe we have a president who hates America.
When the captured sailors get home they will spill the beans unless they have been threatened by the Navy.
Minta Marie Morze,
No. It’s not an important quote.
“businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action” can be and, at high echelons of leadership often are, intellectuals. It comes with the job.
The Hoffer quote’s use of “intellectual” seems to be referring to particular kinds of dogmatic and/or autocratic leaders rather than intellectuals per se.
Cornhead Says:
January 13th, 2016 at 1:47 pm
Outrage doesn’t begin to describe my feelings about this.
Obama is no leader. He has sold us out to Iran. And Iran will have nukes in 3-5 years.
The deal should be called off.
&&&&&&
There is NO DEAL… no WRITTEN deal.
Neither party signed any documents — at all.
Hence the complete absence of the traditional ceremony and photo op.
****
So this is another Bergdahl ‘swap.
That is, its a straight give away.
****
The back story will take decades to leak out — but it’s pretty obvious that Hillary’s data security breach wholly compromised our diplomatic cyphers — so for years now Moscow, et. al. have been reading our diplomatic code.
The exact same stunt was performed by the US against Britain in the immediate post-war era (1920) when the British-American-Japan naval treaty was crafted and signed.
The negotiations were held in Washington.
It was only after looking back … that London realized that her signals had been broken.
The American team ALWAYS knew the British negotiating position — even when it had been re-crafted the previous day.
***
Moscow and Iran simply repeated the American technique.
Likewise ALL of our diplomacy — everywhere you turn — has been compromised.
THAT is why Barry can’t score even a slam dunk.
This hyper fiasco is still being buried by the MSM and the punditry.
The reason for the strict cyber-security rules is because deviations lead to total ruptures of the ENTIRE encypherment scheme.
Once the enemy has your scrambling engine figured out — all that he needs are the keys.
Moscow has shown that it can obtain the keys to our highest classification engines virtually at will.
( See the background on the Walker spy scandal. The USN found that Moscow was reading command level signals.)
(!!!!!)
Remember how when the USS Cole was attacked the guns didn’t have any bullets because the Captain wouldn’t allow it? I noticed that in the recent photo of the sailors with their fingers locked behind their heads that there weren’t even any guns in the mounts. I’d like to know who issued the order to send those sailors into harms way completely disarmed.
Here’s something of interest. Here and here are pictures of the captured sailors released by the Iranians. If you click on the pictures of the sailors sitting on the rugs, it will open to a larger view and then, if you click on the picture again, it enlarges to an even greater view. If you then look closely at the sailor’s expressions, in ALL of the pictures ONLY ONE of the sailors is smiling… I suspect he’s the senior officer.
ALL of the rest of the sailors see nothing amusing about their situation, which is certainly understandable. That senior officer is the one who said it was a mistake, admitted to fault and apologized. He did so so unhesitatingly and smoothly that it sounded perfectly rehearsed. Like he’d been coached as to what to say.
If this incident was purposely set up, the only rationale that I can think of is a twisted one, Obama, Kerry et al actually think this strengthens their argument that negotiation and diplomacy, to the exclusion of all else… is always an effective foreign policy.
This has the stink of rot about it.
I don’t know how it’s done these days, but there used to be an element of randomness to the process of “going secure”. Having the hardware and the daily key wasn’t enough. ’nuff said…
If we had a congress willing to assert its power as a full fledged co-equal power we might find out what really happened. But unless someone at the Pentagon is willing to blow the whistle we may never know how this was allowed to unfold. All we know is rot begins at the head of the fish and has spread almost to the tail.
There once was a time when American soldiers would never apologize, and if tortured would send coded messages such as blinking in morse code or sending Hawaiian good luck signs.
Blert
I know no documents have been signed. Not a conventional legal contract by any means. Also all conditions precedent not satisfied. Maybe a material breach already.
Legally it is no contract but State claims this is a typical “deal” or understanding between countries that doesn’t require Senate ratification. Total BS.
When I was a kid the North Koreans captured one of our boats. The Cmdr was a Boys Town grad and it got big coverage in Omaha. He never would have acted like today’s officer who apologized on video IN HOURS.
Sleeping with the enemy?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3383266/posts?page=6#6
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-plotters 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.
Eric, you may not read this, but you wrote:
‘No. It’s not an important quote.
“businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action” can be and, at high echelons of leadership often are, intellectuals. It comes with the job.
The Hoffer quote’s use of “intellectual” seems to be referring to particular kinds of dogmatic and/or autocratic leaders rather than intellectuals per se.’
You have made a good point. But may I suggest that to add to the investigation of the Hoffer quote, I would like to point out that Hoffer was marking the dichotomy between people whose actions have to be continually adjusted by the feedback of reality, and those whose beliefs are not measured against reality, but rather against an ideological construct. Those who live in an imaginary realm may feel compelled to force other to mentally or physically prostrate themselves to, and often verbally acknowledge, the counterfactual. Such True Believers–or their followers, some of whom know very well that the ideology falls short in Reality–busy themselves also with erasing people or things from pictures, destroying historical monuments, burning books, and other totalitarian amusements.
The Educated Barbarians are the worst, because they know what to destroy, create, or camouflage to further their ideological ends.
It’s not meant to mean “one size fits all”, but rather a warning, and part of a body of argumentation Hoffer extends through several books, starting with his “The True Believer”.
It’s one of the troubles with words such as “intellectuals” or (“liberals” or “fascism” and other words thrown about)–we so often have to look beyond the word to the panorama it tries to display.
When Hoffer uses the word “intellectual”, he is not speaking of intelligence or mental achievement, but rather those who set themselves apart from reality and disappear into realms of imagined system-building.
Eric, your quest to bring the truth about the OIF and conservatism in general, would absolutely place you in Hoffer’s category of the highly-intelligent, well educated men of action, at home in both strategy and tactics, those loyal to the Truth, and I feel he would praise your actions and your cause; after all, you are dedicated to the Truth and Reality. You are a man in the arena.
By the way, I’ve tried to find out how to contact you to no avail. I believe that you might consider asking around for a good conservative graphic novel illustrator. The stop-action illustrations of war and decision-making are perfect subjects for such action images, and you would broaden the potential audience for your strong arguments. It wouldn’t have to be long. If I were capable of such drawings–which I’m not–I would do it gladly.
Anyway, your objection to the quote is well-made, and I had to think for a few minutes about how to explain why I like the quote. I heard it many years ago, when I was a child, when Hoffer was interviewed–on black-and-white TV–and it has travelled with me all that time.
“Likewise ALL of our diplomacy – everywhere you turn – has been compromised.”
Should be clear that at this stage of the game, for the current rogue regime in the WH, this is a feature and not a bug.
To be sure, if Obama decides to unleash Biden, he can always use this against the Hildebeast….
File under: Blame game.
Iran is putting the US in its place, now that they have a mad dog like Hussein Obola on a leash.