lie like an authentic persian rug
By now I’m sure you’ve heard of the incident in the Persian Gulf where a couple of Iranian “fast boats” essentially buzzed a US Naval envoy (note: I’m not sure what constitutes an envoy versus a hodge podge, but I’m disinclined to think the Navy would call anything a hodge podge. Too bad, really). If you haven’t, watch the youtube video of the event here.
The video is apparently a separately taped audio and video account, the US government stitched together later, of the events. Ok, I can readily believe a war ship would have separate audio and video recorders, especially when it comes to audio tapes of radio transmissions. Iran, however, is pretty adamant the US fabricated the record, citing primarily the audio/video mismatch.
Here’s the thing, if I were going to throw something together like that to lie, that’s exactly how I’d do it. You can download damn good multimedia editing software and put something like this together in short order, and I can only imagine what kind of tools and people the government might have at its disposal. Making it too perfect and taking a little more time to release the footage would only make the conspiracy cries louder. Release it straight off and make it crap though, and it leaves legitimacy as a viable option.
On one hand, why go through the trouble of fabricating a provocative incident and not make it perfect? On the other, make it crap while everybody knows you could have made it perfect and start answering questions with questions, like “Why would we so poorly combine the mediums and leave room for controversy if we had something to hide?”
On another note, anybody tomorrow that tries to relate it to the the Gulf of Tonkin incident is going to get stabbed in the face. If this were anything like the Gulf of Tonkin there’d be a hold in the side of a US ship - self-inflicted to escalate the incident or not I don’t care - , a couple of Iranian floaters and absolutely no publicly released video.
I commend the Naval officers for withholding their soap-in-a-sock bootcamp aggression and allowing the situation to diffuse without any shots fired. Now that I think about it though, maybe that’s a little too convenient.
Update: I’ve watched the video a bit more and every time I do I end up feeling like it offers less and less real information. Camera stability, the surrounding weather from different angles, the shit audio/video matching job; none of it makes much sense. The sea really is the perfect place to make something like this up. It’s also the place to stage the event so your enemy’s populous thinks it’s made up. It might be time to pick up the red phone. I just hope Bush calls collect; “Yeah, we’ll negotiate, but you gotta foot the international charges, bitch.”
Update 2: Think that guy that yells “INBOUND!!!” at the top of his lungs 30 seconds in is now the official ship pussy? Somebody has to fill the role on a ship of pent up testosterone, I can only imagine it’s the guy that gets a little over-zealous with his notifications.
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