[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Voice from Iran incident may be regional pest ( Dr. Paul was right about rushing to wrongly judge Iranian gunboats!) The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler well known to Navy crews. Since the Jan. 6 incident was announced to the public a day later, the U.S. Navy has said it's unclear where the voice came from. In the videotape released by the Pentagon on Jan. 8, the screen goes black at the very end and the voice can be heard, distancing it from the scenes on the water. "We don't know for sure where they came from," said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for 5th Fleet in Bahrain. "It could have been a shore station." While the threat — "I am coming to you. You will explode in a few minutes" — was picked up during the incident, further raising the tension, there's no proof yet of its origin. And several Navy officials have said it's difficult to figure out who's talking. "Based on my experience operating in that part of the world, where there is a lot of maritime activity, trying to discern [who is speaking on the radio channel] is very hard to do," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead told Navy Times during a brief telephone interview on Friday. The voice in the Navy audio sounds different from the one heard in a video released by Iranian authorities, showing an Iranian officer in a small, open boat as he uses a radio to speak to the cruiser Port Royal. He is shown in a radio exchange at one point asking the U.S. warship to change from the common bridge-to-bridge channel 16 to another channel, perhaps to speak to the Navy without being interrupted. Further, there's none of the background noise in the audio released by the United States that would have been picked up by a radio handset in an open boat. So with Navy officials unsure and the Iranians accusing the United States of fabrications, whose voice was it? In recent years, American ships operating in the Middle East have had to contend with a mysterious but profane voice widely known as the "Filipino Monkey," likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and epithets. Civilian mariners say the term stems from the fact that Greek merchant sailors perceive Filipinos to be a large portion of merchant mariners at sea. Navy women — a helicopter pilot hailing a tanker, for example — who are overheard on the radio are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, could not say if the voice belonged to the heckler. "It's an international circuit and we've said all along there were other ships and shore stations in the area," he said. When asked if U.S. officials considered whether the threats came from someone besides the Iranians when releasing the video and audio, Roughead said: "The reason there is audio superimposed over the video is it gives you a better idea of what is happening." Similarly, Davis said the audio was part of the "totality" of the situation and helped show the "aggressive behavior." But Navy warship crews and veterans interviewed by Navy Times are raising the possibility that the heckler, or an imitator, was indeed featured in that video. Rick Hoffman, a retired captain who commanded the cruiser Hue City and spent many of his 17 years at sea in the Gulf was subject to the renegade radio talker repeatedly, often without pause during the so-called "Tanker Wars" of the late 1980s. "For 25 years there's been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats," he said. "He could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship." Or farther — radio signals have a way of traveling long distances in that area, Hoffman said. "Under certain weather conditions I could hear Bahrain from the Strait of Hormuz," he said. And the heckler has stamina. "He used to go all night long. The guy is crazy," he said. "But who knows how many Filipino Monkeys there are? Could it have been a spurious transmission? Absolutely."
Poster Comment: Looks like Dr. Ron Paul has been vindicated today with regards to his skepticism last night at the debates about his colleagues' rush to judgement about the Iranian gunboat incident. It turns out that now the Navy is backing off from their initial take on the situation upon further investigation. I wonder if Fox will report on the revised position of the Navy - that it might have been a longtime heckler crackpot pulling the Navy's chain and that this heckler is not associated with the Iranians whatsoever. For shame - how could the Navy be so stupid? A heckler cutting in on their frequency and they could not figure that out until today????? This is scary - we have warmongers as elected officials and incompetent professional sailors in leadership positions in our Navy. Ohmygosh - God help us. This story has also been picked up by the Wash Post.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: All posters who want Ron Paul for President (#0)
Great article that demonstrates unequivocably that Dr. Paul is the only Presidential candidate with the wisdom and good judgement to lead our nation during these perilous times! Go Ron Paul!
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||