NYT ARTICLE TODAY ON U.S. WAR GAMES "SPINS" TO JUSTIFY BUSH'S RECKLESS THREATS AGAINST IRAN

In an effort to justify almost starting a war with Iran over those pesky little Iranian motor boats approaching the mighty ships of the U.S. Navy in the Straits of Hormuz, a mere shooting distance of Iran, Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer, explains in a story today by Thom Shanker in The New York Times how he personally warned the Pentagon in 2002 that small boats coming in numbers could inflict horrendous casualties on the U.S. Navy war ships.

Writes Shanker:

"There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships.

"In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats."

Why do I feel that a spin is involved? The evidence coming out now about the video and audio showing Iranian speedboats "threatening" the U.S. Navy seems upon closer examination to indicate that there was no real threat and there was no Iranian provocation. The audio seems to have been patched onto the video and then released by the Pentagon to further demonize Iran at the inception of the Bush visit to Arab Sunni states in the Middle East. As if to say, "We told you so, Iran is a serious threat to the region, and this inchoate attack shows that Iran is a menace, even without nuclear weapons, and so we must take action."

And who is this Gen. Van Riper? And why is he coming out now to disclose his experience with war games back in 2002. Van Riper sounds like somebody's mouthpiece, and that someone I suspect could be Dick Cheney or Cheney's assistant, David Addington. Could Van Riper be in fact Cheney's spokesman in a case where Cheney or Addington do not want to be identified themselves in the laying of the bogus foundation that the U.S. was not the instigator of the confrontation but the injured party. All in an attempt to justify George W. Bush's recklessly calling the encounter a "serious provocation" and warning that the next one would result in serious military retaliation. Otherwise Bush could not conceal that he appears to the world to be the war monger once again, this time in his and Cheney's attempt to bomb Iran.