THREE IRANIAN SPEED BOATS AGAINST US WARSHIPS?

This whole flare-up between U.S. warships and three or four Iranian speedboats in the Gulf of Hormuz seems more and more bizarre. Look closely at a photo of one of the Iranian boats in today's The New York Times. There aoppears to be three occupants. As far as can be seen, no one has on any body or head protection. There seems to be no small-arms weapons in the speed boat, not even a machine gun or a rifle. How does the Bush government expect people to believe the Iranians were threatening or attacking huge war ships with three puny unarmed speed boats?

Reports Nazila Fathi:

"Iran’s Revolutionary Guard accused the United States on Wednesday of fabricating a video showing Iranian speedboats confronting United States Navy warships in the Persian Gulf over the weekend, according to a report carried by the semiofficial Fars news agency and state-run television.
“Images released by the U.S. Department of Defense about the Navy vessels were made from file pictures, and the audio was fabricated,” an unnamed Revolutionary Guard official said, according to Fars, which has close links to the Revolutionary Guard. It was the first time Iran had commented on the video that the Pentagon released Tuesday."

The suspicion of the Iranians that this whole incident was faked and fabricated has believability. Take the audio that was released that has the Iranians predicting that the U.S. warships "will blow up." Where is the ambient noise that should be heard if these radio transmissions are being made from one of the approaching speedboats? On the audio, there is no noise of the engines or of the rushing wake.

Writes Fathi:

"The audio includes a heavily accented voice warning in English that the Navy warships would explode. However, the recording carries no ambient noise — the sounds of a motor, the sea or wind — that would be expected if the broadcast had been made from one of the five small boats that sped around the three-ship American convoy."

The U.S. Pentagon cannot explain the lack of surround noise in the audio:

"Pentagon officials said they could not rule out that the broadcast might have come from shore, or from another ship nearby, although it might have come from one of the five fast boats with a high-quality radio system."