Wonkette

Maybe Sarko decided to vacay in the Straights of Hormuz?

It was Iran's drunken idiots speeding away from their government for having alcohol in the first place, let alone drinking it. Taunting the Americans was just gravy before getting the barrels pointed at themselves.

Video may be fake/may be real, but US reputation abroad is so trashed by inept Administration that rest of world will believe it fake.

Let me get this straight...they go two miles off their own fuckin' coast and its an "provocative action". Riiiiight...if Iran was two miles off OUR coast we'd be going all McCain on their asses (bomb-bomb-bomb bomb-bomb Iran).

If sources that are "anonymous and offered no evidence" are not credible then that means just about every Politico lead story over past 6 days are not credible. Actually, that sounds about right.

I dunno. Firing on those speed boats with rapid-fire cannon would be arcade-game awsome.

Gee, where have we seen faked up attacks by high speed boats on US Navy warships as a prelude to a US clusterfuck? Hmmmmmm. Gulf of, uh, Tolkien? Thompson? Turcott? Token?

Maybe now we can freeze Evinrude's assets?
They were getting some boss slalom waves in that wake, daddy.

@coozledad: (cue the Ride of the Valkyries)

Totally looks like an episode of Miami Vice to me.

Seriously, we could be killing dolphins and whales off the Iranian coast with sonar in an attempt to disrupt Iranian submarine communications.
Whales, the first casualty of the 2008 Iran war.

@ManchuCandidate: Gulf of Turducken. Definitely Turducken.

@weazel: The OJ Syndrome. If the boats look fake, Bush can go jump in the lake.

The Navy needs to spend some cash on those dashboard video cameras for the bridge, just like cops have. Then they'll have some better evidence than some sailor's cellphone cam.

@HomoPolitico: 15 miles off their coast, in international waters. If they'd really wanted to blow up the US ships, though, they'd have used a fishing dhow. Those things get practically run over all the time in the Persian Gulf. Especially at night; they don't hardly show up on radar because they're made of wood, and they're not moving so the blip you do see looks like ground clutter.

The guys who attacked the Cole used a fiberglass fishing boat with an outboard motor. Looked just like any other fisherman in the harbor up until they drove it into the ship.

Those idiots in the Iranian speedboats were definitely practicing for a future potential attack; we used to do the same thing with the Russians all the time. I doubt Iran wants to start it, but no reason for them to think we won't.

Duuuude! Which way to Dewey Beach?

@Whattheheck: No. It doesn't work like that. Subs use very low-frequency radio to talk to base, or else send up an antenna. Has nothing to do with sonar, which is sound. And you don't use active sonar much in the Gulf, because it's too shallow; the pings bounce off the bottom before they go out far enough to pick up a sub.

Mostly all you have to do to track subs there is fly around and look at them; they're visible from the air because the water's only 100 feet deep.

It would have been some kind of awesome if the Iranian cigarette boats were manned by two guys wearing Ahmadinejad-style open-collar pastel shirts and dark sports coats. One with stubble, the other with a slow, smokey voice.

Then the US Navy could have blasted a Jan Hammer bassy soundtrack from their $230,000,000 stereo. The two guys would have laughed. The Navy crewmen would have laughed. They would have toasted each other with bottles of Coke™. And we'd have peace in the Mideast.

If they were there in the first place. Which considering the whole "WMD" thing (thanks again, Bush for completely destroying whatever credibility we had in the world), I'm skeptical.

Is that the Loch Ness monster wrestling with Bigfoot in the background?

@mbillips: Yeah, the active sonar is only good for permanently maiming Flipper, enriching military contractors and giving redneck military oafs woodies as they watch blinded whales beach themselves in agony. Because that's how they roll.

Bastards.

If this had been a truly provocative attack, they would have dropped trou and pressed a little ham.

@trai_dep: That explains why the blinded whales hate America so much.

@trai_dep:

You know what REALLY hurts whales? Ships. They run over them all the time, because whales sleep on the surface in the same sea lanes that ships use. That's a big reason why the whale population hasn't come back despite the whaling ban.

However, it is completely true that more than half the time on U.S. Navy ships is spent in tobacco-saliva-lubed masturbation over whale corpses. Ah, the romance of the sea.

Too bad the 'crew' of the 'attack vessels' are wearing life jackets. If they were showing off their man boobs, I would have guessed it was Putin.

The open skepticism of this is heartening. But you don't suppose that some God-fearing bubba will be able to give this a discerning look, right? "Dept. of Defense Video" would not raise a red flag to such a rough, imperfect stereotype.

Oh, and you know the Pubbies are going to own this shit in the next debate. The race will be on to pound Dubya for not bombing Tehran yet. (My call: 9ud11 wins.)

Zhivago's Cat: The only thing the Helm Cam would do is tape the Iranians' polite denials of possession of crack cocaine, only to have the U.S. Navy find three rocks and a pipe in an empty cigarette pack stashed underneath the seat.

@Not_so_much: That, by itself, should've tipped off the Navy that they were safe and the boats weren't a threat to them. A life jacket on a suicide bomber is about as useful as tits on a man.

I love the befuddled incredulity in the U.S. deck officer's voice at the end there: "You will explode after a few minutes?"

Quick question... why wear lifejackets on a suicide boat run?

@Chicago Bureau: Not going to happen. Rudy is finnished.He's in FL spending other peoples money and keeping Judy warm and happy. Although maybe someone will vp him and then later he could stay on as Pres.
If something blows then it's Walnuts!and his 100,000 years.Do you think he might be a Scientologist too?Cute daughter but where's the brown one now?I never see around here any more and his son?

@mbillips: So do roadkill rules apply to whales? 'Cause I could really use me some blubber.

Wait a minute - the Pentagon gets billions of our tax dollars and they can't shoot a better video? Feh.

@ManchuCandidate: I think it was the Straits of Tonka. Or the Gulf of Hormuz. Shit, they didn't have YouTube in '64. And wikipedia's too confusing Still, haven't we heard/seen this mov.ie before?

LBJ-any sort of soul or compassion=GWB.

@mbillips: Hovering on the fringe of the territorial seas, and then claiming that they were being threatened is not exactly the most diplomatic way to get the world's sympathies. Aside from the fact that this looked less professional than a frat-boy's rush-week prank, this is kind of like the 250 pound jock crying that the nerd with the taped-up glasses is scaring him. Bo-gus.

I can haz casus belli?

So if the whales were sleeping there first, shouldn't they be whaling lanes?

@hotsauce: Mmmm, blubber. Any chance for some tasty whale fetus there?

I'm a lot more prone to believe that the U.S. government would manufacture evidence than that they wouldn't.

And I'm pretty sure it was the Gulf of Ginantonix.

@Grimnir: Hope floats?

@gurukalehuru: Isn't that in a tiny Gallic enclave resisting the Romans?

Looks like Race Bannon and Jonny Quest to me.

In the Navy, our audio is a fake...

If we gave the whales armor and missiles, like a Free Willy meets The Golden Compass, I'd be okay with the whole "Navy vs Flipper" thing.

So long as the whales taped the battles and submitted them to YouTube.

Don't worry the world and us Europeans know the footage is real... we just don't give a fuck.