{"id":16557,"date":"2016-01-16T11:43:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T16:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16557"},"modified":"2016-01-16T11:43:28","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T16:43:28","slug":"u-s-radically-changes-its-story-of-the-boats-in-iranian-waters-to-an-even-more-suspicious-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16557","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Radically Changes Its Story of the Boats in Iranian Waters: to an Even More Suspicious Version"},"content":{"rendered":"
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U.S. Radically Changes Its Story of the Boats in Iranian Waters: to an Even More Suspicious Version<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When news first broke of the detention of two U.S. ships in Iranian territorial waters, the U.S. media \u2014 aside from\u00a0depicting it as an act of\u00a0Iranian\u00a0<\/em>aggression<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 uncritically cited the U.S. government\u2019s explanation for what happened. One of the boats, we were told, experienced \u201cmechanical failure\u201d and thus \u201cinadvertently drifted\u201d into Iranian waters. On\u00a0CBS News<\/em>,\u00a0Joe Biden told<\/a>\u00a0Charlie Rose, \u201cOne of the\u00a0boats had engine failure, drifted into Iranian waters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Provided\u00a0their government script, U.S. media outlets repeatedly cited these phrases \u2014 \u201cmechanical failure\u201d and \u201cinadvertently drifted\u201d and \u201cboat in distress\u201d \u2014 like some sort of hypnotic mantra. Here\u2019s Eli Lake of\u00a0Bloomberg News<\/em>\u00a0explaining yesterday<\/a>\u00a0why this was all Iran\u2019s fault:<\/p>\n

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Iran\u2019s handling of the situation violated international norms. \u2026\u00a0<\/span>Two small U.S. sea craft transiting between Kuwait and Bahrain strayed into Iranian territorial waters because of a mechanical failure, according to the U.S. side. This means the boats were in distress.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lake quoted John McCain as saying that \u201cboats do not lose their sovereign immune status when they are in distress at sea.\u201d The night the news broke, Reuters quickly\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0the \u201cboats may have inadvertently drifted into Iranian waters\u201d and \u201canother U.S. official said mechanical issues may have disabled one of the boats, leading to a situation in which both ships drifted inadvertently into Iranian waters.\u201d
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The U.S. government itself now says this story was false. There was no engine\u00a0failure, and the boats were never \u201cin distress.\u201d Once the sailors were released, AP\u00a0<\/em>reported<\/a>, \u201cIn Washington, a defense official said the Navy has ruled out engine or propulsion failure as the reason the boats entered Iranian waters.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Radically Changes Its Story of the Boats in Iranian Waters: to an Even More Suspicious Version When news first broke of the detention of two U.S. ships in Iranian territorial waters, the U.S. media \u2014 aside from\u00a0depicting it as an act of\u00a0Iranian\u00a0aggression\u00a0\u2014 uncritically cited the U.S. government\u2019s explanation for what happened. One of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5437,441,1320,2864,655,5567,827,1920,1127,865],"class_list":["post-16557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-glenn-greenwald","tag-iran","tag-joe-biden","tag-lies","tag-propaganda","tag-the-intercept","tag-united-states","tag-us-media","tag-us-navy","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16558,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16557\/revisions\/16558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}