Conspiracies around every corner. Tin-foil hats on me.

This type of thing happens more than we know. When I was serving in Germany we were always having Russian or East German troops doing similar things to test our reactions. We did the same to them.

I don’t doubt it happened the way the US claims. It was a provocation. The US commanders showed good disipline and followed their rules of engagement to the letter.

No conspiracy theory, it’s a matter of trust and credibility isn’t it?

Agreed. There’s nothing wrong with maintaining a healthy degree of scepticism.

Ooops…. What’s this? Iranian speed boats? Spliced audio & video tapes? Do these idiots ever learn?

Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (IPS) - Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to U.S. ships from Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a “battle at sea”, new information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no U.S. commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.

The new information that appears to contradict the original version of the incident includes the revelation that U.S. officials spliced the audio recording of an alleged Iranian threat onto to a videotape of the incident. That suggests that the threatening message may not have come in immediately after the initial warning to Iranian boats from a U.S. warship, as appears to do on the video.

Also unraveling the story is testimony from a former U.S. naval officer that non-official chatter is common on the channel used to communicate with the Iranian boats and testimony from the commander of the U.S. 5th fleet that the commanding officers of the U.S. warships involved in the incident never felt the need to warn the Iranians of a possible use of force against them.

Further undermining the U.S. version of the incident is a video released by Iran Thursday showing an Iranian naval officer on a small boat hailing one of three ships.

The Iranian commander is heard to say, “Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian navy patrol boat.” He then requests the “side numbers” of the U.S. warships. A voice with a U.S. accent replies, “This is coalition warship 73. I am operating in international waters.”

The dramatic version of the incident reported by U.S. news media throughout Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that Iranian speedboats, apparently belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard navy, had made moves to attack three U.S. warships entering the Strait and that the U.S. commander had been on the verge of firing at them when they broke off.

(emphasis mine)

Another credibility blow for the Bush administration and the US military - why anyone believes a word they say is beyond me.

The Iranian “version” is video of a separate incident.

The audio splice is that of a message received during the incident, although it is unclear whether the transmission was received from the boats nearby or from a separate source (onshore). It isn’t clear from what I’ve read so far whether the audio was properly time-synchronized to the video, but it is simply a case of putting two pieces of information in one.