Probably?? After all that money, probably?

WASHINGTON - A Navy missile soaring 130 miles above the Pacific smashed a dying and potentially deadly U.S. spy satellite Wednesday and probably destroyed a tank carrying 1,000 pounds of toxic fuel, officials said.

I still say they launched a faulty satellite filled with explosives so they could 'lose control' over it and then pretend to shoot it down to shock and awe the Chinese who did this last year.

The sad thing is.. we can't trust anything Bush and his cohorts say or do. So if we shot down a satellite, I'll wait until somebody else in some other country with some other satellite photos verifies it.

Update 2/22: Bryan of Why Now? says it better.

I am coming at you, and you will explode in a few minutes...

From irritation and fury at the Defense Department. They were the ones deciding to send out this video to broadcast how dangerous Iran was, the Navy was apparently not really upset.

Via Phoenix Woman at Mercury Rising:

The initial press stories on the incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in charge of media operations, Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the navy itself.

Then the navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that US warships would “explode” in “a few seconds”. Although it was ostensibly a navy production, Inter Press Service (IPS) has learned that the ultimate decision on its content was made by top officials of the Defense Department.

The encounter between five small and apparently unarmed speedboats, each carrying a crew of two to four men, and the three US warships occurred very early on Saturday January 6, Washington time. No information was released to the public about the incident for more than 24 hours, indicating that it was not viewed initially as being very urgent.

These actions take place regularly in the Persian Gulf. The Navy knew about the Filipino Monkey and his constant threats. So... this little boat skirmish exposes the desires of the Bush administration, to start a war with Iran just before Bush leaves office:

In the June 2007 issue of Commentary, neoconservative icon Norman Podhoretz laid out “The Case for Bombing Iran,” in which he argued that “the only prudent–indeed, the only responsible–course” is to “strike” Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.” Though the recent NIE has slowed down hawkish belligerence towards Iran a bit, Podhoretz is still arguing that President Bush should take “military action” against Iran “soon.”

In a new article for Commentary, titled “Stopping Iran: Why the Case for Military Action Still Stands,” he argues that Bush should commence with a “bombing campaign”:

Iran can still be stopped from getting the bomb and even more millions of lives can be saved–but only provided that we summon up the courage to see what is staring us in the face and then act on what we see.

Podhoretz isn’t alone in his desire to keep pushing for an attack on Iran. Ever since Podhoretz’s recent article was released online, right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt has been promoting it, encouraging his audience to “read the whole thing. Twice.” Hewitt has also been asking his guests, including New York Times columnist William Kristol, if they agree with Podhoretz’s assessment. Scarily, they do.

We can't get these creeps out of office soon enough.

There is no 'international waters' area

In the Strait of Hormuz...

So what exactly were we claiming as we sailed our warships through them?:

Tension spiked markedly last week when Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) speedboats were involved in an "incident" with three US Navy vessels, which claimed they were international waters.

Yet there is no "international water" in the Strait of Hormuz, straddled between the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. The US government claimed, through a Pentagon spokesperson, Bryan Whitman, that the three US ships "transiting through the Strait of Hormuz" were provocatively harassed by the speedboats.

The article goes on to discuss the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, (UNCLOS) and makes this point:

However, irrespective of how Congress acts on the pending legislation on UNCLOS, the fact is that the US cannot have its cake and eat it. That is, rely on it to defend its navigational rights in the Strait of Hormuz and, simultaneously, disregard the various limitations on those rights imposed by the UNCLOS - and favoring Iran.

Thus:

In other words, US warships transiting through Hormuz must, in effect, act as non-war ships, "temporarily depriving themselves of their armed might". And any "warning shots" fired by US ships at Iranian boats, inspecting the US ships under customary international laws, must be considered an infringement on Iran's rights. This technically warrants a legal backlash in the form of the Iranians temporary suspending the US warships' right of passage. Again, the US could be technically prosecuted by Iran in international forums for conducting questionable activities while in Iranian territorial waters.

Now take a look at the Strait:





And tell me which one is doing the harassing?

6 Navy Commanders sacked in 6 weeks

Why?

Are they refusing to attack Iran? What is going on? Who is replacing these commanders?

For the sixth time in as many weeks, the lead officer of a Navy ship has been suddenly relieved of command, DANGER ROOM pal Andy Scutro reports for Navy Times.

Here is a list of all of them, one was Coast Guard.

Why does this make me freak out just a bit?

In the neocons' mind, Iraq IS a success

So obviously we can win the upcoming war with Iran:

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (ret.), a veteran of the Pentagon with firsthand experience of the administration’s cherry-picking of intelligence, reveals why Bush thinks he can win a war with Iran, why few politicians are serious about withdrawal and why “when they call Iraq a success, they mean it.”

[snip]

JAMES HARRIS: The highly speculative people have said they’re out because we’re going into Iran. You might’ve read the news…

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Well yeah, I don’t… I had not seen that connection made, but I certainly am alarmed at the daily signs that indeed this country is getting ready to instigate an attack on Iran. All the signs are there, the suggestions that Iranian bombs are killing American soldiers, that’s not true, but it’s certainly been made in, I think every American newspaper, the suggestion that Iran is somehow killing Americans. The suggestion that Iran has nuclear weapons, is imminently close to nuclear weapons. That is not true but that’s been, those claims are made, even by this Administration. The idea that we have two carrier battle groups currently in the region and in fact I just saw today, Admiral Walsh, one of the big guys in the Navy said that we’re very concerned about what Iran is doing even more so than Al Qaeda. So there, all the signs are there that we are being, we’re going to wake up one morning soon, very soon, and we will be at war with Iran. We will have bombed them in some sort of shock and awe campaign destroying many lives and setting back US relations even further than we’ve already done it with Iraq.

JOSH SCHEER: I want to continue on Iran. You spent obviously many years in the military and you talk in those kind of terms that many people maybe not know about. Can we not just politically, and not just in the region, but can we support another war in another country? Right now we’re in Afghanistan, we’re in Iraq. Can we feasibly actually go into Iran, or is this going to be a shock and awe campaign?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: You know, I think the, one of the big reasons that Bush and Cheney think they can do Iran is that they believe, well, they’re hearing from the Air Force and the Navy, two of the three main branches of our military, the two that have been left out of the glory of Iraq, you see. And those guys want a piece of the action, and so they’re advertising to the Administration and publicly, I mean you can read it for yourself, the Air Force and the Navy have targets they believe they can overwhelmingly hit their targets, deep penetration, possibly nuclear weapons, I mean, nothing is off the table as Dick Cheney says “nothing is off the table.” And the delivery of these weapons, whether they’re conventional or nuclear will be naval and Air Force. They’ll be Navy from the sea and Air Force form long range bombers and some of the bases that we have around the… so I don’t think, certainly, I don’t know, I’m not in the Army, wasn’t in the Army, I was in the Air Force, I don’t think the Army could support any type of invasion of Iran and they wouldn’t’ want to. I’m sure that they’ve, they’ve had enough with Iraq and our reserves are in terrible condition. We’ve got huge problems in the Army and in the Reserve system. So I don’t think there’s any intention to go into Iran, but simply to destroy it and to create havoc and disruption and humanitarian crisis and topple perhaps the government of Ahmadinejad. We want to topple that government. Yeah, we’ll do it with bombs from a distance. I don’t know if you call that shock and awe, we’ve been advertising it for a long, long time. It will not be a surprise to the Iranians if we do it.