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Thursday, January 10, 2008

Idiots.
Posted by Jill | 11:21 PM
So we almost went to war against Iranian speedboats that said nothing to our warships; the supposed "threat" may have been coming from the shore or another vessel:

Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.

The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes."


The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.

Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else.

We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there," said the spokesperson. "It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we're not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we're not saying it absolutely didn't."


So we have a president who's just itching to enlarge his penis by nuking Iran. We have a vice-president who's so batshit crazy he wants to nuke Iran just for the hell of it. And here we are with trigger-happy warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, back where insecurity will be assured by the Department of Redundancy Department and the Natural Guard, the telephone companies -- you know, the ones to whom the Democrats in Congress are going to give immunity for tapping your phone looking for terrorists? The ones who co-operated in the Bush Administration's illegal wiretap program to "help with the war on terror"? Well, just like they do when you or I don't pay the bill, they've suspended the program because the government is a deadbeat:

The big telephone companies are only too happy to let the feds snoop on your phone calls and Internet use --- as long as the government pays its bills. But an audit has just revealed that the telcos have been cutting off wiretaps, because the incompetent FBI has been unable to pay its phone bills on time.

Forget the constitution --- when it comes to wiretapping and Internet-tapping, for the telcos, it's only the bottom line that matters. The AP reports that a Justice Department audit has found that phone companies "have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time."

The report found that more than half of 990 bills supposed to pay for surveillance in five FBI field offices weren't paid on time. In just one office, the report found, "unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000." And when the bills weren't paid, the telcos often cut off the surveillance.

In one case, the report found, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) investigation had to be cut off because the FBI didn't pay its bills on time. The AP notes, "FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies."

It's hard to know which is worse, the venality of the phone companies, or the incompetence of the FBI. When it comes to what appears to be illegal wiretapping and Internet-tapping by the NSA, the telephone companies say they have no choice but to invade people's privacy --- the government says they have to do it. But as this report shows, that's the case only so long as the bills are paid.


After the Michael Dukakis debacle of 1988, the word "competence" fell into disfavor as a qualification for the presidency. That idea doesn't sound so bad now, does it?

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4 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
What do you say about this? "Isn't it great when venality provides a check on government incompetence"? Well, sure. Also: I've stopped beating my wife.
1/11/08, 8:01 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...
>So we almost went to war against Iranian speedboats...

We did? I thought we exercised due restraint. Are we talking about the same story? What would you have had us do differently?
1/11/08, 9:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Barry,

Relegate this non-story to appropriate non-news channels. I recommend ESPN. They like boats!

Does Iran have an Americas Cup team?
1/11/08, 5:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
May have come from somewhere else? I imagine the communications officer knew what language the voice was speaking.
1/11/08, 11:00 PM  
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