What’s Goin’ Down
USMA EX-6B Prowler over Afghanistan (Photo by Senior Airman James Richardson/USAF)
Something is stirring in the Middle East. Per the following article, there is a possibility of passenger planes being ID’d as warplanes by Iran and accordingly shot down.
From the article:
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Commercial airliners flying over the Persian Gulf risk being targeted by “miscalculation or misidentification” from the Iranian military amid heightened tensions between the Islamic Republic and the U.S., American diplomats warned Saturday, even as both Washington and Tehran say they don’t seek war.
The warning relayed by U.S. diplomatic posts from the Federal Aviation Administration underscored the risks the current tensions pose to a region critical to both global air travel and trade. Oil tankers allegedly have faced sabotage and Yemen rebel drones attacked a crucial Saudi oil pipeline over the last week.
Meanwhile on Saturday, Iraqi officials said ExxonMobil Corp. began evacuating staff from Basra, and the island nation of Bahrain ordered its citizens out of Iraq and Iran over “the recent escalations and threats.”
However, U.S. officials have yet to publicly explain the threats they perceive coming from Iran, some two weeks after the White House ordered an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers into the region. The U.S. also has ordered nonessential staff out of its diplomatic posts in Iraq. – Navy Times article
The full article is here: https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/05/18/as-tensions-rise-could-iran-mistake-airliners-for-warplanes/
I am looking for anything that indicates Putin/Russia may have a hand in stirring the pot, but so far have found nothing except photos of Vlad grinning/smirking. Maybe he just enjoys the show. Just remember that the Soviet Union went bankrupt trying to annex Afghanistan into the USSR, and the result was that the USSR was dissolved, warfare and chaos ensued (the Balkans and Chechnya), and the Berlin/East-West boundary wall between East and West Germany came down. Russia was financially bankrupt, until oil and gas were found the drilling started, and then Putin seized control of that, and now – well, looks like he wants control of Middle Eastern oil as well as Central and South American fields.
Let’s also remember those little incidents a while back in which North Korea’s MIG pilots shot down a passenger jet, as well as the targeting of a commercial airliner during that nasty civil war over Crimea not so very long ago.
Read the full article at the link. Stay tuned. Interesting times are upon us.
Category: Foreign Policy, International Affairs, Iran, Iraq, Syria
Staying tuned
Remember, USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner back in 1988.
Yes, I do remember that one, and has it ever been settled as to whether or not the airliner ID’d itself before it was shot down? The Nork shootdown of Flight 007 was allegedly because the Nork pilots did not have access to commercial airwaves.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/16/the-forgotten-story-of-iran-air-flight-655/?utm_term=.5663f5167167
Actually, Ex-PH2, KAL 007 wasn’t shot down by North Korea. It was shot down by Soviet Air Defense Forces – who did indeed have access to commercial frequencies – almost certainly in international airspace near Sakhalin Island.
This occurred after the pilot who shot it down had established visal contact, ascertained that it had operating strobes (and reported that fact to his AD controllers), and had IDed the aircraft as being of Boeing commercial design (this second fact was apparently not reported to his AD controllers).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#Shootdown
This, along with a couple of other incidents occurring over the next few weeks, made my arrival in South Korea less than 2 months later a rather memorable one.
IIRC, they were displaying an attack profile (decreasing range and altitude), not responding to repeated attempts at contact, although it was apparently squawking in Mode III.
Let’s see,… OPEC no longer has the stranglehold on the World Oil Supply and prices that it once had, Putin put his proverbial chips on manipulating Petroleum supplies and prices while we in the USA drilled, we’re still drilling AND NOW we have all the oil we need while WE have turned into an Oil-Exporting Nation ourselves, FUCK YOU, OPEC!!!
AS TO Iran, those little goat-molesting fleabags truly need to remember Operation Preying mantis…
I have a question about the tan hopper cars I see on freight trains. Are they carrying fracking sand or grain, or maybe both?
Either/or and many other things like chemicals such as Potassium Nitrate pellets, plastic pellets, basically anything pelletized that the shipper and consignee want kept out of the elements.
Thanks, API!
All of those goat fuckers need to eat shit and bark at the moon! I hope Trump nukes the bastards!
Just to stir the pot a little..
Rocket lands near U.S. Embassy inside Baghdad’s Green Zone
By Mustafa Salim and Tamer El-Ghobashy
“BAGHDAD — A rocket landed inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, which houses the sprawling U.S. Embassy, Iraqi security officials said Sunday, in an apparent warning shot to the United States amid escalating tensions with Iran.
The rocket landed less than a mile from the U.S. Embassy near Iraq’s parliament building and caused no injuries or serious damage, a security official said. But the timing of the launch has increased worries in Iraq that it will be drawn into a conflict between two of its closest allies, the United States and Iran.”
The rest of the article may be read here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/rocket-lands-near-us-embassy-inside-baghdads-green-zone/2019/05/19/c09c42ee-7a66-11e9-a66c-d36e482aa873_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8a8c93ce6bc8
Prediction: A commercial aircraft will get shot down. The US will get blamed.
Here’s a novel idea, again. Pull everything we got there far enough back to stay out of their range. Park a carrier group or two close enough to kick their asses when they show their asses. Or better yet, the Girls and Boys at Minot are always looking for honest work.
Popcorn?
A “commercial airliner”, fully fueled and perhaps carrying a full load of HE, will fly towards one of our ships. If undeterred, it will Kamikaze the ship. If engaged, we will discover that it contained a bunch of folks.
Those folks are ruthless enough to use a real airline flight loaded with extra boomex baggage, and a couple of fanatics at the controls. If they read Clancy, that scenario could be much worse.
Eggggggxactly! My point in the 1st sentence!
Which brings us to the plan in para 2!
There is no legitimate reason for us to be going to war with Iran right now and if something were to happen that gave an excuse I would be highly suspicious of a Gulf of Tonkin manufactured justification.
Iran is not a war the US is in any position to win. We will also be seen by the international community as the aggressor. With few friends beyond Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Iran is not anything like Iraq. If we get into a ground war there is will be an absolute disaster.
Iran has been at war with us since November 4, 1979. Maye it’s about time to remember that.
What kind of fool cannot see that kind of “Major Obvious” point?
One who claims he went to UC-Berkeley, apparently.
UC-Berkelely history classes skip the “bad” parts of the Carter administration and all of the Reagan administration.
The gulf of Tonkin incident was not “manufactured”. That is an enormous lie. While the incident on August 4, 1964 is in doubt, the attack on the USS Maddox on August 2 is indisputable. That was justification enough for retaliation.
You are right the entire incident was not manufactured but the justification for war was. The justification for war was the second attack which never occurred. The first did occur but it caused no casualties and very little damage.
The first attack alone was sufficient justification for the Gulf of Tonkien resolution, fool. That’s the whole point of CDR_D’s comment. The second attack is now indeed considered to have not occurred; however, that’s also completely irrelevant regarding justification for the Gulf of Tonkien resolution.
LBJ’s use of that second incident as justification merely highlights – yet again – just how much of a duplicitous bastard LBJ truly was. LBJ apparently believed from day one that the second incident never happened; he told an aide a few days afterwards, “Hell, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.” But he used it anyway, for political purposes, in order to appear “thoughtful” and “Presidential” during his 1964 campaign against Goldwater – e.g., to make it appear that he had “turned the other cheek” after the first incident, but that the second forced his hand.
https://www.academia.edu/4003255/They_Were_Shooting_Flying_Fish_the_Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident
During that campaign LBJ was portraying Goldwater as a warmonger and a dangerous “loose cannon”, and wanted to appear as the “reasonable” candidate. In fact, LBJ was perfectly willing to take the US to war in Vietnam – but only after he’d been reelected. LBJ had previously told the Army Chief of Staff at the JCS annual Christmas Party in 1963: “Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war.” (Karnow, Vietnam: A History).
As the joke said;
“They told me if I voted for Goldwater we would get involved in a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater anyway and, sure enough, we got involved in a war in Vietnam.
It is SO obvious that you just REFUSE to believe anything not spoon fed to you by your propaganda masters.
It is effing ridiculous you all seem to want a war with Iran and then accuse me of being the one who believes propaganda.
Soft minded bullshit. What else should I expect from some of the core regulars here?
Soft-minded? No. More like realistic.
No one here wants to see yet another war in the Middle East. But both sides must want peace for peace to be anything more than an interval between wars. And to date, Iran hasn’t shown anything but emnity towards the US – except when it could sucker a US administration into acting counter to its own best interests, as it did with the now-abrogated US-Iran Nuclear Deal that the previous SCoaMF Administration illegally foisted on the country.
Iran has been a declared enemy of the US since the day Khomeini took power – much like the Soviet Union was an enemy of the US from the day Lenin took power. It engaged in multiple acts of war against the US – remember something called the “US Embassy Seizure”? The current Iranian leadership is little different; it has zero desire to reconcile with the US or the rest of the West. They are also quite patient.
The Soviets had a term for those in the West who failed to understand that the Soviets were their enemy: Useful Fools (often translated as Useful Idiots). I’d bet there’s a similar term, with similar usage, in Farsi.
I wonder if it’s pronounced anything like “Khom-i-zahr Pood’l”?
Iran is no more a threat to us than it was two years ago and less than a threat than it was 5 or ten years ago.
There is no reason to be going to war and the “intelligence” being used is not merely being disputed by our allies it is outright being said to be untrue.
Only I know the truth… with all of my empiric data and connections to the intel community , I KNOW IT ALL!!! I have my flaccid micropenis of truth to tell me the way!
ORANGE MAN BAD!!!
Utter nonsense. Five years ago, the SCoaMF previous Administration hadn’t yet sold out US national interests by providing the Iranians tens of billions in assets to fund their nuclear program. And current news reports inticate that they’ve likely used the money to do exactly that.
“Iran has been a declared enemy of the US since the day Khomeini took power”
Iran has been a declared enemy of anyone opposed to their world wide caliphate since the revolution. It ain’t just us.
“Core regulars”?
Please refer to us as “Cadre” or go the fuck home.
I consider those managing the site, and there appears to be several of them, as cadre.
Hey Lars. Guess who else was a Progressive of your ilk.
The Reverend Jim Jones, that’s who.
GOOGLE IT!
Yeah, he was a communalist Marxist. Though he hardly seemed to have much understanding of the theories themselves. Nor did he care to. Like all malignant narcissists he took a rudimentary understanding of a theory he thought would be useful and corrupted and and distorted it to serve himself. Then used it as part of his cult of personality.
Trump is doing the same thing with his version of “capitalism”. A version that has nothing in common with the core tenets of capitalism and is much more accurately regarded as Trump branded “neo-mercantilism”.
It is important to point out that modern socialist theory uses a free market as its core method for the distribution of wealth and resources.
It is nothing like anything Marxists might of believed a half a century ago.
Bullshit, Lars.
Socialism is a transitional period to achieve communism.
A truth grenade like that is going to have Lars biting his fingernails to nothing for at least two weeks!
It sure is taking Scandinavia a long time to “achieve communism”.
Lars has his own definition of “socialism” and “capitalism.” He has his own personal version of the Prog Newspeak dictionary.
Who let that pompous ass into the room?
” modern socialist theory uses a free market as its core method for the distribution of wealth and resources”
hen it’s not Socialist. That word is already taken and they need to find one of their own.
I’ve always thought that Che was a real Commie that I should idolize. My profs at school told me that he was a good choice.
Flying straight down the middle of the Gulf on Torque and Moose flights always made me a bit nervous. Glad I don’t do it anymore. I’m sure they still happen with regular frequency.
Nobody wants war.
Everybody likes to see a well deserved ass whoopin though.
The real question is: how many Russians are in Teheran offering all sorts of “help”, should the USA attack first? Hoping here that we won’t, of course, but how many times will Khameini poke us?
I just love these pawing and snorting things.
“how many times will Khameini poke us?”
One too many.
“However, U.S. officials have yet to publicly explain the threats they perceive coming from Iran”
When they do start explaining them, I may start believing them.
“Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice…”. Iran has been making threats and actually taking actions against the US, et al. for decades. What’s new?