When in doubt, start another war

[debgeisler]

You may have heard that the Navy's all up in arms about threatening messages it received from Iranian warships. Threaten our warships, by jiggy, and you might start a war (a war that our president has been trying to build justification for now for more than a year).

This story from the AP, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer online, raises serious questions about the purported threats. It seems some experts think they were pranks:

Cairo, Egypt - A threatening radio message at the end of a video showing Iranian patrol boats swarming near U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf may have come from a prankster rather than from the Iranian vessels, the Navy Times newspaper has reported.

A video and audio recording of the Jan. 6 incident in the Strait of Hormuz featured a man in accented English saying, "I am coming to you. . . . You will explode after . . . minutes."

Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, said the Navy was still trying to determine the source of the transmission but believed it was related to the Iranian actions.

[...]

However, the Navy Times, a weekly newspaper published by the Gannett company, quoted several veteran sailors as speculating the transmission could have come from a radio heckler.

The newspaper, which serves the Navy community, said U.S. sailors in the Persian Gulf have heard the prankster - possibly more than one person - transmitting "insults and jabbering vile epithets" on unencrypted frequencies.

In other words, it might just be an idiot with a radio...not an official idiot with a radio and a few warships.

Oh, and this guy with a radio? He's been around for a while:

"For 25 years there's been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats," Hoffman said.

"He could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship."