The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Are we supposed to believe what we see on television about the Iran/British captured soldiers situation? I don't ask that you believe as I do. I want you to get more than one view.
Most of tv, if not all, is agenda-based. Some television may have detergent or votes to hawk which is expected. It's the demagogue driven television I worry about and is why we're asked to turn off our tv sets from time to time. If US television is where you get most of your news, you're right to be asked to turn it off. If you're wise enough to go outside the US for your news, I admire you for that. It wasn't easy before the internet with all it's global perspectives. So all this blabbering preface brings me to an article I saw on Independent, a British newspaper.
The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis
Exclusive Report: How a bid to kidnap Iranian security officials sparked a diplomatic crisis
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 03 April 2007
A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.
Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.
In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.
Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.
MORE...
Most of tv, if not all, is agenda-based. Some television may have detergent or votes to hawk which is expected. It's the demagogue driven television I worry about and is why we're asked to turn off our tv sets from time to time. If US television is where you get most of your news, you're right to be asked to turn it off. If you're wise enough to go outside the US for your news, I admire you for that. It wasn't easy before the internet with all it's global perspectives. So all this blabbering preface brings me to an article I saw on Independent, a British newspaper.
The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis
Exclusive Report: How a bid to kidnap Iranian security officials sparked a diplomatic crisis
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 03 April 2007
A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.
Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.
In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.
Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.
MORE...
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