The Unpleasantness At The Straits Of Hormuz: The Fifth Fleet

Recently it has been reported that 4 Iranian speedboats with Revolutionary Guards in them sped at some US naval vessels in the Persion Gulf. It was within the area at the Straits of Hormuz, the narrowest spot of the Gulf.
I did not react much to this report because (1) all the facts were not in, and
(2) I had seen enough manufactured incidents not to believe anything a government throws our way like a bone for a dog, expecting us to salivate, and
(3) the US Navy does not report to news media; the report goes the way the administration desires it to go, and
(4) I had been expecting it.

Why had I been expecting it? I did not think Cheney would give up on his war plans just because of the NIE report. Furthermore, back on November 19, 2007 I had read this article in Voltairenet.org:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article153013.html  
The Neoconservative Agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet – The New Pearl Harbor
by Michael Salla  

"The U.S. plans for an attack on Iran envision to sacrifice the Fifth Fleet in order to justify a nuclear retaliation. This is not a hypothetical scenario, but a real option being discussed within the U.S. Joint Chief of Staff cabinet. According to our sources, admiral William Fallon made clear that if such an order was given, he would refuse to follow it and would hand in his resignation along with the entire Centcom headquarter’s. So far only the Navy and Army’s superior officers’ resistance has prevented the neoconservatives and the Air Force to launch the operations."

The article's logic deals with an attack on Iran, followed by an Iranian response, which response will destroy the Fifth Fleet. This outcome had been the outcome of the Millenium Challenge war games of 2002 with Iraq as the enemy, not Iran. (Of course, we wonder why the $250 million games which obviously required a good deal of planning took place in 2002. Accounts state that the games required 2 years of planning, putting its genesis back to 2000...indeed, since the US lost the war games, we may well wonder whether in 2003 at the start of the real war the US KNEW that Iraq did not possess the weaponry necessary for destroying its fleet.)

So I had been expecting a casus belli for some time. Even if there is no intentional warlike act perpetrated by either side, when you shove two parties who do not like each other into close quarters where they are literally tripping over each other, it is only a matter of time before some lovely little incident occurs. The situation is ripe for a war-like act, whether intentional or unintentional.
 
And since the US government already knows that Iran possesses the weaponry which destroyed the Fifth Fleet in Millenium Challenge, perhaps some within the US government think that they may as well sacrifice a part of the fleet to get things going...since the fleet will be destroyed anyway. Who knows?

http://mcgeek.com/news/geekus/229  
The Man Who Kicked Blue Team's Ass 
 (Note that Blue Team was the US and Red Team was Iraq and General Paul Van Riper was the head of Red Team.)

"When games began, Riper attacked first, using small boats and planes (very many of them civilian), which he'd placed circling in the Gulf. Riper used coded messages broadcast from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer, as well as motorcycle messengers to transmit orders. There were no high-tech communications for the US to intercept. He ordered unanticipated chemical attacks. He also ordered al-Qaida-style suicide attacks by the small boats and planes, and Chinese Silkworm-type cruise missiles, which sank the US fleet's only aircraft carrier and two marine helicopter carriers. Altogether, sixteen ships were sunk. In the first day Red Team had essentially defeated Blue Team. "

This morning I read that the audio accompanying the US Navy's video stating that the speedboats would crash into the Navy vessels and explode cannot be traced to the speedboats. The voices could have come from any ship, US or Iranian. There are other oddities. So it goes.
note: the article's author Dr. Salla has some unorthodox opinions, but these are in areas not germane to this discussion. 

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