Straits of Hormuz/Gulf of Tonkin

For the love of Pete, are these knuckleheads completely incapable of telling the truth?

The list of those who are less than fully confident in the Pentagon’s video/audio mashup of aggressive maneuvers by Iranian boats near American warships in the Strait of Hormuz now includes the Pentagon itself.

Unnamed Pentagon officials said on Wednesday that the threatening voice heard in the audio clip, which was released on Monday night with a disclaimer that it was recorded separately from the video images and merged with them later, is not directly traceable to the Iranian military.

That undercuts one of the most menacing elements from the Pentagon’s assertion that Iranian forces threatened the Navy ships: The voice on the radio saying, “I am coming to you. … You will explode after … minutes.”

Unfortunately, W was off like a shot:

President Bush called the incident "a provocative act" and "dangerous situation." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continued to play up the Iranian threat. "The United States is going to defend its interests, it's going to defend the interests of its allies," she said defensively. "Iran is the single most important, greatest threat to the kind of Middle East we all want to see. It's a supporter of terrorism in Iraq, in Lebanon, in the Palestinian territories. It has nuclear ambitions."

When I was a teacher, I worked in the maintenance shed at the school in the summer. My teaching partner, let's call him Louie, worked with me, and while he had much more skill as a carpenter/painter/electrician/roofer than I, neither one of us were exactly Bob Vila. Whenever we ran into a problem, whether it was fixing a window, hanging a cabinet, starting a tractor, or fixing the bus, we'd always come up with the same solution.

"hit it with a hammer".

We were hung over school teachers, pretending to be maintenance men, working on old machinery. Fast forward twenty years, and we now have that type of guy in the White House. Every challenge that he faces all along the spectrum of issues that a President faces, he comes up with the same solution.

"hit it with a hammer".

You don't think so? Dig this:

Mr Bush also visited Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Looking at aerial photographs taken by US aircraft of Auschwitz, the most notorious death camp, he declared that America had been wrong not to bomb it to stop the mass-extermination taking place there.

Wonderful idea, bombing Auschwitz. That would've worked well.