Jebbie... "I doubt if the ships in this incident we ever really in danger from those boats. If they were, the Captains need to be beached."

You and your mom were in danger. If your radio failed or you didn't hear it. I think that's the point. If suicide bombers will blow themselves up, why not let themselves get blow into paradise for a propaganda coup provided by another international incident like the shootdown of the Iranian passenger liner? You, of all people, should be doing less of this silly second guessing than the rest.

Why me of all people? What makes me special? Was it because I understood why a naval vessel would desire that an unknown civilian vessel keep its distance?

I wasn't guessing, second or otherwise, LWM. If the Captain of a US Naval vessel allows his vessle and crew to be endangered unnecessarily, he should be beached. I believe that and, most of all, I believe the US Navy also believes it.

Obviously, the Captain(s) of our naval ships involved in this incident did not believe their ships were in imminent danger or they would have done more than blow the ship's whistle (listen to the audio of one of the tapes) and contact the boats on the hailing frequency. I've no doubt that the weapons systems on all these vessels were ready for release the instant the Captain(s) gave the word.

It was fairly obvious that the boats in the video were not packed with explosives. Boats of that size which are loaded down don't handle like that and they don't react to waves like that. Can we agree to scratch the term "suicide bomb" from the discussion list?

Someone here mentioned that the Iranians have an exocet type anti-ship missle. That's true but those missles aren't of a size which would easily be fired from a small outboard runabout type of boat as was shown in the video. Can we scratch that missle from the list also?

Iran possess small heatseaking anti-aircraft missles which would work against a warship. The problem with those missles is that (a) they take a short period of time to warm up sufficiently to make their seeker heads active, and they emit radiation which can be detected by their target. I have no doubt that our ships (none of the three were old and (I'd guess all of them have been through major update overhauls within the last 3 years) are equipped with sensors which would detect such weapons from a distance. As a matter of fact, the short distance involved in this incident would probably make such the operation of weapons of this sort extremely problematic.

That leaves us with the Iranians possessing weapons similar to an RPG. There is no mention of shoulder fired weapons being visible to our crews.

How much of a threat were these boats? They were enough of a threat that the Captains of our ships blew the ship's whistles and issued a warning to stay away. The Iranians complied.

What's the problem?

The problem is that someone in the administration took a nominally innocent incident and tried to make a big deal of it.

THAT's THE PROBLEM.

Does anyone here know for certain the destination or mission of our naval vessels which were in contact with Iranian naval vessels the other day?

for someone to tell me what the destination and mission was of our ships transiting the Straight of Hormuz.

LWM has refered me to a site which allegedly tells us where our carrier groups are but that sight doesn't tell us the content of those groups (which it shouldn't) but I can't seem to find any information regarding the specific destination or mission of our cruisers and frigates. None of the press reports tells us anything except that they were entering the Gulf (which tells us that they were heading inbound and not out but not much more).

The reason I asked this question earlier is that unless we know the mission of the ships, we really can't say they were protecting anything, much less the flow of oil. Generally, and historically, when we were on tanker protection missions, the tankers were "convoyed" (albeit loosely) and our escorting ships would cruise ahead, behind and along side the tankers (or freighters). This doesn't seem to be the case in this instance which leads me to believe that they were not in the immediate business of protecting the flow of oil.

I have no way of knowing but I suspect these ships were enroute to the Gulf to take over as part of the protective screen of the one remaining carrier we have there.

Anyway..... I eagerly await further disclosures from our government as to why "details" of this particular incident were released as a major news story and by whose order that release was made.

Think we'll ever get to the bottom of it?