U.S sinks N.Korean ship on its way to Iran!

I simply don't believe this is true.

I would be shocked that 2 ships would be sunk instead of borded and forced to turn around or at most captured, confiscate cargo, question crew and return.

With the ship sunk on the bottom of the ocean,
1) It wouldn't help cheneys cause for war with iran. Video camera's showing all the stuff etc would.
2) Massive contamination would probably result and radiation sensors would be going off all over the place and this would be in the news in other countries at the very least.

It just doesn't make sense.

Classify this as a FALSE STORY.

North Korea has ships.

Iran might not be able to have WMDs without North Korea.

Do you think the A Bombs will fly at IRAN and North Korea like
they almost did to Cuba and Russia.

Those were the good old days until JFK stifled it.

Some old ship might have sunk on its on volition or a fire weakened the steel.

The US Navy fire a torpedo, thats absurd.

Why would US Marines board the ship? It would be SEALs, not Marines.
Why would the US torpedo the ship and risk destroying the evidence?
Why would the US commit an open act of war against NK before exhausting other options?
Why would Iran and NK, and anyone with hydrophones and aerial sensors in the region keep the incident quite?

These questions can be satisfactorily explained as such the story is likely false. The US very rarely departs away from standard operating procedure to conduct a military operation of this type.

Originally posted by Muaddib
Why is that Gools, do you believe anything and everything the Israelis say is not true?...

That's bordering in being a racist statement don't you think?

... but when someone makes such a statement as you just did, as far as i know DEBKA is not a tabloit, it seems a bit strange to me.

Don't put words in my mouth mister! And don't impugn any motives, intent or beliefs upon me based on YOUR biases and lack of reading comprehension.

If you had followed the link I gave and the linked example in the other thread (and in a later post in this one) you would have seen but just ONE example of why I don't trust Debka as a source of information. Your personal distaste for some of my political views and understanding doesn't play into it.

You could be right, i can't say either way,

So why make the comments you made then?

I thought so... typing out of your biased rear end again I see.
.

[edit on 7/29/2007 by Gools]

Originally posted by Gools

Don't put words in my mouth mister!

And don't impugn any motives, intent or beliefs upon me based on YOUR biases and lack of reading comprehension.

I didn't put any words in your mouth...but you decided just to claim this was not true because it is "DEBKA", and as i said as far as i know DEBKA is not a tabloid, so why would anyone just want to dismiss it because it is "DEBKA"?... We all know it is an Israeli source and for you apparently it's name alone means it is all lies....

You should have presented some "proof" instead of just claiming "it is DEBKA, it is lying" ( not in those same words, but that's what you are claiming) ....and as proof for your claim you give another link in which you state the same thing as proof?...

Originally posted by Gools
If you had followed the link I gave and the linked example in the other thread (and in a later post in this one) you would have seen but just ONE example of why I don't trust Debka as a source of information. Your personal distaste for some of my political views and understanding doesn't play into it.

You could be right, i can't say either way,

So why make the comments you made then?

Because all the reason you gave is that the article is from DEBKA, and DEBKa is an Israeli website.... then as proof to this claim you made you just present another link in which you make the exact same claim "it is DEBKA, so they are lying", hence it seems you just want to dismiss it because it is an Israeli website....

Originally posted by Gools
I thought so... typing out of your biased rear end again I see.
.

Naa, i don't do that, i leave that for people like yourself.....

[edit on 29-7-2007 by Muaddib]

and once again you are spouting your biased judeofacist crap.

you make up `statements` to suit your own agenda and twist words far better than any politician can.

You really are a master of splitting hairs and willfull blindness aren't you?

I know you don't do subtlety Muaddib so I'll try to explain one LAST time.

I said I doubted the story because it came from Debka. Did you read the example I gave? Make it all the way to the thread about investors being told to evacuate? Or did you just blow a gasket at my first mention of Debka and refuse to see anything more? Debka was the source for that story as well. It was never confirmed and denials were published in several more reputable and mainstream sources.

So contrary to the inferences you are trying to allude to in you posts about me I will try and spell it out for you. I treat Debka the same way I treat Znet or World Nut Daily or any other "source" of information until such time as I have enough experience with it to make a logical and educated guess as to it's validity and reliability. I don't see the need to have to explain my entire history with a "source" every time I mention one so as to counter your perception of bias on my part.

FOR THE RECORD (since you seem so intent on painting me with some kind of broad brush) I do not automatically assume that an Israeli source is lying. I also do not assume that a source like Al Jazeera is lying either. I understand that truth lies somewhere in the grey zones between biased extremes. Something you rarely demonstrate an understanding of.

I'm done here. I think the membership can clearly see what is going on between us.

I suggest we get back to the topic of the US apparently sinking and (possibly) destroying the smoking gun evidence they could use to justify an invasion of Iran.
.

edit: spelling

[edit on 7/29/2007 by Gools]

Originally posted by Gools
You really are a master of splitting hairs and willfull blindness aren't you?
...........
FOR THE RECORD (since you seem so intent on painting me with some kind of broad brush) I do not automatically assume that an Israeli source is lying. I also do not assume that a source like Al Jazeera is lying either. I understand that truth lies somewhere in the grey zones between biased extremes. Something you rarely demonstrate an understanding of.

I'm done here. I think the membership can clearly see what is going on between us.
..............

Gools, i don't know what in the world you are talking about "the members can see what is happening between us"... What the heck is "happening between us"???? All I know is that i read your statement in which you say "it is DEBKA, and that is all i need to know to doubt them", which is the same as saying they are lying, and now you are even stating no evidence is needed to corroborate your claim, and in that statement you made you give as proof another ATS link in which you state the same thing, hence my first thought is that you are dismissing it because it is DEBKA, an Israeli website/news source...

As for your comment on Al Jazeera, yes i do not trust that source, but the reasons i have given in the past is that several Al Jazeera reporters have been incarcerated by nations like Spain, and Egypt at least for having connections with terrorists, since AL Jazeera reporters always find themselves at the right spot at the right time when a terrorist attack is about to occur. Also there have been Al Jazeera reporters were found to be working for Saddam's regime.

At least two of its Iraqi reporters and one executive had secret connections with, and apparently worked for, Saddam Hussein's intelligence service

www.discoverthenetworks.org...

arabist.net...

www.freemuslims.org...

weekly.ahram.org.eg...

I have used several times other Arab newspapers as evidence to corroborate statements i have made, so i do not dismiss any source just because "they are Arab sources"...

Even CNN and some other news media have been caught red handed making up stories, yet you do not dismiss CNN and other news sources out of hand just like you did DEBKA, why?

Anyways, you are right, we should be discussing the topic, but i won't dismiss this info until i find some real evidence that this story was made up by DEBKA as you apparently believe.


[edit on 29-7-2007 by Muaddib]

yo johnsky can you send me the link to the orchid sun and that it was a med mission. Just post it up. Thanks dude.

Originally posted by jfj123
I simply don't believe this is true.

I would be shocked that 2 ships would be sunk instead of borded and forced to turn around or at most captured, confiscate cargo, question crew and return.

With the ship sunk on the bottom of the ocean,
1) It wouldn't help cheneys cause for war with iran. Video camera's showing all the stuff etc would.
2) Massive contamination would probably result and radiation sensors would be going off all over the place and this would be in the news in other countries at the very least.

It just doesn't make sense.

Classify this as a FALSE STORY.

the points here make absolute sense and i believe, though im open minded, that its not likely its true...

Originally posted by rhombus24
yo johnsky can you send me the link to the orchid sun and that it was a med mission. Just post it up. Thanks dude.

Never said that the Orchid Sun was on a med mission, I said ships provided medical support to the Orchid Sun.

These are a couple of the links to sources that claim things other than a US sub sank it...

news.bbc.co.uk...

www.cusnc.navy.mil...

There are a few versions of what happened to the Orchid Sun. So some of them have to be false.


Clearly some of this has been planted. Whether it's for propaganda, or dis-info, it's certainly working, as there are already people on this forum thinking there is no alternative than to bomb Iran. It's that simple minded attitude that gets controlled by this stuff.

Thats fine though, lol, I'll let them go to the front lines any day. I'll stay here. Natural selection still works in some forms.

i dont support "bombing" anyone lol, not saying you particularly meant me in your post but i do have to say i enjoyed the natural selection comment. very clever and perhaps very true

So general thought of everyone is this is BS and being used for propaganda or just for ratings perhaps?

I still don't know where i stand but i must say the fact that a S.Korean ship sank is kinda odd.Makes me think someone took this normal story and jazzed it up wether for agenda or site ratings.


[edit on 29-7-2007 by Project_Silo]

No not everything of this can be false. I mean remember this was not leaked to the media in ANY form. I mean I can think back and remember hearing some things on the news about sub movements but not about this.

The media has to know about this but obviously it is against someones agenda. The news is controlled by the government, and they don't want us panicking just yet...

Before I get to the long part of this:

1. DEBKA is hit and miss- it has inherent weaknesses. Its sources are primarily Israeli military, therefore they are easier to lie to than publications with a more diverse range of sources, when it serves the interest of the Israeli military to lie. These sources provide an Israeli view of things- when a fact depends on perspective you will get it from the perspective of DEBKA's sources, which are Israeli patriots. Also, no military or intelligence organization knows everything. That means sometimes DEBKA's info will be best guesses, not facts, and sometimes people in that business dont know something, which makes their best guess WAY wrong.

It has nothing to do with race- it has to do with sources. We expect major news outlets to get the facts from both sides. Analogy: if there's a questionable call in the Superbowl, you talk to the ball carrier, you talk to the tackler, you talk to the ref, you talk to an analyst who watched it from 10 different angles. You don't just ask the ball carrier. But DEBKA is only in a position to talk to the ball carrier.

2. WestPoint23: Marines do in fact carry out boarding missions. Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Teams are responsible for "visit, board, search and seizure" on the rare occasions that it is called for. Here is a news story about them training to do it. It comes in handy since we can't keep a seal team on every ship in the fleet. I've heard a few stories on the subject because my Senior Drill Instructor was on FAST.


Now for the long part, if it's true, what are the implications:

Originally posted by johnlear
Originally posted by princeofpeace

Okay then which is worse? A Muslim with a nuke or an Arab with a nuke? What if its an Arab-Muslim?

Princeofpeace I find your post in extremely poor taste.

I would hope, although I have no way of knowing, that Prince of Peace merely failed to articulate his meaning fully.
There are in fact distinctions to be made with respect to Muslims living between Egypt and Iran (which is often erroneously simplified to "Arab Muslims").

The West screws around in their neighborhood more than it does in the neighborhoods of Indonesian Muslims or Somali Muslims.
There are still groups there going back to the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence (the Arab counterpart to the later Balfour Declaration) such as the Ba'ath Party which seek a union of Arab states, and these are distinct from those who seek a union of Muslim states; each of these represents a threat to stability through both its hostility to the other and to any outside interests standing in the way.

They are closer to Israel and so a mutual threat is introduced on top of ideological disagreement.

The rift between Shia and Sunni was created at the Battle of Karbala (which is in Iraq) and the only Shia-majority Islamic state is in their neighborhood.

There are many attributes of the middle east which add to the danger of nuclear weapons proliferating throughout the area, and in that sense a bomb in the Middle-East proper, and perhaps particularly in the hands of a threatened Arab group with an Arab-Nationalist history (Syria, Iraqi Sunnis) would raise the stakes in a way that a Pakistani bomb did not.

An Iranian bomb presents a unique set of threats. It gives them the means to control the gulf if they wish. Capser Weinberger wrote in "The Next War" that this would likely result in an Iranian invasion of the United Arab Emirates, and start an air war between them and Saudi-Arabia, UAE, and Qatar in which the US would be unable to intervene without going nuclear.

That essentially translates into the flash that could spark an all out Sunni vs Shia, Arab vs Persian war in the Middle East.

In today's geopolitical landscape, the whole of Iraq would be in play as well, not just the Shaat al-Arab as it would have been in the early 90s when "The Next War" was written. That makes Kurds and Turks players and places Kuwait in the cross fire as well. Turkey's smart move would be to act only against the Kurds and play switzerland- a "neutral" that only helps Iran- which might, although not necessarily, increase tensions with Syria enough to start a war if Syria didn't find it tennable to side with Iran.

Israel would almost have to get involved because if Iran gets the US by the short and curlies, Israel is doomed to economic destruction. That strips Jordan and Syria of the ability to stay neutral, which is a nightmare for them because both sides would be nuclear, and neither side would represent their interests- on the one hand defending the Saudis and Iraqis means siding with Israel and defying Syria's ally, Iran. Siding with Iran puts them at war with nations immediately bordering them though.

The Egyptian government will have to be tough to prevent a rebellion, because they probably will attempt to stay neutral.


In short, the worst case scenario is a gigantic mess of unprecedented proportion. When Pakistan got the bomb their tensions with India were so high and their historical ambitions so limited that there was never much danger to Iran and Afghanistan.

It would take a pan-islamic revolution in Pakistan to make them even remotely comparable, and even still they wouldn't be likely to do much more than mutually invade Afghanistan with Iran, then get into a power struggle with the Iranian leadership when they started talking about unification (same sort of thing that lead to Saddam's coup against Bakr, or the dissolution of the United Arab Republic) which would lead to Iran trouncing Pakistan in conventional battle after initial Pakistani successes, then Pakistan going nuclear on Iran and the international community backing Pakistan down (because they don't have the missile range to blackmail the West).

So yes, to make a long story short, this would be unprecedented if true.


But is it true? I rather doubt it. Even if the ship was near the Iranian coast, boarding would have been perfectly viable, given the stakes. A small possibility of having one of our destroyers attacked with cruise missiles on a mission that could produce evidence that would allow us to act before we face a nuclear standoff is the textbook definition of acceptable risk, especially since we've already seen that the standard Iranian response is to board, not to attack with missiles, and that we could have anticipated that and used the submarine to cover the operation, sinking any threat to the boarding operation, but not the freighter.

Given the nature of DEBKA, and the conflicting reports, i'd say that this story is born not of fact but of suspicion. I believe that the original sources aren't, or at least initially weren't, certain of what happened, and started playing connect the dots to make sense of why they had reason to suspect that our navy may have attacked the ship.

I think there are a LOT of things going on in the Middle East and all over the world that may never be known to the public. Some of this information should really be made public and some should probably legitimately be kept secret.

We need to keep in mind that every media outlet, every government, every military, every non-governmental group has a bias and an agenda. I have not found any such group that I trust completely. Debka will naturally emphasize stories that promote or support their bias and agenda. CNN, ABC, BBC, FOX, AP, and everybody else do the same thing to some degree or another. It is very enlightening to pick one widely reported news story and compare how the “spin” on that story varies from on media outlet to another.

As for this story that the US intentionally attacked and sunk a North Korean ship – I say it is entirely possible. It is also possible that the whole incident is “disinformation” planted by someone to promote their agenda. Maybe this incident is a small part of a much larger plan. Here is a wild guess at one scenario:

• The US is negotiating with NK to get them to shut down their nuclear reactors
• NK agrees to shut down the reactors as long as the US does not object to NK selling the fuel to other nations to “recover their investment”
• NK removes the fuel to sell to Iran for a hefty profit
• The US watches and smiles
• The fuel from NK leaves for Iran – being closely tracked by US satellites
• The US waits until the ship is in deep water very close to Iran
• The US sinks the ship and tells nobody
• Iran doesn’t get the fuel and NK doesn’t have it either
• Iran and NK now have a large financial dispute
• The US has deniability – “the ship just sunk, we weren’t anywhere near it”
• There is no obvious US military action in International waters
• There is no international outcry that the US is launching illegal military actions
• There is no risk of US military casualties or an obvious confrontation
• Iran and NK both know the US sunk the ship but can’t say anything about it
• Iran and NK both know the US will take serious covert action against them
• Iran and NK must now decide whether to retaliate or not
• If Iran or NK retaliate then GWB has his “provocation” to justify a RETLIATORY attack on Iran or NK or both (GWB wins)
• If Iran and NK don’t retaliate then they are weakened and GWB keeps smiling and waiting (GWB wins)
• If the whole story somehow leaks out then GWB can claim a victory in thwarting another evil Iranian and North Korean plot with covert action that doesn’t risk additional American lives (GWB wins)
• If radiation is detected in the waters near Iran than that is just more evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons and needs to be stopped (GWB wins)
• If the radiation causes an environmental disaster off the coast of Iran it is just more evidence of those evil Iranians again (GWB wins)

I completely agree with your post.^^^^

OK I think some people are missing a BIG point here.

It would not have been a South Korean ship, it would have been a North Korean ship.

S. Korea=allie
N. Korea=bad

Don't say I'm being picky. If you can't get the name of a country right, how am I expected to believe anything else after that. Also if the original news story says S. Korea then close this thread now.

lol it says N.Korean so why come talking trash when you havent read it.

lol it says N.Korean so why come talking trash when you havent read it.

The article may say that and if it does then thats fine. If you had read my reply in it's entirety, you would have noticed that people here are posting that it has to do with S. Korea. This has happened several times so I am correcting them. I therefore am not talking trash, I'm talking facts.

The story was supposed to be about N. Korea, not S. Korea.
Also, I still believe the story is VERY false.