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Justin
9/11 Truth Organiser
Joined: 27 Jul 2005
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Location: Cumbria / Yorkshire Dales
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 Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 10:47 am Post subject: Why no cover for Royal Navy boarding party? |
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Please check out my latest findings at the end of my first effort - proof positive that the Boarding Party were deliberately sacrificed.
What really happened to Royal Navy boarding party? (updated Friday 30 March)
By Justin Walker (jrgwalker@aol.com) Wednesday 28 March 2007
'There is something very fishy going on. HMS Cornwall is a state of the art ship with a radar tracking system that would have seen the Iranian boats as they left port. Why did the captain of HMS Cornwall not go to cut off the Iranians?. Why did the gemini boats not fight or at least run away when they saw the six boats coming?. No Royal Navy captain would send its people out without protection! Either the captain is an incompetent fool OR he was ordered to stand by and do nothing!' -- Beryl Hutchinson, Larnaca, Cyprus
'Knowing the waters well and having been myself 'captured' by the IRG, something smells here. Cornwall had the eye in the sky (helicopter) watching overhead, the zodiac boats can do 30 knots and the interdict was approx 2 miles from Cornwall. How did they not see the Iranian fleet steam up and 'surround' the zodiacs? How do you surround a rubber dinghy capable of 30 knots. Or is this the issue the USA has been needing to justify an offensive move against Iran?' -- Phillip Carr, Sherborne
The above people made these comments in the BBC 'Have Your Say' section of the BBC News website. If you know anything about the military and how things are done, there is absolutely no way that these poor sailors and marines were accidently allowed to be captured - this was a carefully planned 'psych op' to escalate British and overseas public opinion into accepting military action against Iran.
Poor Faye Turney -- interviewed by the BBC just moments before she went out on this 'routine' search of a 'smuggling' ship. We all know from our research into 9/11 that you have to believe in huge coincidences if you are to believe the official story. Well how about this ... there are currently thousands of British servicemen and women operating in Iraq and the Gulf and, guess what, not only does the BBC embed itself with the actual ship that was going to be involved with this major news story (along with selected newspaper journalists), but they also just happen to interview the young woman a couple of hours before she goes out on patrol. The 'hidden hand' needs a human face to get the most from this sort of operation -- if it were just fifteen hunky males in trouble, we would be concerned but not that concerned ... but a young mother with a three-year-old waiting back home for Mummy to come back, now that's something to really get people animated about.
Now to the actual capture itself. The military always, when they put their people into harms way, ensure that close support is available in the form of immediate firepower and reinforcements. The only exception to this are Special Forces who are trained to operate independently of other friendly units and to be able to operate behind enemy lines without immediate backup. A boarding party from a Royal Navy ship are not Special Forces, even though half of them in this particular case were Royal Marine commandos. The normal procedure for a Royal Navy boarding party is for their ship to place itself in a position were it can give covering or warning fire from its most appropriate weaponry, which in this case would have been shipboard mounted GPMGs (General Purpose Machine Guns) and the ship's helicopter. In other words, the boarding party's ship would be no more than 1800 metres (effective range of a mounted GPMG) away from the designated ship to be searched. So what happened in this particular case -- how far away was HMS Cornwall from this freighter? If it was further than two kilometres then that boarding party was deliberately sent out to be captured ... and if Cornwall was within two kilometres then why no support given with warning shots?
HMS Cornwall is bristling with radar and high tech surveillance devices -- how come they did not pick up the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's patrol boats as they were approaching the RN boarding party? And what about the helicopter -- one report says it was sent away when it was seen that the boarding party had received a friendly welcome from the suspected freighter. If that's true, then this is a break with normal SOPs (standing operational procedures).
It is also reported that the Cornwall had communication problems with the boarding party -- now problems with radios do occur, but the ship should have been close enough for other forms of communications to be used (lights, rockets and signal flags) in order to alert the boarding party as to the Iranian patrol boats movements. We also learn from other sources that Commodore Nick Lambert, senior naval officer in the area, was desperately trying to sort out Rules of Engagement with the Ministry of Defence in London and that hesitation here prevented any action from being taken to save the boarding party from capture. Excuse me! Rules of Engagement are decided before deployment and are constantly reviewed, and at no time would you put your people into harms way without knowing your latest Rules of Engagement.
One final thing -- the Rigid Inflatable Boats (RIBs) used by the boarding party are capable of over 30 knots and, as we have seen when Greenpeace use them effectively, are extremely manouvreable. I just find it very strange that skilful avoiding tactics using excellent boatmanship (which you would expect from the Royal Navy), but not firing any shots to exacerbate the situation, were not used by the boarding party to get back to the Cornwall -- assuming of course the Cornwall was at a distance offering 'close support'.
The Ministry of Defence should give us an accurate, minute by minute, account of what happened, but my belief is that we will never know the full truth. Let's hope that some of the Navy personnel involved will speak out.
VERY IMPORTANT UPDATE Friday 30 March 2007:
On Thursday 29th March, the Guardian newspaper reported the official British version of events as given by the Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2044448,00.html ). Their article reads:
| Quote: | Three minutes in which routine boarding turned into armed ambush
· Iranian craft swarmed around naval boats
· Personnel were put in an 'impossible position'
Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday March 29, 2007
Guardian
The Royal Navy for the first time yesterday gave a detailed account of the circumstances surrounding the capture of 15 navy personnel by heavily armed Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
They described in graphic detail how what they called an "entirely routine" boarding of an Indian-flagged vessel took place 7.5 nautical miles south-east of the al-Faw peninsula, the southern tip of Iraq, on Friday morning last week.
A boarding party of eight sailors and seven marines left the frigate HMS Cornwall in fast rigid inflatable boats - Ribs, as the navy calls them. The vessel they raced towards had been spotted unloading cars into two barges secured alongside.
As the search took place, four naval personnel were left to look after their boats and monitor the data link which kept it in contact with the frigate.
The remaining 11 boarded the merchant vessel at 7.39 local time. They carried SA80 rifles or pistols, and the Cornwall's Lynx helicopter hovered overhead.
Vice Admiral Charles Style, deputy chief of the defence staff, described the operation as "entirely routine business", conducted in an area where four other boardings had recently been completed without fuss. The boarding party finished inspecting the vessel, which was cleared to carry on its business, at 9.10am.
The 11 sailors and marines were leaving the vessel when "very heavily armed Iranian vessels" arrived. Adm Style said the Iranian crew initially appeared friendly.
However, with their two boats equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns a few feet away, the Iranians suddenly became aggressive. Four other Iranian craft quickly came on the scene. "They came out to swarm around our boats and shepherded them in," said a senior naval officer. He added: "The navy personnel were put in an almost impossible position."
The Iranian ambush, carried out with six boats capable of 40 knots, took place in three minutes. British military sources insisted yesterday that commanders engaged in patrolling the northern Gulf were "entirely satisfied" with their rules of engagement. "They had all the freedom they needed, all rights to engage in self-defence," said one senior military officer. The naval personnel had acted "in a professional way".
HMS Cornwall could not come to their aid since the boarding took place in very shallow water. The frigate was more than four miles away at the time of the ambush, according to naval sources.
Communications between the naval boarding party and the Cornwall were lost at 9.10. The Lynx helicopter, which had left the scene, returned to locate the boarding team. The helicopter crew reported that the boarding party and their boats were being "escorted by Iranian Islamic Republican Guard Navy vessels towards the Shatt al-Arab waterway and were now inside Iranian territorial waters."
The government's apparent confidence that its case was solid was reflected in Ministry of Defence briefings yesterday. Adm Style pointed out that the British boarding party's two boats were equipped with GPS (global positioning system) chart plotters. Satellite data on the boats and on the Cornwall's Lynx helicopter proved the 15 naval personnel and the merchant ship they boarded had been inside Iraqi waters, British military officers said. Adm Style gave the position of the merchant vessel, and hence the boarding party, as 29 degrees 50.36 minutes north 048 degrees 43.08 minutes east. He said: "This places her 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi territorial waters. This fact has been confirmed by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry."
He said the Iranian government had provided Britain with two different positions for the incident, the first on Saturday and the second on Monday. The first of these was within Iraqi territorial waters, he said, and that was pointed out to the Iranians on Sunday in diplomatic contacts. The Iranians then provided a second set of coordinates that placed the incident in Iranian waters more than two nautical miles from the position given by HMS Cornwall.
Adm Style added: "On Sunday morning, March 25, HMS Cornwall's Lynx conducted an overflight of the merchant vessel, which was still at anchor, and once agian confirmed her location on global positioning system equipment. Her master confirmed that his vessel had remained at anchor since Friday, and was in Iraqi territorial waters."
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Without a shadow of doubt, it is this paragraph in the article that proves to me that this incident was entirely engineered by the 'hidden hand' to enrage and so prepare Britain for the imminent attack on Iran:
"HMS Cornwall could not come to their aid since the boarding took place in very shallow water. The frigate was more than four miles away at the time of the ambush, according to naval sources."
As I pointed out in my initial article, the ideal situation for searching suspicious ships and boats in a war zone would be to have the boarding party's ship take up a position where immediate fire support, using GPMGs, can be called upon to protect the boarding party and to ward off any further hostile action. The ideal distance would be around one kilometre, not over 6 kilometres.
Now let's look at the so-called 'shallow water' shall we. According to Navy News, the draught of HMS Cornwall is 6.3 metres (http://www.navynews.co.uk/ships/cornwall.asp)
The Indian registered vessel being checked by the Cornwall's boarding party when their seizure occurred was anchored in the channel leading to the Shatt al Arab waterway which in turn leads to the Al Basrah Port. This port is able to take vessels whose tonnage is much bigger than the 4,850 tonnes of the Cornwall. Have a look at the official statistics given by the maritime industry for the port (http://steelmillsoftheworld.com/ports/display.asp?id=48400). You will see clearly that the Channel Depth to the Al Basrah Port is between 7.9 and 9.1 metres and that the anchorage is between 9.4 and 10.7 metres.
So why did HMS Cornwall not steam to within one kilometre of the suspect vessel instead of anchoring over 6 kilometres away in a position where it could not offer close support as is normal practice in a war zone? The British Government and the Ministry of Defence must be challenged about this - many believe that a short but devastating attack by the United States on the regime in Iran is perhaps only days away:
http://www.rense.com/general75/bite.htm
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TonyGosling
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Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 18335
Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
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| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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Under review
Bearing in mind the occupation of Iraq is illegal under the UN Charter - Royal Navy policy is now 'under review' according to five live at 1pm today - could this be why?
| Quote: |
March 29, 2007
Both Sides Must Stop This Mad Confrontation, Now
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/weblog.html
There is no agreed maritime boundary between Iraq and Iran in the Persian Gulf. Until the current mad propaganda exercise of the last week, nobody would have found that in the least a controversial statement.
Let me quote, for example, from that well known far left source Stars and Stripes magazine, October 24 2006.
'Bumping into the Iranians can’t be helped in the northern Persian Gulf, where the lines between Iraqi and Iranian territorial water are blurred, officials said.
"No maritime border has been agreed upon by the two countries," Lockwood said.'
That is Royal Australian Navy Commodore Peter Lockwood. He is the Commander of the Combined Task Force in the Northern Persian Gulf.
I might even know something about it myself, having been Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1989 to 1992, and having been personally responsible in the Embargo Surveillance Centre for getting individual real time clearance for the Royal Navy to board specific vessels in these waters.
As I feared, Blair adopted the stupid and confrontational approach of publishing maps ignoring the boundary dispute, thus claiming a very blurred situation is crystal clear and the Iranians totally in the wrong. This has in turn notched the Iranians up another twist in their own spiral of intransigence and stupidity.
Both the British and the Iranian governments are milking this for maximum propaganda value and playing to their respective galleries. Neither has any real care at all for either the British captives or the thousands who could die in Iran and Basra if this gets out of hand.
Tony Blair's contempt for Middle Eastern lives has already been adequately demonstrated in Iraq and Lebanon. His lack of genuine concern for British servicemen demonstrated by his steadfast refusal to meet even one parent of a dead British serviceman or woman, killed in the wars he created. He is confronting an Iranian leadership with an equal lust for glory and lack of human concern.
It is essential now for both sides to back down. No solution is possible if either side continues to insist that the other is completely in the wrong and they are completely in the right. And the first step towards finding a peaceful way out, is to acknowledge the self-evident truth that maritime boundaries are disputed and problematic in this area.
Both sides can therefore accept that the other acted in good faith with regard to their view of where the boundary was. They can also accept that boats move about and all the coordinates given by either party were also in good faith. The captives should be immediately released and, to international acclamation, Iran and Iraq, which now are good neighbours, should appoint a joint panel of judges to arbitrate a maritime boundary and settle this boundary dispute.
That is the way out. For the British to insist on their little red border line, or the Iranians on their GPS coordinates, plainly indicates a greater desire to score propaganda points in the run up to a war in which a lot of people will die, than to resolve the dispute and free the captives. The international community needs to put heavy pressure on both Britain and Iran to stop this mad confrontation.
The British people must break out of the jingoism created by their laudable concern for their servicemen and woman, and realise that this is just a small part of the madness of our policy of continual war in the Middle East. That is what we have to stop. |
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ian neal
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physicist
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| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:48 pm Post subject: Re: Why no cover for Royal Navy boarding party? |
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| Justin wrote: | Please check out my latest findings at the end of my first effort - proof positive that the Boarding Party were deliberately sacrificed.
What really happened to Royal Navy boarding party? (updated Friday 30 March)
By Justin Walker (jrgwalker@aol.com) Wednesday 28 March 2007
'There is something very fishy going on. HMS Cornwall is a state of the art ship with a radar tracking system that would have seen the Iranian boats as they left port. Why did the captain of HMS Cornwall not go to cut off the Iranians?. Why did the gemini boats not fight or at least run away when they saw the six boats coming?. No Royal Navy captain would send its people out without protection! Either the captain is an incompetent fool OR he was ordered to stand by and do nothing!' -- Beryl Hutchinson, Larnaca, Cyprus
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They were having a training exercise on that day. Eventually, aid was sent but they went in the wrong direction. So they decided to pull it. Luckily they found an Iranian passport inside Iraqi waters - it wasn't even wet. |
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xmasdale
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| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:10 pm Post subject: |
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post removed by author
Last edited by xmasdale on Fri Mar 30, 2007 7:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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xmasdale
Angel - now passed away
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:11 pm Post subject: |
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There was a discussion about it on BBC2's Newsnight, last night in which a British and an Iranian "expert" were interviewed together. The Briton was a former ambassador to Iran, the Iranian a professor whose last name, I think, was Firouz. Both agreed that the UK government had recklessly and unnecessarily upped the anti by taking the incident to the Security Council with undue haste rather than seeking a bilateral solution first.
I had a nasty feeling about this incident when it was first reported. We need to get into the open these concerns and the fear that this is the coalition looking for a way of getting public backing for an airstrike on Iran. |
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Thermate
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Joined: 13 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 3:18 pm Post subject: Re: Why no cover for Royal Navy boarding party? |
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| physicist wrote: | | They were having a training exercise on that day. Eventually, aid was sent but they went in the wrong direction. So they decided to pull it. Luckily they found an Iranian passport inside Iraqi waters - it wasn't even wet. |
rofl... sounds about right.
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Banish
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Joined: 18 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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| xmasdale wrote: | There was a discussion about it on BBC2's Newsnight, last night in which a British and an Iranian "expert" were interviewed together. The Briton was a former ambassador to Iran, the Iranian a professor whose last name, I think, was Firouz. Both agreed that the UK government had recklessly and unnecessarily upped the anti by taking the incident to the Security Council with undue haste rather than seeking a bilateral solution first.
I had a nasty feeling about this incident when it was first reported. We need to get into the open these concerns and the fear that this is the coalition looking for a way of getting public backing for an airstrike on Iran. |
Same as the Entity did when their terrorists were "captured" (whatever happened to them?) by the Lebanese. NOT. |
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Anthony Lawson
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| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 6:46 pm Post subject: Shameful |
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A Shameful Display by a British Prime Minister
To watch Blair, who has the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on his hands, metaphorically wringing them with righteous indignation was almost beyond belief.
Then we had to witness the appalling display of two-faced, double-standard indignation by other British and U.S. officials, because the Iranian’s have shown those they’ve captured on television, which is more than can be said for those who have been whisked away to foreign torture chambers, in the dead of night, or off to Guantanamo Bay by the CIA, then held without trial for five or more years. And all that with hardly a peep from the British government.
At least the relatives of the unfortunate British service personnel can see that they are in good health and that they appear to be in reasonably good spirits. There didn’t seem to be any evidence that they had been scared to death by attack dogs or to have suffered any of the other unspeakable indignities, such as simulated rape and sleep deprivation, that we all know took place at Abu Graib, just outside Baghdad, all overseen by the United States forces.
Yes, this has all of the hallmarks of a setup in preparation for an attack on Iran. The question is, will the Iranians decide to use the sailors as shields against such an attack? Morality is not a one-way-way street, and we've seen little evidence, recently, that the Coalition is strictly observing the Geneva conventions.
Anthony
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Linda
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