The year 2008 started in a very nice way, with a naval dispute between US
and Iran.
If you click here, you can download a video realeased from Pentagon, it's a
28.6 MB wmv file and you can see a 4:20 minutes file of the american
version.
One crew member of the US warship says:
"This is coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance
with international law."
he doesn't get an understable answer and he says again:
"This is coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance
with international law. I maintain no harm. Over!"
The most interesting part is the last 36 seconds when you can hear (the
video is just a black screen) a weird voice (it's like a voice from an horror film)
saying: "I am coming to you" and after the US crew member says"You're
approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters, your
identity is not known, your intentionts are unclear [...]" the unidentified
voice says "You will explode after a few minutes."
If you click here, you can see a Pentagon page with 2 versions of the naval dispute, the short version (i already talked about it) and the long version (45 minutes! but there's not sign of any creepy voice)
If you click here, you can see a short video (in Reuters site) that shows the iranian version.
The video showed an Iranian naval officer in a small speedboat speaking via
radio to a ship which could not be clearly identified (we know that there's
high probability it was the american warship).
Iranian officer: "Coalition warship 73 this (is an) Iranian navy patrol
boat"
"This is coalition warship 73. I read you loud and clear," the person
replied with an American accent.
The Iranian officer then appeared to ask for the ships to identify
themselves, though his words at times were indistinguishable:
"Coalition warship 73 this (is) Iranian navy patrol boat, request side
number ... operating in the area (at) this time."
In this video, there's no trace of the creepy voice threating to explod the
americans. Who said that? The iranian say: the audio of the voice was fabricated. Was it? Who can tell?
There are rumours, the Guardian (but it's not the only one) wrote about it,
that the threatening voice heard on the US clip may, in fact, be that of a
prankster given the nickname "Filipino Monkey".
According to wikipedia, "Filipino Monkey" is just a pseudonym used by radio
pranksters in maritime radio transmissions since at least the 1980s,
especially in the Persian Gulf.
If a radio prankster might cause an american warship almost firing against an
iranian boat, i would say that the naval system of communication is not
working properly, is it?
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