UPDATE: Despite the expertise of Kevin Drum’s commenters, the New York Times agrees that the encounter was probably an Iranian strategic exercise. The 2002 War Games in the Gulf used similar, although more complex, tectics to defeat a US fleet. The Gulf is a very confined area for fleet activity. New doctrine and, perhaps, even new ship designs may be necessary for these symmetric tactics. The Army and Marine Corps have adjusted tactics in Iraq. The Navy may need new concepts and soon. The Air Force is facing what may be the end of the manned aircraft era.
According to Kevin Drum’s commenters, this is just another BushCheney conspiracy to fool the Senate into going to war. This is BDS run amok. Even for them this is silly. Some liberals (A term I don’t use often), aren’t buying the Glenn Greenwald line.
The Navy has adopted new measures recommended by the DoD commission on the Cole bombing. The lefties aren’t interested in that incident because it happened on Clinton’s watch.
“The investigation clearly shows that the commanding officer of Cole did not have the specific intelligence, focused training,appropriate equipment or on-scene security support to effectively prevent or deter such a determined, preplanned assault on his ship,” Clark said. “In short, the system – all of us – did not equip this Skipper for success in the environment he encountered in Aden harbor that fateful day.”
Austin Bay seems to agree with me that this was probably a probe of the new “close-in” defenses that have been prepared since the Cole incident. But don’t tell that to the BDS lunatics over at Kevin Drum’s blog. They are sure it is all a Bush plot.