Official Story of Great Iranian Kidnapping story of 2016 has Changed: Nothing to See Here. Move Along

by Scott Creighton

Last night on Hardball, some fat pundit was chatting with Chris Mathews talking about how Paul Ryan didn’t applaud enough while Obama was giving his SOTU address (which I translated for you guys here). The slobbering Mathews took exception to this while chunky kinda laughed it off saying Paul was just making sure to maintain his image as an Obama-contrarian. Obama later praised Ryan for passing the budget bill to which Ryan had attached the new CISPA right before the vote. Obama thought that was a good idea I guess. He signed it anyway after previously promising to veto the new, fascist surveillance bill. One more Obama promise out the window.

Back to the point…

The hefty pundit pointed out how Ryan smirked when Obama praised himself and his administration for capturing and killing Osama bin Laden. The big guy treated himself to a little chuckle as he said it and the rest of the Hardball panel fell into a rather awkward silence. Mathews quickly went on to someone else.

What was it we witnessed there? What was the message with Paul Ryan’s smirk, pundit’s chuckle and Mathews’ sneering redirection of the discussion? Anyone wish to offer up an explanation? I have one.

The official story of the 10 sailors and the 2 boats which ended up in Iranian hands a couple days ago has now changed. But you’re not supposed to notice. You’re not supposed to care. Nothing to see here. Move along.

And for God’s sake, don’t chuckle when you talk about it. You’re not a turd in the punch-bowl are you?

Gone is the unbelievable version where 4 engines on 2 separate boats went out at the same time along with their radios, allowing the little ships to accidentally drift onto Farsi island, home of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps naval base, without a single call for help from the sailors in “distress”.

When the story first came out, the complicit media regurgitated this mythology ad nauseum, without regard for either a rational evaluation of the official story nor any sense of self respect from the “journalists” who dutifully parroted the ridiculously stupid explanation from Obama’s administration.

They even insulted the Iranians for not playing along saying they were making it up when they reported the boats were fine as were the sailors.

Then they tried to say that only one boat experienced “technical difficulties” and therefore BOTH boats “drifted” to the island and again, neither bothered to send a distress call as they “drifted”. Problem there? The boats appear to be in perfect working condition now that we got them back.

Oops.

So we open the over-used incinerator door and shovel all those stories into the fire and make ready for the new, slightly more believable version. Right?

How many times have we seen this happen? Amerithrax? The “pancake theory of collapse”? Yellow cake from Niger? Gaddafi bombing his own people? Nancy Lanza working at Sandy Hook elementary? The attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital an accident? “I am the joker”? Palestinians killed in Gaza were being used as human shields? Gulf of Tonkin? USS Liberty? They hate us for our freedom? How far back do you want to go?

According to the new version dictated by Sec. of Defense Ash Carter on Thursday right here in my hometown of Tampa, a sailor “misnavigated” and never reported their “mistake” via radio before the Iranians found them.

The American sailors detained by Iran earlier this week made a navigational error that mistakenly took them into Iranian territorial waters, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said on Thursday.

In a formal acknowledgment that the Persian Gulf episode was the result of an error by the United States Navy, Mr. Carter said the crews of two American patrol craft were not on a clandestine mission and “obviously had misnavigated” when they came within a few miles of Farsi Island, where Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps has a naval base.

The 10 sailors on the boats did not report the navigational error to their superiors before they were taken by the Iranians, Mr. Carter said. “It may have been they were trying to sort it out at the time when they encountered the Iranian boats,” Mr. Carter said. New York Times

Obviously. Without a doubt. We never run clandestine missions against nations we wish to regime change. That’s a conspiracy theory and will not be tolerated in this free and open society, right?

Obviously.

As Glen Greenwald aptly points out in a recent article on the subject, the slogan “inadvertently drifted” has now been officially replaced with “inadvertently strayed” due to user error (being the sailor who apparently can’t use a GPS like the one in your car)

The significant change in the official narrative is once again accompanied by the requisite dropping of the story down the old memory hole. Few if any news outlets are reporting on what was the story of the century just a few days ago. Poof. It’s gone.

Of course, the crazies at the republican debates couldn’t keep themselves from screeching about how the dreaded Iranians kidnapped a bunch of innocent American heroes and then made them kneel on the deck of their boats and forced them to smile and eat food while waiting to be released less than 24 hours later.

Jebus. Even when they treat our soldiers with decency and according to international law and it turns out we are the ones who were lying from the word “go”, the Iranians still have to be portrayed as the villains.

Perhaps next year when Jeb Bush is giving his first State of the Union address (yeah, get used to it) someone sitting behind him (Chelsea Clinton?) will give a little smirk as he recalls the Great Iranian Kidnapping story of 2016 and Chris Mathews will get testy when some chunky pundit chuckles a little at the stupidity of it all.

After all, you have to take your service to the Dark Lord seriously. You can’t afford to indulge in fibber’s glee when regurgitating the official narratives on the main stage. You can expect that kind of amateurish from some of the crisis actors. What are they, community theater guys? What else do you expect from them?

But as Chris Mathews’ reaction tells us, a little professionalism is to be expected, nay, demanded from the players on the “A” team and if you can’t get that much right, you might as well be a blogger someplace, right?

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