About the coordinates… according to Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, “…on British nautical maps, 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East is 100 yards above the low water line.” Legally this puts the supposed position of the capture on dry ground. But, as he points out, that is a red herring. There is no established boundry worked out between Iraq and Iran in those waters. Claims and counter claims by both Iran and Britain are hotheaded spouting of non-facts for the public’s consumption.
Omar confidently stating the seizure was in Iraqi waters, and an act of aggression, is weak at best. Of course, everything he continues to say rests on equally weak footing, including the hyperbolic, not so clever comparison to the hanging of an apparently innocent journalist in a completely different country, by a completely unrelated regime, by a completely unrelated tyrant, and under completely different circumstances. Yeah, that’s helpful.
Could the capture have anything to do with the 300 or so Iranians the US is holding, some having been invited by the Iraqi government into Iraq in the first place? Tit for tat? Less provocative than taking Americans. God knows what someone with an itchy, possibly palsied, trigger finger might do.
God, the theories fevered neocons come up with….
Terry Jones has got it right: “I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this – allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world – have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with putting a bag over her head? That’s what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it’s hard to breathe.”
