I have found, having lived in a combat zone, that the toughest things to endure are not what the enemy who is “outside the wire” tries to throw your way, it’s the stuff that comes from the people who are supposed to be “watching your six.” I do rest in the promise that “what is done in secret will be shouted from the roof tops,” and it seems that there was a recent slip of the tongue that exposed just what was done to our sailors in the Middle East by our administration when their ship encountered mechanical problems. As unbelievable as it sounds, they essentially turned them over to our arch enemies-turned-“friends,” the Iranians.
This was probably not something that we were supposed to find out, at least according to Representative Louie Gohmert, a Republican Congressman from Texas.
“I understand that (Secretary of State) John Kerry has indicated, look, when he got word, he and (Secretary of Defense) Ash Carter called the Iranians to help take care of our Navy guys, because they had some mechanical problems,” Gohmert said in an interview with Dana Loesch.
Called the Iranians? Why would they do that? Were they in fact hoping for what happened, that our sailors got arrested? Were they at all concerned about our sailors while they were in captivity, worried for their safety? Were they thinking that this wouldn’t get out?
“When our Navy ships have problems, we don’t call Iran. We call the rest of the Navy. We can call the Air Force, the Army, the Marines, Coast Guard. We don’t call Iran,” Gohmert said.
I don’t even know what to think. Does it matter to POTUS, SEC DEF and SEC STATE that the Iranians would have been able to go over the vessel with a fine tooth comb and gain access to all kinds of technology that could be used against us sooner than later?
Representative Gohmert said further, there are secrets on every military ship we have … that has [sic] no business being in the hands of the Iranians.” Senator John McCain weighed in as well. He said, accused the administration of “pretending as if nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.”
The Secretary of State did his best to express his supposed outrage over the footage of our soldiers being made to kneel with their hands laced behind their heads, and he should. In an era when a similar sight could remind one of those who are about to be decapitated by ISIS, his use of the word “outrage” could have been anything from reasonable to strategic. But the part that makes me feel the very most as though the inmates are running the asylum was that the sailors had to “apologize” to their captors.
Apologize? For the fact that they wandered into Iranian waters when their boat broke down? If, in fact, they ended up where they should not have been as a result of an ill-conceived mission, then I suppose that an apology might be in order. However, my gut tells me differently, and I hope I am wrong. Thankfully, time will tell all.
By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
