Friday, December 16, 2011

This Should Not Be a Hard Question

Are we at war with Iran, or not?

Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.

An interesting claim. I assumed Iran got lucky. I have my doubts it is true that Iran hacked the drone. If Iran did this, wouldn't they want to keep it secret so they might do it again?

Or do they assume (rightly or wrongly) that we know how they did it so they might as well get propaganda value out of it since we will patch that hole?

But one thing is clear, Iran is either attacking our drones or is willing to if they could. Which means that it is even more bizarre that our president decided not to destroy the drone on the ground in Iran because he didn't want it to look like war.

It should not be a tough question to answer. Are we at war with Iran? If so, act like it.

UPDATE: So far, Iranian actions aren't the prime suspect:

The United States is investigating a combination of pilot error and mechanical failure as possible causes for the crash of a classified U.S. drone in Iran and does not believe Iran brought down the plane, according to two U.S. government officials.

Stuff happens. Pilots make errors and components fail. We should have destroyed the drone on the ground.