US hides truth about incidents related to national security: Analyst

The US administrations have invariably been hiding the truth about incidents that somehow link to the country’s national security, a political analyst and former US Senate candidate says.

Mark Dankof, who is also a broadcaster in San Antonio, Texas, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday while commenting on the fire that broke out at Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious American warship, as it was anchored at the US Naval base in San Diego.

The blaze was accompanied by at least one large explosion while docked for scheduled maintenance between deployments.

Addressing a meeting of senior resistance commanders, Iran's Brigadier General Esmail Qa’ani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), suggested that the conflagration and subsequent blast that hit the huge warship emanates from the US government’s own crimes.

Qa’ani urged the US “not to waste their time looking for a culprit or leveling accusations against others” over what happened to the ship off San Diego.

Iran general on US navy ship blaze: Tough days await America, Israel

A senior IRGC commander says a massive blast that has hit a huge American warship has been the result of the US government’s own crimes.

“I read General Qa’ani's remarks about the burning of the Bonhomme Richard, and it's a little difficult to quite get at the bottom of what happened to that ship. Clearly something happened. Something catastrophic happened. Something went wrong. One thing is absolutely guaranteed and that is for so-called national security reasons, we are very unlikely to hear from the US Navy or from the Defense Department what really happened to this ship. How many people may have been injured, what the difficulty really was, and precisely what the chain of events was determined to be that led up to this catastrophe,” Dankof said.

“So I think we are absolutely guaranteed not to know the truth. Because that's typically the way that most national security establishments operate especially the American model. When it comes to covering up anything that relates to the malfunction of a ship or an aircraft, or a catastrophe, or be it an accident or be it something involving sabotage either an inside job or something involving a foreign power. Whatever the truth is about this we are likely never to hear one shred of the truth in regard to what the Navy and the Defense Department undoubtedly are still investigating,” he added.

The political analyst said Washington had a “very long history of spinning delivered untruth,” adding that, “an increasing number of Americans have come to see that their own government is frankly a government that is run by the same people; it would seem regardless of which political party wins and individually election.”

A Navy spokesman told Reuters on Monday that there was no evidence of foul play in the Bonhomme Richard's incident.

The Navy said 36 sailors and 23 civilians had been treated for minor injuries, including heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation, and no personnel remained hospitalized.

The Bonhomme Richard, commissioned in 1998, is designed to carry US Marine Corps attack helicopters and ground troops into battle. 

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