What are needed are shallow draft warships which can maneuver in those waters.

In any event, the big news in the Iran standoff is that the British won and Iran backed down

The conclusion will be: It’s Bush’ fault

I recall my German friends mocking American military people

Erb, Given German history, I think your German friends were merely engaging in a bit of self exculpatory self denial.

Here is how real sailors deal with propaganda ops.

The Private of the Buffs (or The British Soldier In China) by Sir Francis Hastings Doyle.
Excerpted from The Private of the Buffs on Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

Last night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaffed, and swore;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.
To-day, beneath the foeman’s frown,
He stands in Elgin’s place,
Ambassador from Britain’s crown,
And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
Bewildered, and alone,
A heart, with English instinct fraught,
He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
Bring cord or axe or flame,
He only knows that not through him
Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish hop-fields round him seemed,
Like dreams, to come and go;
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed,
One sheet of living snow;
The smoke above his father’s door
In gray soft eddyings hung;
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doomed by himself so young?

Yes, honor calls!—with strength like steel
He put the vision by;
Let dusky Indians whine and kneel,
An English lad must die.
And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent,
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
To his red grave he went.

Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed,
Vain those all-shattering guns,
Unless proud England keep untamed
The strong heart of her sons;
So let his name through Europe ring,—
A man of mean estate,
Who died, as firm as Sparta’s king,
Because his soul was great.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Private_of_the_Buffs"

The Brits are familiar with the concept: John Moyse

The Royal Navy Sailors and Marines disgraced their uniforms and all who preceded them in Her Majesty’s Forces.

but he got NOTHING from the Brits.

Just as an aside, I have never in my four years serving in the US Army National Guard had any training or formal discussion about what to do when facing capture. I suspect this is largely because we expect to be executed on camera if captured. The closest I’ve ever come to really addressing the issue is an agreement among my team to keep a "contingency grenade."