If you're in SW Meridian tomorrow night, feel free to stop by! Also, anyone who has any suggestions on how to anchor my inflatable Santa onto my wood shake roof, I'd love to hear from you by Thanksgiving.
I like "Cannibalistic Pumpkin" even better than the "Puking Pumpkin" we did last year.
For those interested in what might have happened if the BoSox fan on the ground had actually ignited her stream of WD-40 while the other fan was still in the area, check out this page.
You can do a lot of things with this picture. You can go to the hi-res version and check out all the ways a Seawolf-class submarine sail is different from the other boats, you can reminisce about your favorite stores loads (including your favorite boxes to "float test", like the rabbit or brussels sprouts), or just share your best stories of liberty in Subic Bay. (For any family members reading this, I'd like to point out in advance that I never visited Subic Bay, so I never participated in any of the described debauchery.)
A U.S. Navy warship fired on and sank two skiffs used by pirates Sunday to hijack a merchant vessel off the coast of Somalia, U.S. officials said Monday.It's a good thing the gunners on the Porter shot accurately -- those coastal gas carriers in that part of the world don't have very thick hulls. It would have been somewhat embarrassing to have to announce that we had accidentally destroyed the merchant in order to save it...
The USS Porter responded to a distress call from the merchant vessel carrying benzene, the officials said. Sunday's shooting took place in international waters, they said...
...The officials said that when the Porter fired on the skiffs tied up to the merchant vessel, it was not known the ship was filled with highly flammable benzene.
Kremlin reports are stating today that the United States War Leaders are in a ‘state of panic’ over the unraveling of their abortive attempt to attack Iran with a nuclear missile launched from the Middle Eastern Nation of Qatar during the visit of President Putin.I wish I could make up stuff this good...
The Americans plan, according to these reports, was for the Russian President to be killed during the nuclear missile strike on Iran, throwing the Kremlin ‘off guard’ and unable to respond to the combined US-Israeli assault upon the Iranian Nation...
... Russian Military Intelligence reports are stating that after the aborted US nuclear missile launch against Iran, the 3-person crew of the Patriot Missile Battery in Qatar were ‘moved’ to the giant US Naval Support Activity base in Bahrain, and which after their ‘interrogation’ 2 of the US Soldiers, Genesia Mattril Gresham and Anamarie Sannicolas Camacho, were immediately killed and the third US Soldier involved, Clarence Jackson, was shot through the brain and was not expected to survive.
[US Military reports, however, on the deaths of the Patriot Missile Crew, state that Clarence Jackson shot his fellow soldiers before turning his weapon on himself.]
These reports go on to state that after US Military investigators determined that the nuclear material used in the aborted strike against Iran came from one of their own Los Angeles Class Nuclear Submarines it was ordered back to its port in San Diego whereupon its commander was placed under arrest with several members of his crew also being charged.
US reports on this incident, and as we can read as reported by the CNN News Service, state: "The commander of the nuclear-powered submarine USS Hampton has been relieved of his command amid an inquiry into misconduct by crew members...
The commanding officer of the nuclear-powered submarine USS Hampton was relieved of his duty Thursday because of a loss of confidence in his leadership, the Navy said.[Links above are to my posts on the firings of those COs.] Navy Times has more on the "no band" relief (as opposed to one with a Navy band and nice uniforms, like this one), which includes the information that the new CO, CDR William Houston, had been already slated to relieve CDR Portland next month. (The AP article says that CDR Houston had previously been assigned as a "special assistant to the Director of the Naval Reactors", which probably means "Line Locker".)
Cmdr. Michael B. Portland was relieved of duty after a U.S. Navy investigation found the ship failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission...
...Portland's dismissal as commander is effective immediately. Myrick said Portland will be temporarily assigned to squadron duty and the Hampton will not conduct operations until the Navy can confirm the operational standards have been met. Myrick said at no time was the submarine conducting unsafe operations.
"He has not been charged with any offense nor has he received non-judicial punishment," Myrick said...
...Portland is the fourth commanding officer of a submarine to be relieved of duty this year. The other three, who were relieved for various unrelated actions, were: Cmdr. Edwin Ruff of the USS Minneapolis-St. Paul, Cmdr. Matthew Weingart of the USS Newport News and Cmdr. William Schwalm of the USS Helena.
Mr. Hoffman had E-mailed me to find out why a lifelong Republican like myself isn't supporting his boss, and why I now consider myself a Democrat when it comes to state politics. We courteously exchanged views for about an hour, and while neither of us changed the other's mind, it was a good chance for both of us to better understand where the other camp is coming from. (As an added bonus, I was able to put in a pitch for Mr. Hoffman's boss to support increased submarine funding.) Wayne pointed out that he recently interacted with Mr. Sali's opponent for both the 2006 and 2008 elections, Larry Grant, and because both behaved with civility and decorum, it was a positive experience. As a result of this personal interaction, I'm sure I'll be more likely to get an answer when I look for a quote from Mr. Sali on whatever "gotcha" (or real) questions I come up with as the campaign heats up. Hopefully Mr. Grant's supporters will realize, as the election gets closer, that bomb-throwing and name-calling aren't going to get the residents of this district to replace Mr. Sali -- it'll be reasoned discourse that convinces them that having a moderate voice in the majority party in the House will do the most good for the state.
While it appears that a good part of the crew only did 2/3 of the deployment, many of them did the whole nine months. A deployment that long is an impressive feat for any class submarine, let alone one that's almost 30 years old. That certainly was the dog's bollocks, chaps!
Then I got to the Oly, SRB in hand, and they saidIt could be worth a read; the first six chapters are the author's experience in the nuke pipeline (including a stint in Idaho), so all nukes can appreciate that part. Hopefully the book will get fleshed out and get a publisher -- I'd buy it.
"You have just made the worst mistake
That a young sailor can"
And, on my first underway, I knew they were right
It's a really, really sh**ty job
And there's just no end in sight
Last thing I remember
I was running for the brow
"I think I've had enough of this
And I want to go home now"
"Relax" said the topside "we all need to relieve"
"You're the newest NUB on board, and you can never
leave"
-Hotel 717, from the EM Log
NAVAL SUPPORT ACTIVITY BAHRAIN – Two Sailors were fatally shot and one critically wounded aboard U. S. Naval Support Activity Bahrain at approximately 5 a.m. Oct. 22. The shootings took place in the on-base barracks.The fact that the base was opened back up so quickly would tend to indicate that it wasn't a terrorist attack, but isn't definitive.
Two Sailors were pronounced dead at the scene and the third was taken to a local hospital for treatment. The incident is currently under investigation.
Officials closed the base temporarily and reopened it shortly after 6 a.m.
The names of the Sailors are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
According to one source with knowledge of the investigation, the central problem involves how often sailors analyzed the chemical and radiological properties of the submarine’s reactor, which is typically checked daily.The Navy had to expect that the story would get out sooner or later -- too many people are just flabbergasted at what supposedly happened. (I should point out at this time that I don't absolutely know if what was described here is what actually happened -- I've only heard rumors, and I was certainly not one of the sources quoted, even though the story does link back here.) If this is what happened, though, I think it's important to realize that this is almost certainly an isolated instance. In any division, you'd only need one guy with integrity to nip a problem like this in the bud. The odds of having 5 or 6 guys all deciding to throw away everything we do as submariners are fairly low -- before this, I would have said the odds were infinitesimally small.
During preparations for the boat’s Operational Reactor Safeguard Examination, which is typically conducted as a nuclear submarine ends its deployment, officials discovered that the sailors hadn’t checked the water in at least a month, and their division officer, the chemistry/radiological controls assistant, knew it, the source said.
They also learned that the logs had been forged — or “radioed,” in submarine parlance — later to cover up the lapse and make it look as though the sailors had been keeping up with required checks all along...
...Referring to the chemical levels, another former submarine commander added: “It’s not that it’s dangerous at the instant. Blowing off the chem sample that day isn’t what’s dangerous, but the operational philosophy adopted by people who would do that, if applied to the other aspects of operating the nuclear propulsion plant watch stations or other aspects of the submarine, could be dangerous. That’s what’s scary. Besides, why the hell wouldn’t you check the chem levels? First, that’s the ELT and the CRA’s job. Second, it takes about an hour and a half each day to do it. Third, you’re on a submarine, so it’s not like you’re going to get away with doing nothing on your free time.”
In the case of the Hampton, it appears from a preliminary investigation that sailors in Submarine Squadron 11 had skipped the required analysis of the chemical and radiological properties of the submarine's reactor for more than a month, even though a daily check is required...I'm not sure how they got from the Navy Times article that squadron members were the ones who blew off the chemistry analyses -- unless the AP writer normally covers the Air Force and doesn't understand the difference between a "squadron" and a "ship". And of course they'd try to link it to the recent Air Force nuclear weapons problems, which, let's face it, were much, much, much worse than the Hampton problem in the whole scheme of things.
...Other members of the squadron discovered the lapse during a routine examination required as part of the redundancy built into the system so that problems are caught, he said. The examination was done as the submarine was nearing the end of a West Pacific deployment, which was completed Sept. 17...
...A nuclear powered fast attack submarine, Hampton is the most advanced nuclear attack submarine in the world, carrying a torpedo, cruise missile, and mine-laying arsenal, according to information on its Web site...
...The reported problems with procedures and record keeping in the Navy squadron comes just after the Air Force disciplined some 70 airmen in the B-52 incident...
The submarine is under investigation. The Navy has already disciplined one officer and five enlisted sailors, but the Navy isn't exactly telling us why. All it's saying is that a recent routine review "fell short of high Navy standards." It may be an issue with maintenance problems on the ship as they were wrapping up their deployment, but again, the Navy isn't saying.I sure hope they're not thinking that TSSBP was one of the "blog sites" wondering whether the video had something to do with the investigation; some commenters here did -- and it was a reasonable supposition -- but I've heard from "the street" that the video definitely wasn't the reason for the initial investigation. Now, I suppose it's possible that, as the investigation expands to the "crawl up their buttholes and look for every possible thing they've ever done wrong" phase, the video might get mentioned -- but it sure wasn't the original problem. Another division apparently getting confused and thinking that because their workcenter name was one letter off from the people who work behind Control, they should do what the other division's name has become submarine slang for -- that was supposedly the thing that Squadron found on the inspection workup. (You submariners can figure out what that means; everyone else can just keep wondering, 'cause we're not gonna tell you.)
There are also some who theorizing that a music video that recently posted on YouTube entitled, "What is submarine life exactly?" may be part of the controversy. It was made by a Hampton crew member on the recent deployment and it's fun pictures of the crew joking around together. The worst thing we saw on the video was someone giving the middle finger and slapping someone on the butt. But several blog sites on the internet are wondering whether this music video has something to do with the investigation.
Submarines are very serious about their security. When NewsChannel 3 photographers are on board the subs, the Navy is extremely particular about what we can take video of. But again, the Navy won't say if that video has anything to do with the trouble the sub is in. Again, they'll only say it's "issues" that they're looking into. We'll keep you posted.
Sometimes I wonder how psychologically destructive it would be for the extreme Left if America wins the War on Terror. They survived the fall of the Soviet Union by extreme acts of denial and then, when the period of mourning was over, finally by morphing into extreme Greens, both of the environmental and Islamic kind. What will they become if Osama's movement is finally discredited is anybody's guess. They'll turn into something, I guess. But I shudder to think what.
Personally, I'm not surprised the Chinese Navy didn't take a lot of effort to hide these ships; after all, a deterrent only works if people know you have something to deter them with. Some more discussion on the "public unveiling" of these ships can be found here and here.
That official commissioning and christening of the New Hampshire will take place over the course of the next year. Meanwhile, the ship is already "manned up," with a pre-commissioning captain and crew overseeing the installation of the many systems that will make the New Hampshire the most sophisticated sub in the Navy fleet...Speaking of the Virginia-class boats, we're still waiting on a name for SSN 780. Senator Tester from Montana recently made a case for his state to be the namesake, pointing out that Montana is the only one of the 50 states never to have had a ship named for it.
...Chase is a 24 year-old graduate of Farmington High School (Class of '01). He enlisted six days after graduation and was stationed aboard the USS Philadelphia off the coast of Bahrain -- he's a nuclear reactor operator -- when he heard that the USS New Hampshire was in the works.
"I filed my '1306' the next day," he smiled, with "1306" being the Navy's "request for transfer" paperwork. "If there was going to be a 'New Hampshire,' I wanted to be first on board."
"In the Navy, there are boats and there are targets. Surface ships are targets. We're on a boat," he grinned -- a boyish grin that should get him carded in bars until he's 50. "Really though, it's about the independence. On a submarine, once you're gone, you're gone. You get the chance to do the job that Joe Citizen is paying you to do, and you do it to the best of your ability."
Montana twice has come close to having a Navy ship named for it, but these did not work out. The Armored Cruiser 13 was christened the USS Montana in 1906, but had its named changed to the USS Missoula shortly afterwards...Compare and contrast with the official Navy history of ships named Montana:
The first Montana (ACR‑13), was laid down by the Newport News Shipbuilding Co., Newport News, Va., 29 April 1905; launched 15 December 1906; sponsored by Miss Minnie Conrad; and commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard 21 July 1908, Capt. Alfred Reynolds in command...So, we see that, in the Senator's mind (or at least that of his staff) "shortly" means 12 years, or 96% of the ship's total commissioned lifetime. Just for that misleading statement, the new submarine should be named "California", and all the peaceniks who are offended by that should be required to move to Montana and become Sen. Tester's constituents.
...Following her arrival at Puget Sound Navy Yard, Seattle, Wash., Montana remained there from 16 August 1919 through her decommissioning 2 February 1921. On 7 June 1920 Montana was renamed Missoula for a city of Montana and classified CA‑13 on 7 June 1920...
It took a long time -- 15 years -- but guess what.My point was insurgencies can be defeated.
We won.
So rather than seeing this current struggle as intrinsically unwinnable, we can learn from history how to win it.
Leo Bloom said...His claim is, essentially, that since the Philippine campaign was "stupid", by extension so is Iraq.
I read this most of this thinking it was satire. Gradually I realized you were serious. The whole Phillipines episode was one of the stupidest endeavors we ever embarked on. We "won"? Exactly what did we win? The Philipines was an albatross all the way through WWII, just as Iraq will be, best case.
The problem with you guys is you want to have all this grit and determination and you spend 0 time trying to figure out if what you are doing is actually helping or hurting. Your tellingly abstract explication of the glories of the Phillipines is a perfect emblem of your general mental unfitness.
1:40 PM, October 02, 2007
Iwo Jima: 20,700 Japanese; 8,200 AmericansWretchard of Belmont Club, who grew up in the Philippines, writes:
Guadalcanal: 26,000 Japanese; 1,800 Americans
Okinawa: 66,000 Japanese; 12,500 Americans
All the campaigns listed above, including the massive battle for Okinawa, are dwarfed by the Sixth and Eighth Army's Philippine Campaign of 1944-45. The raw statistics are astonishing. The Philippine Campaign was the graveyard of the Imperial Japanese Army: IJA KIA exceeded the estimated (300,000) German and Axis dead at Stalingrad.Take that in.
In terms of raw effort, Wikipedia notes that "in all, ten U.S. divisions and five independent regiments battled on Luzon, making it the largest campaign of the Pacific war, involving more troops than the United States had used in North Africa, Italy, or southern France." It also included the largest urban battle of the Pacific War, the Battle of Manila, in which 100,000 civilians were killed. Two of the most famous divisions in the US Army, the 1st Cavalry and 25th Infantry, participated in the Philippine Campaign. And yet it is nearly forgotten. It will not even be remembered in Spielberg's sequel to the Band of Brothers.
What is even more striking is the phenomenal economy with which the US Sixth and Eighth armies inflicted these losses on the Imperial Japanese Army. Here are tables calculating the ratio of US to Japanese KIA in each campaign. Yet these remarkable ratios were inflicted in terrain that included urban battlefields, the dense jungles of Leyte and the rugged mountains of Luzon's Cordilleras against a first rate Japanese commander -- Tomoyuki Yamashita, the famed "Tiger of Malaya".The Japanese initially invaded because our control of the Philippines was a stratgic thorn in the side of their plans to dominate the Southwest Pacific.
The massacre was at its worst in the Battle of Manila. During the battle for control of the city, Japanese troops took out their anger and frustration on the civilians caught in the crossfire. Japanese troops brutally looted, burned, executed, decapitated and abused women, men and children alike, including priests, Red Cross personnel, prisoners of war and hospital patients. Manila was called the "Warsaw of Asia", being the most devastated city in Asia during World War II.And that was a drop in the bucket of their evil:
The Manila massacre is one of several major war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army from the annexation of Manchuria in 1931 to the end of World War II in 1945. It was a major event in Japanese war crimes, where over 15 million Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Indonesian, Burmese, and Indochinese civilians, Pacific Islanders, and Allied Filipino and American POWs were killed.Just like their Nazi friends.
By any normal ethical standard, the coalition's current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq's other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution. The UN approved the coalition's role in May 2003, and the mandate has been renewed annually since then, most recently this August. Meanwhile, the other side in this war are among the worst people in global politics: Baathists, the Nazis of the middle east; Sunni fundamentalists, the chief opponents of progress in Islam's struggle with modernity; and the government of Iran. Ethically, causes do not come much clearer than this one.No amount of hyperventilating can change this objective Truth of the facts on the ground.
Some just wars, however, are not worth fighting. There are countries that do not matter very much to the rest of the world. Rwanda is one tragic example; and its case illustrates the immorality of a completely pragmatic foreign policy. But Iraq, the world's axial country since the beginning of history and all the more important in the current era for probably possessing the world's largest reserves of oil, is no Rwanda. Nor do two or three improvised explosive devices a day, for all the personal tragedy involved in each casualty, make a Vietnam.
The great question in deciding whether to keep fighting in Iraq is not about the morality and self-interest of supporting a struggling democracy that is also one of the most important countries in the world. The question is whether the war is winnable and whether we can help the winning of it. The answer is made much easier by the fact that three and a half years after the start of the insurgency, most of the big questions in Iraq have been resolved. Moreover, they have been resolved in ways that are mostly towards the positive end of the range of outcomes imagined at the start of the project. The country is whole. It has embraced the ballot box. It has created a fair and popular constitution. It has avoided all-out civil war. It has not been taken over by Iran. It has put an end to Kurdish and marsh Arab genocide, and anti-Shia apartheid. It has rejected mass revenge against the Sunnis. As shown in the great national votes of 2005 and the noisy celebrations of the Iraq football team's success in July, Iraq survived the Saddam Hussein era with a sense of national unity; even the Kurds—whose reluctant commitment to autonomy rather than full independence is in no danger of changing—celebrated. Iraq's condition has not caused a sectarian apocalypse across the region. The country has ceased to be a threat to the world or its region. The only neighbours threatened by its status today are the leaders in Damascus, Riyadh and Tehran.
The mission in Iraq may be on the way to being accomplished, but it has clearly been imperfect and costly. At least 80,000 and perhaps 200,000 or more Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, almost all of them by Iraqis and other Arabs (although this should be weighed against the 1.5m people killed by war and political violence during the 35-year Baath reign).
...
Some of the violence—that paid for by foreigners or motivated by Islam's crazed fringes—will not recede in a hurry. Iraq has a lot of Islam and long, soft borders. But the rest of Iraq's violence is local: factionalism, revenge cycles, crime, power plays. It will largely cease once Iraq has had a few more years to build up its security apparatus.
...
It was always clear that Iraq's Sunni tribes would eventually take up arms against the Saudis, Jordanians and Syrians in their midst who were banning smoking, killing whisky vendors, executing sheikhs of ancient tribes and forcibly marrying local girls to "emirs" of the soi-disant "Islamic state of Iraq." Of course, Anbar's tribal leaders and Baathists could be bought off either directly or by the indirect promise of owning a chunk of what will be a very rich country now that the basic question of who owns Baghdad has been resolved. At least 14,000 Anbari young men have joined the state security services since the surge began in February and the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, started reaching out to the chiefs.
...
The Sunni insurgents have recognised that there is little point fighting a strong and increasingly skilled enemy—the US—that is on the right side of Iraq's historical destiny and has a political leadership that—unlike that of the British in Basra—responds to setbacks by trying harder. (That is essentially the Petraeus doctrine: more resources more intelligently applied further forward.) There is even less point doing so when you are a discredited minority, as the Sunnis are after 35 years of Baathism followed by their disastrous insurgency, and the enemy is in fact your main guarantor of a fair place at the national table.
Iraq's Sunnis would not be needing the help of the US today had the Sunni leadership not made a historic miscalculation back in 2004. Saddam, a rational man, made an understandable but fatal misjudgement about the people he was up against, and paid for it with his throne and his neck. His Sunni supporters did not learn from this. Thinking they were dealing with the post-Vietnam America of Carter, Reagan and Clinton, they took up arms to prevent the Americans from delivering on their promise of an Iraq that could freely choose its leaders. The habit of centuries of overlordship also fed the Sunni miscalculation: to them, Shia control was unthinkable and so the insurgency was sure to succeed.
By the second half of 2004, the insurgency had had six months to show what it was capable of, and it became clear that its goal could not be the military defeat of the Americans. The Sunnis were now fighting not for a military victory but a political one, to win in the US congress and the newsrooms of CNN and the New York Times the war they could not win in the alleys and date palm groves of Mesopotamia.
...
The world held its breath after Samarra: here, we thought, comes the cataclysm, the civil war that many had feared and that others had sought for three years. But it never happened. The Shia backlash in parts of Baghdad was vicious, and the Sunnis were more or less kicked out of much of the city. But over 18 months later, it is clear that the Shias were too sensible to go all the way. It was never a civil war: no battle lines or uniforms, no secession, no attempt to seize power or impose constitutional change, no parallel governments, not even any public leaders or aims. The Sunnis rolled the dice, launched the battle of Baghdad and lost. Now they are begging for an accommodation with Shia Iraq.
What is the evidence for this? This summer, Maliki's office reached out to Baathist ex-soldiers and officers and received 48,600 requests for jobs in uniform; he made room for 5,000 of them, found civil service jobs for another 7,000, and put the rest of them on a full pension. Meanwhile leading Baathists have told Time magazine they want to be in the government; the 1920 Revolution Brigade—a Sunni insurgent group—is reportedly patrolling the streets of Diyala with the 3rd infantry division, and the Sunni Islamic Army in Iraq is telling al Jazeera it may negotiate with the Americans. The anecdotes coming out of Baghdad confirm the trend. The drawing rooms of the capital's dealmakers are full of Baathists, cap in hand. They are terrified of the Shia death squads and want to share in the pie when the oil starts flowing.
...
Iranian-made rockets will continue to kill British and American soldiers. Saudi Wahhabis will continue to blow up marketplaces, employment queues and Shia mosques when they can. Iraqi criminals will continue to bully their neighbourhoods into homogeneities that will give the strongest more leverage, although even this tide is turning in most places where Petraeus's surge has reached. Bodies will continue to pile up in the ditches of Doura and east Baghdad as the country goes through the final spasm of the reckoning that was always going to attend the end of 35 years of brutal Sunni rule.
But in terms of national politics, there is nothing left to fight for. The only Iraqis still fighting for more than local factional advantage and criminal dominance are the irrational actors: the Sunni fundamentalists, who number but a thousand or two men-at-arms, most of them not Iraqi. Like other Wahhabi attacks on Iraq in 1805 and 1925, the current one will end soon enough. As the maturing Iraqi state gets control of its borders, and as Iraq's Sunni neighbours recognise that a Shia Iraq must be dealt with, the flow of foreign fighters and suicide bombers into Iraq from Syria will start to dry up. Even today, for all the bloodshed it causes, the violence hardly affects the bigger picture: suicide bombs go off, dozens of innocents die, the Shias mostly hold back and Iraq's tough life goes on.
In early September, Nouri al-Maliki said, "We may differ with our American friends about tactics… But my message to them is one of appreciation and gratitude. To them I say, you have liberated a people, brought them into the modern world… We used to be decimated and killed like locusts in Saddam's endless wars, and we have now come into the light."
...
The other half of the moral hazard argument is about security: if we provide Iraqis' security for them, they will never do it for themselves. This is equally inaccurate. First, Iraqis are increasingly providing their own security. Second, Maliki and his colleagues run an elected government. They are subject to the judgement of their people in two years' time. They have every reason to try as hard as possible to deliver an end to the embarrassing reliance on the foreigner. It would be foolhardy to bet on Iraq, of all places, becoming the first Islamic state in the middle east not to achieve a basic monopoly on domestic violence.
The argument of this article—that with nothing more to resolve from political violence, Iraqis can now settle down to gorge themselves at the oil trough—is based on two premises: Sunni acknowledgement of the failure of their insurgency and the need to reach an accommodation with the new Iraq, and a conjunction of interests between the coalition on one hand and the Kurds and Shias on the other.
...
Petraeus has already announced the first marine and army drawdowns for September and December respectively. His boss, defence secretary Robert Gates, is hoping publicly for a net withdrawal of 60,000 troops next year. Bush too is promising cuts. These plans are a recognition that the job in Iraq is moving rapidly towards something closer to Iraqi police work than American war.
I just realized I hadn't mentioned USS Hampton's recent move to her new homeport. She arrived in San Diego back on September 18th at the end of a seven month deployment, so her crew should just be getting off post-deployment stand-down now.The fast attack submarine Hampton, which completed an overseas deployment last month, is under investigation for unspecified reasons, Navy officials said Friday afternoon.Sounds to me like they got their "keys taken away" by the normal organization that does that sort of thing. Word on the street is that it's pretty ugly.
“During a routine review ... conduct of procedures, although found to be safe, fell short of high Navy standards,” Submarine Squadron 11 officials said in a release, provided by spokeswoman Lt. Alli Myrick.
Capt. Chip Jaenichen, squadron commander, ordered an investigation under the Judge Advocate General’s Manual, or JAGMan, after some “issues” surfaced while the submarine and squadron were preparing for a normal end-of-deployment examination, Myrick said...
...Already, one officer and several enlisted sailors have received disciplinary action, Myrick said. No details were available late Friday...
...Hampton will remain in port and not conduct operations until the investigation is completed “and the Navy’s high standards are met” as a precautionary measure, officials said.
“Right now, it’s not leaving the pier, it’s not getting underway,” Myrick said. The submarine also had completed a standdown.
The award was also a validation for the United Nations panel, which in its early days was vilified by those who disputed the scientific case for a human role in climate change.Validation? Ha! An idiot lauding a moron as a genius is hardly vindication.
PASADENA, Calif. - A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent loss in the extent of the Arctic's thick, year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. This drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is the primary cause of this summer's fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.The question is why? Warmer temperatures, or something else?
The scientists observed less perennial ice cover in March 2007 than ever before, with the thick ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Those thinner seasonal ice conditions facilitated the ice loss, leading to this year's record low amount of total Arctic sea ice.Climate is changing. The reasons are complex.
Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.
Murphy was the officer-in-charge of the SEAL element, which was tasked with locating a high- level Taliban militia leader to provide intelligence for a follow-on mission to capture or destroy the local leadership and disrupt enemy activity. However local Taliban sympathizers discovered the SEAL unit and immediately revealed their position to Taliban fighters. The element was besieged on a mountaintop by scores of enemy fighters. The firefight that ensued pushed the element farther into enemy territory and left all four SEALs wounded.As near as I can tell, LT Murphy will be the first Sailor so honored since the Vietnam War.
The SEALs fought the enemy fearlessly despite being at a tactical disadvantage and outnumbered more than four to one. Understanding the gravity of the situation and his responsibility to his men, Murphy, already wounded, deliberately and unhesitatingly moved from cover into the open where he took and returned fire while transmitting a call for help for his beleaguered teammates. Shot through the back while radioing for help, Murphy completed his transmission while returning fire. The call ultimately led to the rescue of one severely wounded team member, Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Marcus Luttrell, and the recovery of the remains of Murphy and Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class (SEAL) Danny Dietz and Sonar Technician 2nd Class (SEAL) Matthew Axelson.
"Is this really what we want our harbour to be used for?" Tamara Lorincz of the Halifax Peace Coalition said Tuesday.As the article mentions, U.S. subs visit Halifax and Victoria, B.C., fairly frequently; it's a good way to get a "foreign" port call when you're out doing ops during the Inter-Deployment Training Cycle (or whatever they're calling the time between deployments now). One of the things that make the visits interesting is the presence of the charmingly determined yet completely misinformed Canadian anti-nuclear activists. I never pulled into Halifax, but I did pull into Victoria a couple of times, and we were always met by the Raging Grannies, who sang funny songs. Like most hopelessly earnest protesters, they think they're making a statement, but they don't ever get anything actually changed (except they make life a little more difficult for people providing security at various places). They're kind of like the anti-war people in Congress here in the U.S.
"There’s risks to the citizens of Halifax, there’s risks to the navy personnel and it’s expensive. We shouldn’t be spending our precious tax dollars on welcoming effectively nuclear weapons from other countries into our harbour. We shouldn’t be part of this."...
..."Why are they here?" Ms. Lorincz said. "Are they making their way to the Middle East, to the Gulf? You’re hearing the war drums beating for Iran."...
...Halifax and Esquimalt, B.C., are bound by international agreements to accept nuclear-powered warships belonging to some of Canada’s closest allies, including the United States, Britain and France. Nanoose, B.C., is the only other Canadian port where they can tie up.
Historically, Halifax played host to about six nuclear-powered vessels a year, Sub-Lt. Blondin said Tuesday.
"There’s been quite a reduction over the years," he said.
The man, who was wearing a wetsuit, was one of four Scandinavian activists who tried to swim into the base. Three were stopped before they got inside the boundary.I'm sure he'll try to claim that the warmongers tortured him while he was in custody. Interestingly, the article goes on to say that his compatriots mentioned that he'd gotten a long way into the base; it also said they hadn't spoken to him yet. It doesn't say how they knew how far he'd gotten without having spoken to him.
A further four members of their group tried to enter the base by walking along the shoreline. They were arrested by armed military police as they entered its grounds.
The rescue was only launched after the other activists reported their missing colleague.
A spokesman for the MoD said: "Earlier this morning a group of swimmers were spotted and removed from the water outside Coulport naval base by police launch.
"In a separate incident, a concerned protester phoned into Coulport inquiring as to the whereabouts of another protester who was also believed to be in the water.
"An RAF search and rescue operation was conducted and he was found, removed from the water and taken to hospital for treatment for possible post- immersion shock.
"This individual is now in the custody of police."
The Stupid Shall Be PunishedObviously, you'll want to put in the information for your selected blog (including your own), and not just copy-and-paste to nominate me all willy-nilly.
http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/
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Many will argue that pro-family conservatives should vote for Giuliani just to keep Sen. Clinton from occupying the highest office in the land.While there's absolutely no chance that anything Fischer does will result in Idaho's electoral votes going to anyone but the Republican nominee in 2008, it'll be interesting to see if he sticks to his guns if Giuliani gets nominated. My guess is he won't -- and since his web site doesn't allow comments, he'll forget he ever said anything.
But the issue comes down to this: how much value do we place on the life of a baby in the womb? If we truly believe that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being, it is difficult to imagine we could find a way to support a candidate who wants to protect that gruesome practice.
Imagine for the moment that you are living in Germany in the early 1940s, and there is a candidate who wants your vote. You like everything about this candidate, every position he takes, except for one thing: he is determined to protect the practice of gassing Jews.
There is simply no way a citizen with a functioning human conscience could permit himself to vote for such a candidate, no matter how appealing he might be on other matters.
