QUOTE OF THE DAY: 
GLENN BECK AT CPAC 2010:
‘Hello, my name is the Republican Party, and I’ve got a problem. I’m addicted to spending and big government…I’m addicted to spending and I just don’t want to spend today.’
(CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO QUOTE)
"If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.” ~ John F. Kennedy, 1960
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Calls from Angela Merkel told Tony Blair he would not get EU’s top job
and
Leaked documents reveal No 10 cover-up over Iraq invasion
• Inquiry to hear how Blair hid true intentions for war
• Military ‘ill-prepared’ for aftermath of invasion
coinky dink?
I think not, after all who wants a known liar;
Tony Blair, the former prime minister, misled MPs and the public to throughout 2002 when he claimed that Britain’s objective was “disarmament, not regime change” and that there had been no planning for military action. In fact, British military planning for a full invasion and regime change began in February 2002.
and possible war criminal;
They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.
to head the European Union?
Hmm if Tony Blair was lying to the British people cause he made a pack with Bush to illegally attack Iraq in early 2002,
Blair had in effect promised George Bush that he would join the US-led invasion when, as late as July 2002, he was denying to MPs that preparations were being made for military action. The leaked documents reveal that “from March 2002 or May at the latest there was a significant possibility of a large-scale British operation”.
does that mean Bush-Cheney lied to us all through 2002?
YA THINK?
That means they are war criminals also.
Illegal invasion;
No preparation for civilians post combat phase, …
Documents leaked in 2005 show that, almost a year before the invasion, Blair was privately preparing to commit Britain to war and topple Saddam Hussein, despite warnings from his closest advisers that it was unjustified. They also show how Blair was planning to justify regime change as an objective, despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, that the “desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action.
Hmmmm …… regime change for the sake of regime change is a war crime,
Interesting;
Somebody better tell Gonzo, Condi, Dumsfeld, Powell, Feith, Wolfowitz, Franks, Hadley, Libby, Fleisher, Tenet, Perle, Cambone, Boykin, Ashcroft, Armitage, Bolton, Zoellick among others to call Henry Kissinger and ask how American War criminals can travel with out the inconvience of being sent to the Hague for a trial.
Oh yea Bush and Cheney too.
Nice to see the British actually investigating this, too bad we never will …. cause too many republicans (they were in charge of lying and committing war crimes remember) will go to prison then.
Wanna bet the corporate owned MSM entertainment-disinfo service here in America ignores this one also?
Matthew P. Hoh’s letter in full;
Dear Ambassador Powell,
It is with great regret and disappointment I submit my resignation from my appointment as a Political Officer in the Foreign Service and my post as the Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. Government in Zabul Province. I have served six of the previous ten years in service to our country overseas, to include deployment as a U.S. Marine officer and Department of Defense civilian in the Euphrates and Tigris River Valleys of Iraq in 2004-2005 and 2006-2007. I did not enter into this position lightly or with any undue expectations nor did I believe my assignment would be without sacrifice hardship or difficulty. However, in the course of my five months of service in Afghanistan, in both Regional Commands East and South, I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end. To put simply: I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures or resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.
This fall will mark the eighth year of U.S. combat, governance and development operations within Afghanistan. Next fall, the United States’ occupation will equal in length the Soviet Union’s own physical involvement in Afghanistan. Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people.
If the history or Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously, in a tragedy that not only pits tribes, valleys, clans, villages and families against one another, but, from at least the end of King Zahir Shah’s reign, has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modem of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional. It is this latter group that composes and supports the Pashtun insurgency. The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.
The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people. The Afghan government’s failings, particularly when weighed against the sacrifice of American lives and dollars, appear legion and metastatic:
• Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;
• A President whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and war crimes villains, who mock our own rule of law and counternarcotics efforts;
• A system of provincial and district leaders constituted of local power brokers, opportunists and strongmen allied to the United States solely for, and limited by, the value of our USAID and CERP contracts and whose own political and economic interests stand nothing to gain from any positive or genuine attempts at reconciliation; and
• The recent election process dominated by fraud and discredited by low voter turnout, which has created an enormous victory for our enemy who now claims a popular boycott and will call into question worldwide our government’s military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and illegitimate Afghan government.
Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency’s true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our Nation’s own internal peace, against an insurgency whose nationalism we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology.
I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of nuclear weapons. However, again, to follow the logic of our stated goals we should garrison Pakistan, not Afghanistan. More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries. Finally, if our concern is for a failed state crippled by corruption and poverty and under assault from criminal and drug lords, then if we bear our military and financial contributions to Afghanistan, we must reevaluate our commitment to and involvement in Mexico.
Eight years into war, no nation has ever known a more dedicated, well trained, experienced and disciplined military as the U.S. Armed Forces. I do not believe any military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. military has received in Afghanistan. The tactical proficiency and performance of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines is unmatched and unquestioned. However, this is not the European or Pacific theaters of World War II, but rather is a war for which our leaders, uniformed, civilian and elected, have inadequately prepared and resourced our men and women. Our forces, devoted and faithful, have committed to conflict in an indefinite and unplanned manner that has become a cavalier, politically expedient and Pollyannaish misadventure. Similarly, the United States has a dedicated and talented cadre of civilians, both U.S. government employees and contractors, who believe in and sacrifice for their mission, but have been ineffectually trained and led with guidance and intent shaped more by the political climate in Washington, D.C. than in Afghan cities, villages, mountains and valleys.
“We are spending ourselves into oblivion” a very talented and intelligent commander, one of America’s best, briefs every visitor, staff delegation and senior officer. We are mortgaging our Nation’s economy on a war, which, even with increased commitment, will remain a draw for years to come. Success and victory, whatever they may be, will be realized not in years, after billions more spent, but in decades and generations. The United States does not enjoy a national treasury for such success and victory.
I realize the emotion and tone of my letter and ask you excuse any ill temper. I trust you understand the nature of this war and the sacrifices made by so many thousands of families who have been separated from loved ones deployed in defense of our Nation and whose homes bear the fractures, upheavals and scars of multiple and compounded deployments. Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds, some that will never heal or will only worsen with time. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can anymore be made. As such, l submit my resignation.
Sincerely,
Matthew P. Hoh
Senior Civilian Representative
Zabul Province, Afghanistan
cc:
Mr. Frank Ruggiero
Ms. Dawn Liberi
Ambassador Anthony Wayne
Ambassador Karl Eikenberry
This letter was addressed to:
Ambassador Nancy J. Powell
Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
About sums up the failures of Bush and Cheney for the last eight years, and why Obama shouldn’t send in new cannon fodder to the failed war Bush already lost.
If George W Bush were willing to open up and admit his thoughts after leaving office, I have a sneaking suspicion that his answer to a question he was asked during his presidency, and failed miserably in his answer, would surpires many. I think his response would be completely different today.
In April 2004 a reporter asked the question;
In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you’d made in your life and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa. You’ve looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say? And what lessons have you learned from it?
His answer is memorable for it’s arrogance and clueless at the same time;
Hmmm. I wish you’d have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. I’m sure historians will look back and say, Gosh, he could have done it better this way or that way. You know, I just — I’m sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn’t yet.
Given his presidency is finished and beginning to be judged by history, something he claimed would result in his resurrection in the publics eyes, I would ask a slightly different version of the same question.
In the first campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you’d made in your life and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa. Now that you can reflect on your presidency, what mistakes might have been made. What would your biggest mistake in your presidency be, would you say?
I think if he is completely honest and candid, his answer would surprise many of us.
I for one do not think he would say;
The fact he totally missed the intell and warnings pre 9-11.
The failure to properly prosecute the Afghan operation and focusing on actually capturing Osama bin Laden.
His failure to properly access the intell and realities about the Iraqi situation pre-invasion.
The actions post invasion in Iraq which both allowed the insurrection to arise and bumbling mostly by Rumsfeld that fed it for years.
The total debacle of his and the government under him response to the worst natural disaster in our nations history, hurricane Katrina.
His numerous failures to actually follow the US Constitution and International law, ie allowing torture, wholesale unlawful spying on Americans.
Pushing the US military to the breaking point, and not addressing the stress and needs of uniformed military and veterans during wartime.
Nomination of Alberto Gonzales to any post.
The failure to properly enforce regulations and demand proper accounting standards before the worst recession post WW2.
No as important as each of those failures are, I think George W Bush regrets one decision he made even more then any of them.
I think that he just might consider his greatest mistake was actually made on July 25, 2000, when he asked Richard Bruce Cheney to be his running mate.
Once he asked Cheney to run with him, he seemed to hand much of the power and decision making power over to Cheney.
Cheney brought his PNAC team in to the bush administration with him, from Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith, at Defense, to Armitage, Cheney’s daughter and Bolton at State, to Libby and Addington, running his hit squad inside the VP office. These team Cheney players set the course for the first six years of Bush’s time in office and doomed Bush to a course for the failures he experienced in foreign policy.
But Cheney had a larger influence then just rigging the foreign policy views to match the PNAC delusions, he under cut Treas Sec O’Neill and Sec of State Powell, and was the prime mover in the Plame Affair black eye the Bush Administration suffered. This resulted in the major disasters for Bush by the end of his presidency;
Powell couldn’t stop the invasion and resulting fiasco in Iraq and O’Neill wasn’t allowed to point out how disastrous the policies Bush was perusing would end, like they did in our current recession. Cheney made sure of it. Cheney also was the prime architect of the efforts to under mine the US Constitution and laws to promote a view of the presidency which does not exist in either the founding fathers original ideal nor the document the wrote to found this nation. Cheney in the end setup Bush for the vast majority of the failures he experienced.
The only major failure Bush experienced which Cheney isn’t prominently featured in was Katrina.
Cheney came into office with a set of plans for the Middle East, and how power should be exercised by the executive branch, that Bush never discussed with the voting public. However until at least November 2006 Bush seemed to aqueous to the ideas of Cheney most of the time. By the time the results of those policies were obvious to most Americans, the Bush administration was resoundingly rejected both in the mid term elections of November 2006 and the presidential election of 2008. John McCain seemed to run from Bush/Cheney in 2008 even more then Gore ran from Clinton in 2000
I expect if one could actually sit down for a few beers with Bush, and he relaxed and got honest both with himself and the rest of us, he would admit his very first “presidential decision” was actually his worst;
IE, asking Dick Cheney to be his running mate.
I knew it. I’ve said for years that if American troops were to leave Iraq, the Iraqis would step aside and let them go without interfering. Of course, the right wing neocons of America said that would never happen! They told us that Iraq would crumble into a heap of dung and would be lost without us, because the Iraqis loved having Americans in their country occupying it!
Dumbasses.
From Think Progress…the Iraqis are lighting off fireworks & celebrating:
U.S. forces handed over formal control of Iraq’s major cities today (it is already Tuesday in Iraq), “a defining step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country.” In celebration, Iraqis launched fireworks and “thousands attended a party in a park [in Baghdad] where singers performed patriotic songs. … Loudspeakers at police stations and military checkpoints played recordings of similar tunes throughout the day, as Iraqi military vehicles decorated with flowers and national flags patrolled the capital.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had called the withdrawal a “great victory,” declared June 30 a public holiday.
John McCain told us last year that he knew better than the Iraqis on what they wanted….
(image created by KayInMaine of White Noise Insanity)
President Dick Cheney leaving his Shadow Government on January 20, 2009 after stuffing documents, videos, and other stuff into his pockets…
As president of the Shadow Government, Dick Cheney approved of:
Illegal wiretaps
The torture of prisoners
The formation of death squads for his use
Stealing billions of American taxpayer money via the cover of Iraq/Afghanistan
Outing CIA operatives
Protecting al-Qaida/Osama bin Laden’s image
Sending out anthrax to kill liberals
And then Dick Cheney went on Face the Nation recently and said this (emphasis mine):
SCHIEFFER: How much did President Bush know specifically about the methods that were being used? We know that you– and you have said– that you approved this…
CHENEY: Right.
SCHIEFFER: … somewhere down the line. Did President Bush know everything you knew?
CHENEY: I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew — he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.
George Bush basically authorized the torture program? Seems to me Dick Cheney was the one orchestrating the whole entire torture program for his Shadow Government (that he and Donald Rumsfeld dreamed of for so long) and then last minute to make it “legal”, he had Bush sign off for him, because it would have been ILLEGAL for the Vice President of the United States to sign off on something like this……and by the way, how many VPs have we had creating a torture program outside the knowledge of the president of the United States?
If George Bush wants to earn a shred of respect, now would be the time for him to come clean about Dick Cheney’s Shadow Government that he formed on the morning of 9/11/01 and to tell the American people what Cheney did as the president of it. I would be willing to accept George Bush’s freedom in exchange for exposing Dick Cheney as the RIGHT WING CAREER CRIMINAL HE IS just so Dickey can go to prison for the rest of his natural born life! I also would love it if George Bush exposed how Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others helped in orchestrating the 9/11/01 attack.
Every time Dick Cheney opens his mouth, he proves a little bit more that he was the president of his Shadow Government and this government was mainly in effect for the 8 years under George Bush.
There he goes again! Dick Cheney opening his big evil mouth and lashing out with his forked-tongue just to change the subject at the moment!
Dick is so proud of himself his left testicle has swollen up…
Poor Dickwad. He can’t stand it that President Obama has authorized the release of the OLC torture memos for all the world to see. Why can’t he stand it? Because he knows these memos prove that the Bush Regime authorized waterboarding and other forms of torture while the assholes said for years that they didn’t torture! Not only that, but we’ve also learned that Khalid Sheik Mohammad was waterboarded 183 times in one month…..one month! And ole DickFace wants us to believe it was because of being waterboarded that KSM gave up RELIABLE information that prevented more attacks!
DickFace is now changing the subject by saying, “Look at the birdie! We got good info even though we broke the law! Nice birdie! Cute birdie! Everyone see the birdie? We protected you by preventing attacks!!!”.
Prevented more attacks? Really Dickwad? If that is true, then the documents that you are wanting the CIA to release to the public will have the following information for all the world to see:
- The names of the individuals who were going to orchestrate the attack
- The target the individuals were going to attack
- The names of the individuals ARRESTED after this information was obtained from KSM
Ummm, Dick? Let’s pretend that what you say is true….that because of the lovely torture your CIA guys inflicted on KSM resulted in the prevention of more attacks against America.
Here’s some questions I have for ya…
- If no one was arrested after KSM gave up this valuable information that an attack was going to happen and an attack didn’t happen as KSM explained it would, then wouldn’t that mean that KSM was just pulling your leg and the information he gave was fabricated just to stop the torture?
- And wouldn’t it make sense that the individuals who were going to carry out the attack (you know, the ones KSM named along with the target while he was being waterboarded for the 183rd time) would still carry out the attack even if they knew KSM was being tortured and held by the US? Huh?
- Wouldn’t they want to still attack us and wouldn’t their mission to kill Americans be more important than the life of KSM? Huh?
Something is very fishy here Dicky. I think you’re lying again! By the way, there was breaking news today THAT YOU WERE LYING WHEN YOU SAID YOU HAD CONTACTED THE CIA TO RELEASE THESE DOCUMENTS! The CIA said you did not contact them and they would not release these documents just because you said so. So ppppbbbblllllllttttttt……liar.
Is it possible ole Little Dick and others in the CIA falsified documents reflecting that their hard work in torturing these individuals was working and they made up future attacks to make themselves look good? No attacks were ever carried out, even though ole Dick said they had thwarted them all because of the info given to the CIA through the use of torture. Huh…but yet……not one arrest of these phantom terrorists nor was there ever an attack of any kind! Interesting…so who was going to carry out the attacks, Dicky? The guys you were torturing? Huh. Could be, so basically that means you didn’t save us from anything!
Change the subject all you want Darth, but you have some more explaining to do to the American people. We want the following items declassified and released to the public, please:
- The names of the individuals on your personal assassination squad
- The names of the individuals employed in your Shadow Government you created on the morning of 9/11/01 and were the president of
- All emails, phone conversations, faxes, cell phone conversations & documents by you pertaining to the Anthrax Attacks (you know, the 2nd attack on America that you conveniently leave out). We would appreciate the names of the individuals at the Pentagon and at Fort Detrick that you hired to send out the anthrax to liberal Americans.
- All emails, phone records, faxes, cell phone conversations & documents created by you during the time you and the Bush Regime were actively working to expose a CIA agent….Valerie Plame.
- ALL YOUR EMAILS, INTERNET CONVERSATIONS, FAXES, PHONE RECORDS, CELL PHONE RECORDS & ALL PAPER DOCUMENTS CREATED BY YOU TO BE PUT IN THE BUSH LIBRARY.
- Names, dates, and times of all individuals who came to the White House, your personal properties, and your VP residents to visit you. We want access to these phone logs, you know, the phone logs you refused to let Americans see while you were the VP!
What other things should we have Dicky declassify and release to the public since he’s in such a giving mood at the moment?
After the 1993 WTC bombing, Bill Clinton arrested the 5 guys involved and they remain in prison today. They weren’t tortured, no one was tortured from 1993 to 2000, but yet, George Bush gets in in 2001 and for 9 months the Bush Regime is hearing an attack is coming to our nation. They’re all laughing about it. Even John Ashcroft refused to fly commercially during the summer of 2001 and refused to tell the media why! Then on the morning of 9/11/01, Dick Cheney tells the US military to stand down. Yep…..don’t intercept or shoot down those planes in the sky that have been hijacked! Yeah, yeah….just send out military out over the Atlantic Ocean in the opposite direction of where the hijacked planes were!
Torturing ANYONE is what the terrorists do. It’s what they did after we started dropping bombs in Iraq on March 17, 2003 and killed 30,000 Iraqis in those first few hours. How many wingers were bullshit when they saw the tortured, burned, and dead American contractors hanging from a bridge in Iraq? And how did they react when they found out the Iraqis had captured some Americans and beheaded them? They were livid! Well then, why aren’t they upset that America’s CIA was told to treat the Iraqis, the Afghans, and others from around the world that we imprisoned the same way? Huh?
The Bush Regime did not make us safe. They only fueled the hatred against our country because they acted no different than the terrorists!
Interesting,
The guy the reich wing trumpeted to deny this story as false;
Shock Troops
Master Sergeant John Hatley, First Sergeant for Company A, First Battalion, First Infantry Division, during it’s deployment in Iraq.
…. was convicted two days ago by a military Courts-Martial in Germany of executing four handcuffed, blindfolded Iraqi men by shooting them in the backs of their heads.
In effect senior officers of the United States Army said he was not what he portrayed himself to be during the orchestrated reich wing media attack on the Beauchamp article. Instead he was criminal guilty of murder, and sentenced him to life in prison. sort of undercuts his statements don’t ya think?
In other words what was written by Private Beauchamp did have merit because the people he wrote about especially senior enlisted have been found guilty. The people the reich wing spinmeisters relied on sort of have been convicted of crimes like Beauchamp wrote about.
Besides Hadley two others have Beauchamp served with also been imprisoned for the crimes they committed.
Sgt. Michael Leahy Jr., 28, the medic for the unit Hadley was in, was found of premeditated murder in February and sentenced him to life in prison.
On March 30, Sgt. First Class Joseph P. Mayo, 27, pleaded guilty to murder and received a 35-year sentence.
Sort of makes you wonder why the reich-wing media worked so hard to deny the truth the US Army just confirmed?
Why not actually find out what the truth actually is before going all rabid over somebody who in the end simply reported what he saw?
This sorta parallels the torture revelations, the reich wing said we never tortured until the truth came out, now they wanna say so what, like committing crimes is no big deal.
I wonder why they think that?
On March 20th 2009 a very bad thing happened, ….. but a much worse thing was avoided.
The nuclear powered submarine USS Hartford (SSN-768) (a Los Angeles-Class attack submarine) and the US Navy amphibious surface ship USS New Orleans (LPD-18) , the newest vessel in the US Navy, did something ships should never do, they tried to occupy the same spot in the seas, they collided.
The collision was real serious, as you can see;
Photos from whiskeyandgunpowder
Notice the damage to the subs sail (that very large jagged crack is definitely not in the blueprints) making submersion impossible, which will make getting it half way around the planet for repairs interesting. A Navy website has comments which say there are cracks in the frame also
According to one report, submarine Hartford rolled 85-degrees to starboard. The impact and rolling caused injuries to 15 Sailors on board. The bow planes and sail of the submerged Hartford ripped into the hull of New Orleans.
According to a Navy statement, the collision punched a 16-by-18 foot hole in the fuel tanks of New Orleans. Two interior ballast tanks were also damaged, the statement said. USS New Orleans lost about 25,000 gallons of diesel fuel, which rapidly dissipated in the ocean and could not be tracked after a few days. There were no injuries to New Orleans crew of 360 or the embarked unit of 700 US Marines.
Nuclear-powered submarine Hartford was severely damaged. Indeed, the submarine’s sail was torn from its mountings to the vessel’s pressure hull. The submarine’s sail is clearly bent by several degrees to starboard. It’s not part of the builder’s specs, that’s for sure. Apparently, the submarine’s communication masts and periscope are warped and inoperable. The watertight integrity of the pressure hull is suspect. After the collision, Hartford transited on the surface to Bahrain, where the vessel tied up to a military pier.
According to a report in the latest issue of Navy Times, this is a “deployment ending” event for the USS Hartford. The submarine cannot fulfill its combat mission. The vessel must move to a nuclear-capable shipyard to undergo extensive repairs, costing “in the tens of millions of dollars” according to one source.
That is a very bad thing to happen, especially considering a nuclear powered sub was involved. However as bad as it was, remember 15 sailors were hurt in the accident Though they all have returned to duty. Where it happened couldn’t have been worse, right smack in the middle of the Straights of Hormuz.
For those of you who do not know where that is, it is the place Iran and the US have squabbled over since 1979, the same place where all the super tankers from the Saudis Iraq and Kuwait must traverse through to bring the oil to Europe, Japan, Korea, China and even the US. The same place last year the Iranian navy’s speed boats played chicken with the US Navy both last April and as recent as January.
If we had suffered a “Kursk” style sinking of a nuclear sub there all traffic would have come to a screeching halt. Nobody would have wanted to float a very large ship full of highly flammable oil directly over the top of a damaged submerged nuclear powered sub. Remember the Kursk did catch fire ….. and could have exploded. The Navy would have locked the area down until they could have recovered the sub. Which would have made the Iranians not very happy, which might have lead to more games of high speed chicken. .
This would have had dire consequences to the price of oil and it’s products like gasoline plastics which of course would have further stressed a severely stressed world economy. This of course would have sunk us much deeper into a recession lest a (gasp) depression. Sort of making the last year seem quite mild by comparison.
So all in all, we dodged a real bad situation a couple of weeks ago, thank god, allah, the flying spaghetti monster, yehovah, budda, krishna, bael, zeus, poseidon, your lucky rabbits foot … take your pick. Yes, if the accident had been worse, think of how the Iranians might have responded, because a good amount of their oil and revenue from it flows through that narrow strip of water. Or if the Iranians had chosen that particular time to play chicken again. We all got lucky this time, wars have started in stranger circumstances, just ask the poor Iraqis about the last six years …….. or the Vietnamese about a place called the Gulf of Tonkin.
We all just missed a real bad, bad or worse ………………………
Dick Cheney hiding a dirty bomb in his pants for future use…
If anyone has proof Osama bin Laden is alive, then please feel free to post your proof. Until then, I will continue to believe that Osama bin Laden died of liver/kidney disease in 2002 and that Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the republic party, while Dick Cheney is the leader of al-Qaida for the republic party. See? So, to keep American’s scared and to not think about the financial mess Cheney & Bush left behind, Cheney got bored today and had his Osama bin Laden impersonator at the Pentagon/CIA do a scary audio of Osama saying Israel is still in the crosshairs. Uh ha. Let me guess, Dick Cheney will contact his neocons at the Pentagon/CIA to put out propaganda (feed it especially to President Obama by providing fake evidence just like he and his Pigs did before the Iraq Use of Force vote went down!) that Iran must be destroyed to protect Israel, so he and his Robber Baron Thugs can have their new fake war to line their deep pockets with? Hey, could be.
Donald Rumsfeld and his buddy Saddam Hussein shaking hands and smiling back in the 1980’s…
(picture)
Where’d Iraq get that mustard gas and Taban nerve gas again? Huh. Anyone know?
Brendanx is a commenter over on FireDogLake and just recently he was waiting at the bus stop in DC with his son when he sees Donald Rumsfeld waiting at the same bus stop. Does Brendanx stay silent when he sees a war criminal in his midst? Are you kidding me!?! No way! He called Donald Rumsfeld ‘evil’ to his face with all the angst 8 years can bring!
Here’s the comment Brendanx first left on FireDogLake:
emptywheel –
I hope you find this interesting. Your analyses are very important to my understanding of the world, so I wanted to share it on your blog.
This is way off the topic of the day, but is maybe pertinent to one of the overarching topics of this site, war criminals. It’s certainly vanity that leads me to post this, but also a kind of trepidation that makes me want to make at least a semi-public statement about a very disturbing public encounter I just had.
Donald Rumsfeld was standing at my bus stop this morning as I waited to take my boy to school. I’m still shaky. I confronted him and couldn’t control my anger. I had seen him once before walk by (his arm was in a sling then and he looked positively wizened, but this time he was hale and nattily dressed) but had been too flabbergasted to react. I wanted to be ready with something to say the next time, and had prepared myself, but couldn’t stay on script past “You think you can show your face in public among decent people?”. I became more vociferous and enraged the longer it went: mass murderer, traitor, torturer, rapist of children….In fact, from my first words, when I saw Rumsfeld don an impenetrable smirk I consciously took the tack of yelling and loudly indicating his presence to everyone else; I wanted to enlist their help. Dismayingly my gentle fellow citizens didn’t intervene in any way, or were even outright hostile to me, although some people who witnessed the exchange from the bus comforted me afterwards, approvingly. Thankfully my kid was not overly disturbed, and seemed even cheerful after I explained that Rumsfeld is a wicked man who started a war, like Sauron or Saruman, but that he was not a danger to us. I’m frankly not positive about the latter assertion.
Anyway, he did respond at a couple of points. One insidious tactic was to comment on my kid — I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect that he would be messed up by having such a crazy father, which bait I took and responded, “He has to learn the difference between good and evil.” The other was a surprising statement, the inverse of the “I vuz only taking orders”, uttered in a tone of bemused incredulity you’d recognize from his press conferences: “But I didn’t order those things.” I took that lie as an admission.
If you think this exchange did not happen, here’s what was reported on the Washington Post:
“….The former defense secretary was waiting for a long-delayed bus when a man in his late 30s with a young son got just inches from his face and started berating him over his handling of the war in Iraq — words like “warmonger,” “rapist” and “evil man” were heard by others at the stop. Rumsfeld stood stoically, not responding, so the man turned to the rest of the crowd and yelled at them for not joining him in heaping abuse. Then the man’s bus arrived (Rumsfeld was waiting for a different one) and that was that.”
I’m telling you…this is exactly what we Americans need to be doing every time we see one of the Bush Criminals on the streets. If they don’t get the justice and prison terms they deserve, then we Americans will make sure these assholes are looking over their shoulders for the angry masses for the rest of their lives! Sounds good to me!
Way to go, Brendanx!
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emptywheel –
I hope you find this interesting. Your analyses are very important to my understanding of the world, so I wanted to share it on your blog.
This is way off the topic of the day, but is maybe pertinent to one of the overarching topics of this site, war criminals. It’s certainly vanity that leads me to post this, but also a kind of trepidation that makes me want to make at least a semi-public statement about a very disturbing public encounter I just had.
Donald Rumsfeld was standing at my bus stop this morning as I waited to take my boy to school. I’m still shaky. I confronted him and couldn’t control my anger. I had seen him once before walk by (his arm was in a sling then and he looked positively wizened, but this time he was hale and nattily dressed) but had been too flabbergasted to react. I wanted to be ready with something to say the next time, and had prepared myself, but couldn’t stay on script past “You think you can show your face in public among decent people?”. I became more vociferous and enraged the longer it went: mass murderer, traitor, torturer, rapist of children….In fact, from my first words, when I saw Rumsfeld don an impenetrable smirk I consciously took the tack of yelling and loudly indicating his presence to everyone else; I wanted to enlist their help. Dismayingly my gentle fellow citizens didn’t intervene in any way, or were even outright hostile to me, although some people who witnessed the exchange from the bus comforted me afterwards, approvingly. Thankfully my kid was not overly disturbed, and seemed even cheerful after I explained that Rumsfeld is a wicked man who started a war, like Sauron or Saruman, but that he was not a danger to us. I’m frankly not positive about the latter assertion.
Anyway, he did respond at a couple of points. One insidious tactic was to comment on my kid — I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect that he would be messed up by having such a crazy father, which bait I took and responded, “He has to learn the difference between good and evil.” The other was a surprising statement, the inverse of the “I vuz only taking orders”, uttered in a tone of bemused incredulity you’d recognize from his press conferences: “But I didn’t order those things.” I took that lie as an admission.
If you think this exchange did not happen, here’s what was reported on the Washington Post:
“….The former defense secretary was waiting for a long-delayed bus when a man in his late 30s with a young son got just inches from his face and started berating him over his handling of the war in Iraq — words like “warmonger,” “rapist” and “evil man” were heard by others at the stop. Rumsfeld stood stoically, not responding, so the man turned to the rest of the crowd and yelled at them for not joining him in heaping abuse. Then the man’s bus arrived (Rumsfeld was waiting for a different one) and that was that.”