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Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War
Hugh Pickens writes "The high stakes standoff between Iran and the U.S. over the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for one-fifth of the world's oil, escalated this week as Iran's navy claimed to have recorded video of a U.S. aircraft carrier entering the Port of Oman and the deputy chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Hossein Salami rejected U.S. claims that it could prevent Iran from closing the strait. To drive the point home, Iran has started a 10-day naval exercise in the Persian Gulf to show off how it could use small speedboats and a barrage of missiles to combat America's naval armada while in a report for the Naval War College, U.S. Navy Commander Daniel Dolan wrote that Iran has acquired 'thousands of sea mines, wake homing torpedoes, hundreds of advanced cruise missiles (PDF) and possibly more than one thousand small Fast Attack Craft and Fast Inshore Attack Craft.'" (Read more, below.)
Hugh Pickens continues: "The heart of the Iran's arsenal is its 200 small potential-suicide boats — fiberglass motorboats with a heavy machine gun, a multiple rocket-launcher, or a mine — and may also carry heavy explosives, rigged to ram and blow a hole in the hull of a larger ship. These boats will likely employ a strategy of 'swarming' — coming out of nowhere to ambush merchant convoys and American warships in narrow shipping lanes. But the U.S. Navy is not defenseless against kamikaze warfare. The U.S. has put more machine guns and 25-millimeter gyro-stabilized guns on the decks of warships, modified the 5-inch gun to make it more capable of dealing with high-speed boats, and improved the sensor suite of the Aegis computer-integrated combat system aboard destroyers and cruisers. 'We have been preparing for it for a number of years with changes in training and equipment,' says Vice Admiral (ret.) Kevin Cosgriff, former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command."
regardless of THERE losses
For fuck's sake. LEARN THE FUCKING PRONOUNS!
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Puhleeeze, let go of that fucking Mossadegh!
It was the Cold War, both the US and the USSR conducted thousands of secret operations all over the world. The simple fact that operation Ajax was a viable proposition means Iran wasn't a stable democracy.
Countries like those of Eastern Europe got fucked much harder than Iran, they were invaded militarily and kept in submission for fifty years, yet they are recovering. Why cannot Iran forget Mossadegh? Or, rather, why cannot the childish American leftists forget him?
"Bush is taking us to war with Iraq". those libs and protestors were always going on and on about this.
Well, we never did. We had a short, brief kinetic contingency operation.
Cheney said we would be greeted as liberators - we were.
Rumsfeld said it wouldn't be a big deal - it wasn't.
John McCain said it wouldn't take very long or cost very much - it didn't.
Economic sanctions kill poor people? I don't think so. Just like most of the rest of the world, Iran is overpopulated. Overpopulation kills more poor people, than economic sanctions can.
It is the unstated mission of Unicef and organizations like them, to force the world to support as large a human population as possible. I can't get behind that mission.
Now, if Unicef's mission were to educate people, and to convince them to control the population, I could support them.
The entire world needs to team up with China, and their once child per couple thing for about 50 to 100 years.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I'd have to agree, if someone told me such a thing.
And, before you run your mouth to fast, and to far, I'm a parent and a grandparent. I have stood in an emergency room, looking at my son's body all torn up, wondering if he was going to live or not. Unlike many a mindless shrieking parent, I looked hard at that son, and told him that Darwin's rules probably applied to him.
Yes, we're overpopulated, and the fact that you and at least 6 billion other people on the planet would deny it has no bearing on the fact.
Writing stupid shit? Hmmmmm - you might take your own advice?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br