Posted on 09/18/2006 10:08:31 AM PDT by areafiftyone
I'll defer to your point, though I simply wrote that I was curious as to current carrier placement. I always leave the details to the admirals, they wouldn't listen to me anyway, and shouldn't!
I like the blockade idea, that's the core of my comments.
So was seizing our embassy in 1979.
We are already technically at war with them.
We shouldn't worry whether or not it's an act of war...we should worry only about what Iran and their allies can do about it.
Time magazine this week looks like they're going back into the "write about stuff to try to scare people" mode. "What War With Iran Would Look Like"
excerpts:
The first message was routine enough: a "Prepare to Deploy Order" sent through Naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two minehunters. The orders didn't actually command the ships out of port; they just said be ready to move by October 1. A deployment of minesweepers to the east coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed, but until now largely theoretical, prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.
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OK, so we already have four minehunters there -- it still sounds scary to be doubling our force, you might say. It might be, if it wasn't for the fact that the two Osprey-class ships currently in Bahrain are being decommissioned in Dec. '06 . So, it looks like rather than doubling the force, we're just replacing the ones that are already there but leaving. Since all the Osprey-class ships are to be decommissioned by the end of 2008 .I wouldn't be surprised if the two "minesweepers" that got prepare to deploy orders were the Cardinal and Raven, who are going to "deploy" to their new owners in Egypt -- which means we'd still just have four minesweepers in the Gulf.
And what about the cruiser and the submarine that were mentioned? Well, it turns out that Navy ships, especially since 9/11, do "surge deployments" all the time. Bottom line: This just isn't a big deal, no matter how much Time wants us to believe it is. http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2006/09/time-magazine-scare-mongers.html
I won't believe until Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh confirm it.
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