“Qaeda” group claims rocket attack on U.S. ship (Yahoo/Reuters). The Jordanian attack was launched from an industrial warehouse area near Aqaba, Jordan. Reuters has the militants’ supposed statement.
NYT: “AMMAN, Jordan, Aug. 19 – A rocket was fired early today at two American naval ships docked in southern Jordan, killing a Jordanian soldier and marking the first attack on American military ships in the region in five years, American and Jordanian officials said.
“A rocket was fired at the same time from apparently the same area at an airport in a neighboring Israeli port, hitting a stretch of road and wounding a taxi driver. … A third projectile was fired at a Jordanian hospital around the southern port of Aqaba but did no damage.”
The Diplomatic Times reports that “[t]wo U.S. Navy ships left the Jordanian port of Aqaba after three rockets were fired at the ships. ‘They missed their targets and hit a warehouse and a hospital, killing a Jordanian soldier, and striking the Israeli port of Eilat,’ according to Al-Jazeera and other publications.”
It is getting really hard to keep track of which countries the US is going to blow up next, isn’t it? Iran, Syria, now Jordan…I guess the tactical nukes plan for Iran would serve to eliminate most of the Middle East if they plan it right, wouldn’t it? Who do we have to shoot up if Israel is attacked?
Karl will stop at nothing to deflect attention from Boy George and his mistakes, will he?
WHAT would have happened if those missiles had struck a nuclear-type device? (My terminilogy in this area is weak…)
I try hard never to think about it …
but just about 50 miles from me is the Hood Canal through which U.S. Navy nuclear submarines pass all the time….
we’ve watched them because the Hood Canal bridge gets shut down while they pass. The subs are painted ALL BLACK* .. quite hideous looking … wow…. bet nobody can guess what THAT submarine is! :):)
Then, about 90+? miles from here is the Bremerton Naval Shipyard where there are lots of nuclear subs + aircraft carriers, etc.
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*Unless the black paint is not meant to fool humans but to protect from detection under water out in the ocean?
The black paint is indeed part of the subs visual and aural “stealth” package. Underwater is dark/black. Even thirty feet down scuba diving there’s a pronounced shft to blue. At Sub depths it is black so the subs are too.
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Same thought reading news items just after breakfast ::
Should pick a small part of INFO from my diary and add it as comment here, so I can delete rest of diary?
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In the morning we can review the news together – date?
<click pic – of course it’s fresh – .au>
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Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm … and let’s put some vodka in it too! Wooooo!
That would have been a disaster!
I can understand your fear, being there in the middle of all the naval installations. We live within the evacuation distance of a nuclear power plant, and that was our first worry on 9/11, when no one knew what the extent of the attackes were. You must have that fear multiplied by 100!
I shudder to think what a trigger-happy cowboy would have done if the missiles from Jordan had hit something nuclear.
Thank you, Oui and Cabin Girl, for helping me feel like my fears aren’t silly … well, if you ever hear that Bremerton’s been hit, count the entire Seattle region gone, along with most of the I-5 corridor through Wa state, and the Peninsula too. Portland, OR might be endangered too, as well as communities on the other side of the Cascade mountains.
Susan! Don’t give Darth Cheney and his warmongers any ideas!!
Lived in Port Orchard after marrying… hard to sleep at night knowing just an eentsy teensy bit of what is all around you.
Indeed the entire region would be devastated.
But also, almost certainly incorrect. Nuclear power plants are not glorified bombs waiting to explode, and nuclear missiles must be triggered in just the right way to go off.
There’s another one up at Bangor – “oddly” most we knew who worked there came down with various types of cancer within the year we knew them.
Of course Freeps would say, “they knew what they were signing on to” Cancer and war and lies – oh my. Not.
Seriously? Not much.
If by “nuclear-type device” you mean a weapon, it’d take a lucky hit to damage a warhead. If it did damage it, it certainly would not set it off. The conditions necessary to trigger a nuclear detonation are much too exact for it to happen that way. Worst case scenario is that that someone — probably a highly-trained Navy hazmat team — would have to clean up the wreckage.
If by “nuclear-type device” you mean a reactor, ditto on the “lucky hit”, even more ditto on the “set it off” (can’t happen), and the mess that the hazmat team would need to deal with would be bigger.
Risk to people who happen to be nearby would depend on the circumstances, but would probably be minimal.
Ob: I’m not a nuclear engineer. I was a physics major for a while in college and I’ve read up on these things a bit.
As for the black paint, submarines are probably painted black to minimize the chance of being spotted from the air when they’re on the surface. Under the water, visual detection is not an issue.
I concur that rockets like that wouldn’t set off a nuclear device (incidentally, neither of these ships were nuclear powered or would have had nuclear weapons on board). Indeed, they probably wouldn’t have sunk the ships if they had hit. But, they would have done lots of damage, killed a dozen or two people, and put those ships out of action (one was what any other country in the world would call an aircraft carrier).
But, the more important observation is that while U.S. ships are designed to be well protected from hostile action when they are on alert and on patrol in hostile waters, when they have all sorts of active countermeasures activated, they are pretty much sitting ducks at port.
Getting within range of a naval shipyard with heavy weapons is not a difficult matter, and in foreign ports it is even easier.
Even if you don’t sink a ship like that, when they cost $1-$2 billion dollars each, simply disabling one for an extended period of time has an immense impact.
I am telling you, Folks, we are not any safer ever in the world of today. If we had a legitimate administration in the place of this play acting group, we might find answers to todays misery, found int he whole of the world…..My honest opinion is we as a member of the world, must find answers ind solutions instead of retaliatory actions. This is simply nonsense to think otherwise! We must discover the causeitive root for all thsi and resolve it asap; otherwise, we are really going to kill ourselves!
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Protects the geographical region of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. No retaliation is possible with US nukes due to fallout and environmental disaster in its aftermath, in such a small area of heavily populated ME!
There are “no targets” in area, so US could target sites in Iran instead –
recall words about Afghanistan from DoD assh*** Rumsfeld.
Just send in boots on the ground, open up some cans of marines and reservists.
<click on pic to enlarge>
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Lovely…
Exactly as CabinGirl said above….it’s hard keeping track of who our “enemey” is.
But it never fails… Bush is low in the polls and voila – something for the Freeps to get riled up about – WAR. Some fucking “threat” to our National Security and the media doesn’t have to do it’s job.
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we’re killing `em over there – no terror attacks on US mainland soil.
I (GWB) promised to protect YOU!
I just need some more of our fine boys and girls to die for a noble cause.
<click on pic for true US backbone>
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The “greatest generation” was just used by the war machine like with every generation.
The New Pearl Harbor.
At the New England Holocaust Memorial (which we visited in April) there are reminders as you walk along the smoketowers one speaks none so highly of our “greatest generation”.
“In 1938 the US knew of these attrocities and
DID NOTHING”
As the babes are saying today and yesterday and for all they days – “War is bad”
Janet, may I steal that image for our OPEN THREAD sometime this weekend?!
Cause I stole em from MomAgainstthedraft and I’m sure she stole em for a Hockey chat post of hers. They’re two seperate pix.
http://www.nehm.com/ is the site for the NEHM.
Damn I can’t get at my Kos diary of our NEHM experience.
Is Kos down again?
I nearly flipped out yesterday when I couldn’t find my Kos diaries from last winter and early spring … I am PRAYING someone didn’t clean house and not tell us.
I think during peak hours or something the archives are blunted.
I was so hopping mad when I went to retrieve a diary of mine (area board wanted another copy of it) and it wasn’t there!!!! Two about my son that I want to retrieve next time the archives is back up.
But I only have, what, four diaries?? LOL
So keep checking Susan.
Not that I pay much attention, but I think there’s a server switch going on over there today, and that might be why things aren’t available.