Five Years Ago Today...
On October 12, 2000, USS Cole (DDG-67) was attacked in Aden, Yemen, by suicide bombers. Seventeen Sailors made the ultimate sacrifice. Sailors, rest your oars.
In 1898, USS Maine was "attacked" in Havana harbor; the U.S. declared war on Spain. (It's since been proven fairly conclusively that this was actually an internal explosion.)
In 1917, Germany launched submarine attacks on our shipping; the U.S. declared war.
In 1941, Japan attacked our ships in harbor; the U.S. declared war.
In 2000, we sent FBI agents to Aden. It took most people eleven more months to realize we were already at war.
Michelle Malkin has a good roundup of others in the blogosphere who are honoring the heroes of the USS Cole today. For background and photos of the attack and aftermath, this site is a good place to start.
I will never forget...
posted by Bubblehead at 10:55 PM
1 Comments:
Here's the poop from a former surface sailor. In 1973 we went to DEFCON 3. We put people on watch that never had even fired a weapon. I was on roving security patrol (aka FZ wathch). I had been in VN on gunboats so I was OK with this, but we had a guy on bow watch that was an OSSN. Doubt the guy was qualified to even load the 12 guage he had.
Navy people are not killers by nature. I hope the new MA rate takes care of that. When I was at CI training in Coronado Island, SEALs and UDT would typically make fools of security on the gray Navy ships across the harbor.
I served on a Tango in VN, and the truth is I am glad the USMC is taking over the river interdiction role we used to do. They know a lot more about small arms, and aren't afraid to use them.
10/13/2005 12:42 AM
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