Moving In Or Moving Out?

[Intel Source: The Sub Report] The story accompanying this picture at Yahoo News says that the continued presence of U.S. subs in La Maddalena, Italy, was discussed today at a meeting between the U.S. SecDef and the Italian Defense Minister:

"Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino said after a meeting in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005, with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, that the United States was withdrawing its submarines from La Maddalena. The move is part of a general reshuffling of U.S. military forces and resources throughout Europe, and the timing of the move will be decided later."

I'm surprised I haven't seen anything else on this. Maybe Rumsfeld was giving into the intrepid protestors who demonstrated earlier this month against a hallucination that the U.S. was going to base a sub there; or, maybe we're giving in to the Sardinian regional president, who wanted our boats to leave. More than likely, if the tender really does move out (since there's no reason for the USS Emory S. Land (AS-39) to stay there if boats aren't pulling in), we'll see whining about the loss of money and jobs, like we saw in Rosie Roads.

Going deep...

Update 2104 22 Nov: Via The Sub Report, here's more on the eventual removal of U.S. forces from Sardinia.

On an unrelated note, while looking for backup information, I came across a Google hit for the Commander's bio on the SubGru 8 website. Here's what I found... it's not too impressive. When you move your mouse over the SubGru 8 logo, you can see it will try to send you to the C: drive of someone's computer. Anyway, here's Rear Admiral Mauney's bio on the Navy website. (He was my Squadron CO when my old boat USS Connecticut was commissioned.)