"..A senior Pentagon official said Thursday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the Defense
Department perfers not to publicly annouonce upcoming ship movements for security reasons."... So, why
is he telling the whole world?
In a perfect world, carrier operational secrecy might be worth something...but we don't live in that world. The carriers dock in well known ports, and their crews rtepresent a significant portion of the area population while they are in port.
Their absense is noticed.
Further, to get to amny of the trouble spots on earth, they have to pass through narrow straits, Gibralter, Suez, Indonesia/Malaysia...
...again they are noticed.
DOD may not post their plans on the front page of the Washington Post, but it only takes a very few mouse clicks to determine the location and status of our carriers. Nature of the beast.
Besides. This time around, we WANT the Iranians to take notice. However...
Moving an extra carrier in is the kind of thing you do when the bad guys do something you don't like, or when you expect the enemy to get uppity, or when you want to punish them, or if you have an op laid on and need to get assets into place without making it obvious that you're making a move...raising at least a couple of questions...
1. What, specifically did Iran do recently to piss us off?
2. Just what is the long term Bush plan for Iran and their nuclear weapon aspirations, and how does this one piece of that larger puzzle fit into place?
Before you answer, I can speculate as well as the average guy, and I'm not really looking for answers here, especially if they are less than obvious answers, the possession of which might aid some real jerks.
Just thinking out loud...
;-)
They should move in a third carrier task force. Or is a third already moving in that we don't know about?