Posted on 09/02/2007 1:09:49 PM PDT by kristinn
This might just be another BS moment at the Kos - theyve had so many of them Ive lost count. But if this is legit we just had a serious breach of national security.
I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing Signal Officer- she directs carrier aircraft while landing) She told me we are going to attack Iran. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking are finished. That means that all the targets have been chosen, prioritized, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers and so forth.
I asked her why she is telling me this.Her answer was really amazing. .I know this will sound crazy coming from a Naval officer, she said. But were all just waiting for this administration to end. Things that happen at the senior officer level seem more and more to happen outside of the purview of XOs and other officers who typically have a say-so in daily combat and flight operations. Today, orders just come down from the mountaintop and theres no questioning. In fact, there is no discussing it. I have seen more than one senior commander disappear and then three weeks later we find out that he has been replaced. Thats really weird. Its also really weird because everyone who has disappeared has questioned whether or not we should be staging a massive attack on Iran."Were not stupid. Most of the members of the fleet read well enough to know what is going on world-wise. We also realize that anyone who has any doubts is in danger of having a long military career yanked out from under them. Keep in mind that most of the people I serve with are happy to be a part of the global war on terror. Its just that the touch points are what we see since we are the ones out here who are supposedly implementing this grand strategy. But when you liason with administration officials who dont know that Iranians dont speak Arabic and have no idea what Iranians live like, then you start having second thoughts about whether these Administration officials are even competent.
(So much for the apolitical moniker)
I asked her about the attack, how limited and so forth.
I dont think its limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every damn Tomahawk we have in inventory. I think this is going to be massive and sudden, like thousands of targets. I believe that no American will know when it happens until after it happens. And whatever the consequences, whatever the consequences, they will have to be lived with. I am sure if my father knew I was telling someone in a news organization that we were about to launch a supposedly secret attack that it would be treason. But something inside me tells me to tell it anyway.
I asked her why she was suddenly so cynical.
I have become cynical only recently. I also dont believe anyone will be able to stop this. Bush has become something of an Emperor. He will give the command, and cruise missiles will fly and aircraft will fly and people will die, and yet few of us here are really able to cobble together a great explanation of why this is a good idea. Of course many of us can give you the 4H Club lecture on democracy in the Mid East. But if you asked any of the flight officers whether they have a clear idea of what the goal of this strike is, your answer would sound like something out of a think tank policy paper. But its not like Kosovo or when we relieved the tsunami victims. There everyone could tell you in a sentence what we were here doing.
Thats whats missing. A real sense of purpose. Whats missing is the answer to what the hell are we doing out here threatening this country with all this power? Last night in the galley, an ensign asked what right do we have to tell a sovereign nation that they cant build a nuke. I mean the table got EF Hutton quiet. Not so much because the man was asking a question that was off culture. But that he was asking a good question. In fact, the discussion actually followed afterwards topside where someone in our group had to smoke a cigarette. The discussion was intelligent but also in lowered voices. Its like we arent allowed to ask the questions that we always ask before combat. Its almost as if the average seaman or soldier is doing all the policy work.
She had to hang up. She left by telling me that she believes the attack is a done deal. Its only a matter of time before their orders come and they will be sent to station and told to go to Red Alert. She said they were already practicing traps, FARP and FAST. (Trapping is the act of catching the tension wires when landing on the carrier, FARP is Fleet Air Combat Maneuvering Readiness Program- practice dogfighting- and FAST is Fleet Air Superiority Training).
She seemed lost. The first time in my life I have ever heard her sound off rhythm, or unsure of why she is doing something. She knows that there is something rotten in the Naval Command and she, like many of her associates are just hoping that the election brings in someone new, some new situation, or something.
Yes. Were gong to hit Iran, bigtime. Whatever political discussion that are going in is window dressing and perhaps even a red herring. I see whats going on below deck here in the hangars and weapons bays. And I have a sick feeling about how its all going to turn out.
I passed this post on to the ONI AG - Office of Naval Intelligence AG to have a look-see and see if they can find this young lady - if she exists and have a chat. An active duty officer on a ship preparing for operations giving out the op plans to said operation is called - treason.
Again, considering the source (Kos), buyer beware, but if true the poster who goes by the name Maccabee - will be having some visitors.
Oh golly, they're going to RED ALERT.
"Everytime I set Red Alert Bones goes crazy with the f@#$ing anthrax vaccinations!"
The few like her would rather nukes hit Israel and parts of the western world before we even talk about doing anything. Scum like her should not even be allowed to call themselves American.
Make no mistake, if we let Iran go nuclear they will launch against anything and everything that's not Muslim.
There isn’t much on KOS that isn’t BS. This is more of the same imho. Most of the gender neutral schizos posting on kos rant, swear, and conjure fantasies of every type. There are some extreme sickos that do justice for Kos and Soros, and these are the normal ones. These people are the enemies of the civilized world.
Something there is among certain elements of the left that gets weak kneed at the notion of Bu$hitlers legions of myrmidons finally coming to their senses and Flipping On The Man.
It serves to explain how the New Republic fell for the Scott Thomas Beauchamp diaries, and perhaps explains the tone of breathless, schoolyard tattletaling in this dKos diary entry. Whoever the diarists correspondent is, s/he clearly knows a bit of the inside lingo but still manages to get details glaringly wrong in a way that coincidentally serves to reinforce the Kossacks prejudices, garnering over a thousand comments when I first looked in this morning.
Its not that theres any one thing wrong in the post, which purports to tell the inside story of an upcoming US naval attack on Iran, but rather the accumulation of many, many little things that arent quite right:
She started in the Marines and after 8 years her term was up. She had served on a smaller Marine carrier, and found out through a friend knew there was an opening for a junior grade LSO in a training position on a supercarrier. She used the reference and the information and applied for a transfer to the United States Navy. Since she had experience landing F-18Cs and Cobra Gunships, and an unblemished combat record, she was ratcheted into the job, successfully changing from the Marines to the Navy. Her role is still aligned with the Marines since she generally is assigned to liason with the Marine units deploying off her carrier group.(NEXT TO IMPSSIBLE TO DO)
A smaller Marine carrier would be a Navy LHA or LHD, embarking a Marine Air Combat Element, or ACE. They carry attack helicopters, transport helicopters and a small number of Harrier jump jets. They dont (cant) land F-18s.
Its not impossible for an aviator to have an unblemished combat record flying Marine helicopters from amphibs and then have flown the FA-18 - a test pilot might do so - but its very, very rare. You bloom where youre planted, and these days, with the Navy getting smaller and the Marine Corps under burden, transferring from the Corps to carrier aviation is well nigh unheard of.
As for hearing from a friend that a junior grade LSO position was available, thats hooey. Thats now how its done, we dont advertise for LSOs, we grow them up from within the squadrons embarked aboard the carriers. Nor, for that matter, do we call them supercarriers any more, since theyre all supercarriers. The last ship not in the supercarrier weight class was the USS Midway, which weighed in at a bit less than 60,000 tons but was decommissioned 15 years ago.
I know this will sound crazy coming from a Naval officer, she said. But were all just waiting for this administration to end. Things that happen at the senior officer level seem more and more to happen outside of the purview of XOs and other officers who typically have a say-so in daily combat and flight operations. Today, orders just come down from the mountaintop and theres no questioning. In fact, there is no discussing it. I have seen more than one senior commander disappear and then three weeks later we find out that he has been replaced. Thats really weird. Its also really weird because everyone who has disappeared has questioned whether or not we should be staging a massive attack on Iran.
More hooey. The say-so of daily combat operations under the purview of XOs is how to execute the mission, not whether or not it ought to be done, and anyway, XOs do heads, beds and haircuts not national policy. And since the correspondent talks of doing traps and FARP training later in the post - events that are at the very beginning of the training cycle, and a year or more before the ship and air wing deploy - shes nowhere near being in the fight in any case, with two ships on the line right now and at least one between her ship and deployment. Something doesnt add up.
As for all of those disappearing senior officers, there are a couple of well-trodden paths to professional ignominy - DUIs and zipper failures are among the most common - but no one gets vanished for questioning whether or not we ought to attack Iran, or any other country for that matter and if they had, you can be sure wed all of heard about it by now. Its also passing strange to hear a former Marine complain that orders come down from the mountain top, as though at some time in the cherished past they use to bubble up from the mess decks. But even in such a bizarrely constructed paragraph, its hard to plausibly and consistently argue on the one hand that orders arent being questioned and that people are being relieved for doing so.
Were not stupid. Most of the members of the fleet read well enough to know what is going on world-wise. We also realize that anyone who has any doubts is in danger of having a long military career yanked out from under them. Keep in mind that most of the people I serve with are happy to be a part of the global war on terror. Its just that the touch points are what we see since we are the ones out here who are supposedly implementing this grand strategy. But when you liason (sic) with administration officials who dont know that Iranians dont speak Arabic and have no idea what Iranians live like, then you start having second thoughts about whether these Administration officials are even competent.
I have to wonder what administration official a lieutenant would be performing liason with, or who it is among those officials doesnt know that Iranians speak Farsi or how the subject would have even come up. While this is exactly the kind of paragraph that people personally invested in the narrative of the administration as a bunch of wooden headed bumblers would drink down like fine wine, it rings as false as a football bat on a tin cymbal to anyone who understands the way the Navy - and junior officers within the Navy - actually work.
JOs avoid talking to their embarked flag officer if ever they can manage to, and even a shipboard flag wouldnt speak directly to political types on policy matters, reporting instead to a 3-star ashore, who reports to the 4-star joint force commander who reports to a theater combatant commander - Admiral Fallon, in this case. The COCOM would be the first guy to routinely coordinate with the political arms of government and would be in any event be rather unlikely to share with a shipboard lieutenant his observation that administration officials didnt know that Iranians spoke Farsi even in the unlikely event that the opportunity presented itself.
More jangling language here:
But if you asked any of the flight officers whether they have a clear idea of what the goal of this strike is, your answer would sound like something out of a think tank policy paper. But its not like Kosovo or when we relieved the tsunami victims. There everyone could tell you in a sentence what we were here doing.
The dKos diarist is quoting here, so I think its safe to point out that flight officer has a specific and restrictive meaning in naval aviation, referring to the weapons systems operators, navigators and mission specialists who, along with a Navy pilot, execute the aircraft mission in a multi-seat aircraft. The term flight officer itself is an awkward formulation - naval flight officer or NFO is the common term - and would never in any case be used in this way. Much more likely would be the more generic term aviators or even aircrew. We just dont talk about ourselves that way, especially pilots - and all LSOs are pilots.
Next up:
Last night in the galley, an ensign asked what right do we have to tell a sovereign nation that they cant build a nuke. I mean the table got EF Hutton quiet. Not so much because the man was asking a question that was off culture. But that he was asking a good question. In fact, the discussion actually followed afterwards topside where someone in our group had to smoke a cigarette. The discussion was intelligent but also in lowered voices. Its like we arent allowed to ask the questions that we always ask before combat. Its almost as if the average seaman or soldier is doing all the policy work.
The galley is where food is cooked for enlisted men, and an air wing ensign would have no business being there. There are no tables in the galley. Officers dine in a wardroom. Very few aviators smoke these days, and you certainly dont go topside to do so - smoking galleries are on sponsons that give off the hangar bay. The questions we always ask before combat are all related to how do I get in and do my job without getting bagged, not whether or not its a job worth doing.
Its almost as if the average seaman is a little out of his or her swim lane talking about things s/he has only heard about and in every case, getting it almost right. But missing.
Is there a plan to attack Iran? Absolutely there is: We plan for everything, always have. Before World War II we planned with equal intensity to fight Britain and Canada on the one hand, and Japan on the other. As you start heading towards a place that has an existing plan, you dust that puppy off, check the intel for updated threats and cross-check the other planners math. Having thus paid obeisance to the household gods of war planning, the entire package is laid aside until the next time you go by. Makes the time pass faster.
But every little bit of this story reads like BS to me, with the only real surprise being that there are so very many eager rubes in the world, waiting to be taken in by it. So, as I said: Im hoisting the flag.
B S
LOL, I bet their phasers are on stun, too.
Yes, considering that the “source” seems to have the same talking/writing style as the “author”. lol.
That sounds about right! In fact, anybody with anything holding their ears apart probably figured that part out a long time ago.
Of course, the leftist bullsh*t that went with it is typical of a hildabeaste front-group.
Nice touch on siccin' the Feds on the clown that posted it! Way-to-go, kristinn! ....................... FRegards
Somebody out there has a very vivid imagination. I'm hoping no genuine Naval officer is stupid enough to use such unprofessional terminology even when betraying his or her country. At least Kerry managed to bleat a halfway believable story.
Here's the bottom line - nothing she described (if she's even real and it was, in fact, her talking) is one bit outside the Navy's normal peacetime training procedures. Nothing. As far as our attacking Iran, believe me, she'd be the very last to know.
I second this one. The "impending attack on Iran" story is all over the press. I only wish I had a monopoly on toilet paper in Mullahville.
Today, orders just come down from the mountaintop and theres no questioning.
Hey! That's not the way the military's supposed to work! ;-)
I have seen more than one senior commander disappear and then three weeks later we find out that he has been replaced. Thats really weird. Its also really weird because everyone who has disappeared has questioned whether or not we should be staging a massive attack on Iran.
What a scary notion, this. It's almost as if the civilian side of the government has taken control of the military!
But when you liason with administration officials who dont know that Iranians dont speak Arabic
I call BS. This sort of thing is total Kos-land fantasy. They love to tell each other this sort of thing. (Another one is that no one on the right knows that there are some Muslims called Sunnis and others called Shiites.)
and have no idea what Iranians live like,
More Kos-invention. Exactly why the f*** would we have to know "what Iranians live like", even if we didn't? What's that got to do with anything? That's a lefty pseudocriticism of warfare masquerading as some sort of genuine military person's dissent.
I believe that no American will know when it happens until after it happens.
LOL. Another "sinister" prediction that crumbles to pieces if you think about it for even one second. Um, of course we won't hear about it till after it happens. It's not going to be broadcast live as an ABC Special. Nor did Americans "know when" the Normandy invasion happened till after it happened. This is.... sinister? why exactly?
And whatever the consequences, whatever the consequences, they will have to be lived with.
From the Department Of Utterly Banal Statements.
"Whatever the consequences of doing X will have to be lived with" is true for every X. Whatever the consequences of not bombing Iran, will have to be lived with. Whatever the consequences of buttering my toast, will have to be lived with.
What a fascinating point this military-geostrategy expert has made.
I am sure if my father knew I was telling someone in a news organization that we were about to launch a supposedly secret attack that it would be treason.
It's treason regardless of whether her father finds out (assuming this person is real and not fictitious).
I also dont believe anyone will be able to stop this. Bush has become something of an Emperor. He will give the command, and cruise missiles will fly and aircraft will fly and people will die, and yet few of us here are really able to cobble together a great explanation of why this is a good idea.
The term is "Commander-in-Chief". But, yeah. Such is a soldier's lot, when given an order rarely are they able to "cobble together a great explanation of why this is a good idea", particularly if they are lower rank. Only recently is this considered to be supposedly some sort of rock-solid rebuttal to some military plan.
But if you asked any of the flight officers whether they have a clear idea of what the goal of this strike is, your answer would sound like something out of a think tank policy paper.
As long as they know what their actual targets are, that's ok with me.
But its not like Kosovo or when we relieved the tsunami victims. There everyone could tell you in a sentence what we were here doing.
Here's a sentence: We're destroying Iran's nuclear program.
There. There's your sentence. Maybe you don't like that justification, and you have the right to your personal convictions in such things, but that doesn't matter. You joined the military. Grow up. (if she exists)
Last night in the galley, an ensign asked what right do we have to tell a sovereign nation that they cant build a nuke.
Oh no! An ensign doesn't understand what "right" we have to prevent an autocratic theocracy from building weapons of mass-murder. Yes, then let's call the whole thing off.
The discussion was intelligent but also in lowered voices. Its like we arent allowed to ask the questions that we always ask before combat.
Yet somehow, the discussion occurred anyway. Miraculously, none of the participants were subsequently killed by the military's secret squad of Question-Disallowers.
She left by telling me that she believes the attack is a done deal.
I would like to think she's right, but I doubt it. (Again, if she exists.)
This is just to stir the dailycuss obscenity-spouting execrators to new levels of vulgarity.
Seems to me, not that I have experience at these levels, the way it would happen....particularly given that Admiral Fallon in now Commander of Central Command (Centcom)- Tommy Franks and Gen Abizad's old job.
On January 5 Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that he was replacing Gen. John Abizaid as commander of the Central Command (Centcom)--the body responsible for oversight of all US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the greater Middle East--with Adm. William Fallon, currently the commander of the Pacific Command (Pacom). Fallon is one of several senior officers recently appointed by Gates to oversee the new strategy for Iraq now being shaped by President Bush. [emphasis mine]
This story, treasonous if a leak of Operational Plans, may be a result of Admiral Fallon lining up his ducks in case the baloon goes up!
The Maccabees were a Jewish national liberation movement that fought for and won independence from Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty, who was succeeded by his infant son Antiochus V Eupator. The Maccabees founded the Hasmonean royal dynasty and established Jewish independence in the Land of Israel for about one hundred years, from 164 BC to 63 BC.
If true, I don't know what concerns me the most, the leak or the fact that we'll be depleting our inventory of Tomahawks which would mean we're SOL if any other area not of our choosing goes "live"?
I think it is a fairly small community...only an imbecile would actually do this and reveal this type of information about him or herself.
Especially given there are only a few aircraft carriers there at any given time, maximum of four (that I can recall)
Wow. The Marines now have carriers? My son has always said he respected the Navy because they always gave him a ride wherever he was going.
Boy, no kidding.
One is reminded of “Imperialist Running Dog” verbiage we have heard from the communists over the years.
God, they are a bunch of dumb asses.
;^)
" upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given as believe not in God." Sura 9:29
Sura 9:5 of the Koranus, you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in ambush.
Oh yeah, 1400 year history of aggression, lets let them have nukes!
Dumb shiite for brains commtard!
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