Posted on 10/28/2010 9:24:48 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
France's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier is now en route to the region and will arrive there at the end of October, when a quarter of the world's nuclear aircraft carriers will gather in the stratgeic waters.
The French carrier is accompanied by two frigates, an attack submarine, a re-fuelling tanker, 3,000 sailors and 27 aircraft.
"The force would help allied navies fight piracy off the coast of Somalia and send jets to support NATO in the skies above Afghanistan," said the commander of the group, Rear Admiral Jean-Louis Kerignard.
This is while new opinion polls show that a vast majority of the French are against any military presence in Afghanistan and want an immediate withdrawal of troops from the war-torn country.
Charles de Gaulle is to join its two US counterparts already stationed in the waters, that is the nuclear-powered super carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group.
USS Lincoln and USS Truman are currently assigned to the Fifth Fleet's area of responsibility, which encompasses the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the eastern coast of Africa south to Kenya, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.
The Fifth is the first fleet established in the post-Cold War period and is in charge of several of the most strategic chokepoints on the planet that is the Suez Canal, the Bab Al Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz.
There are currently over 31 warships docked in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, nineteen of them belonging to the United States.
The recent additions will create a formidable armada covering the Arabian Sea from one end to the other.
(Excerpt) Read more at presstv.ir ...
The French stopped the Muslims at Tours; they don’t take sh!t from Muslims. They won’t allow them to wear headscarves in public schools, while we try to accomodate them for drivers license pictures with their ninja-masks.
More French died in WWI than Americans in all of our wars combined (it will take centuries for us to catch up); Americans can mock them from behind the safety of their keyboards, but 2 years 10 French troops died defending an area they took over from Americans in Afghanistan (therefore sparing 10 American families that grief), and France lost 58 paratroopers in 1983 in the series of attacks that killed 242 US Marines. Granted, they are hardly the first to fight, but when they do they send good soldiers.
I still love Schwarzkopf’s crack that going to war with the French is like going deer hunting with an accordion.
Excellent post.
And to the anti-France jokers: it makes no sense to mock an ally when we may well be in a war for civilization itself.
Vive la France in 732 (the battle of Tours), and vive la France today.
Why?
Wait a minute. Maybe it’s the only ship they have.
Merci!
220 Marines, 18 sailors, 3 soldiers - BLT barracks
1 Marine, 3 soldiers - Embassy
The article and the headline do not completely agree. The article says the carrier will be stationed in the region.
The region is further defined and not only the Arabian gulf but the Arabian sea, the Gulf of Oman and Aden and the coast off Kenya and Africa
I don’t know for sure, but believe the carriers et al are not all bottled up in the Gulf but are present in the larger region that includes the Gulf.
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For those who don't know, Charles de Gaulle has carried out several deployments supporting our combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I concur, but vive la France a couple of years ago not so much.
They did come to our aid in the eighteenth century.
If you think they “came to your aid” in the eighteenth century you are sadly mistaken. They couldnt give a toss for your revolution. They were in it to help themselves.
That French fleet being in the right place at the right time saved the revolution. Their motives for doing so matter a lot less than their actions, and their actions saved our bacon.
I'm not saying other nations don't do that, or even mostly do that, and I'm not saying that individual French people cannot act out of the goodness of their own hearts (some of the French medical charities are particularly and rightly well regarded) but the French government NEVER does.
Good points. In addition, France under Sarkozy has changed, so (as much as I used to ridicule the French), those “surrender-monkey” potshots about the French may very well be currently inappropriate.
After all, they’ve outlawed the Burka and are beginning to grow some sack about the muzzie cancer in their society.
This is some scary stuff though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijRHfx9TcOw
(...makes you want to walk thru the crowd of muzzie azzes in the air playing a ghetto blaster with Beyonce and eating a ham croissant, doesn’t it?)
There’s another article posted here that says the thing broke down and isn’t going anywhere.
Sarkozy 2012!!
The Lincoln and the Truman. Hmmm, two of the biggest risk takers in American Presidential history. 1 and 1a.
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