Free Republic

Noble Corp. in January announced plans to move one of its deep-water drilling rigs out of the Gulf of Mexico amid a spill-related slowdown in activity. This week, the Swiss-based driller made good on its promise. It loaded the Noble Clyde Boudreaux, an ultra-deepwater semisubmersible, on a ship in Pascagoula, Miss., that will carry the rig 5,000 miles to Brazil, where it has a contract with Shell. That new contract, starting in April, will last for a year and is $290,000 per day less than the previous Gulf lease, Noble said. Noble, Diamond Offshore and other offshore drilling contractors have...

Bogota (AP) - It's a game played out regularly on the high seas off Colombia's Pacific coast: A U.S. Navy helicopter spots a vessel the size of a humpback whale gliding just beneath the water's surface. A Coast Guard ship dispatches an armed team to board the small, submarine-like craft in search of cocaine. Crew members wave and jump into the sea to be rescued, but not before they open flood valves and send the fiberglass hulk and its cargo into the deep. Colombia has yet to make a single arrest in such scuttlings because the evidence sinks with the...

For US, a terror threat lurks in drug smuggling subs Shift of cargo to arms and people is feared By Bryan Bender KEY WEST, Fla. - Skimming just below the surface, they are extremely difficult to detect from surveillance aircraft or patrol boats. Their sleek design, up to 80 feet in length, can secretly carry several tons of cargo thousands of miles. These "semi-submersibles," which exhibit some of the same characteristics as military submarines, mark a significant advancement in the ability of drug smugglers to slip past coastal defenses. So far this year, the Coast Guard says it has encountered...

How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

The waters in the Caribbean and around Latin America for a long time have provided a path for illicit drugs to flow into the United States, but the U.S. Navy has increased its patrols in the region now looking for something else – Hezbollah terrorists, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. The Navy, in trolling for mini-submarines sometimes used to transport drugs, has discovered that some of them apparently are being operated by Hezbollah. The mini-subs are small semi-submersibles, made of fiberglass and capable of carrying up to four people plus a payload. They are popular with...