There’s a lot of back and forth about charging Americans for transport out of Lebanon, but here’s a more interesting question.
Why is the U.S. chartering civilian ships to transport Americans out of Lebanon anyway? XPatriated Texan is “really teed-off”:
When I was serving, we always had a “Gator fleet” - a battle group ready to conduct amphibious operations such as this - in the Mediterannean Sea. It was a standard part of ensuring worldwide security. With the increased need for security in that area in these times, it is a dereliction of duty to not have a ship within striking distance - and make no mistakes, one of these ships could make it from one end of the Med to the other in a couple of days. At least one should have already been moving when the bombs began falling in Lebanon late last week.
They should be there just off shore, projecting US power and serving the worldwide interests of peace by evacuating non-combatant personel and offering genuine humanitarian aid.
Read the whole post.
brokr on 
12:30 pm on July 19th, 2006 1
I know of at least one Naval battle cruiser that was diverted from its homeward trek to the areas around Israel and Lebanon.
The US naval ships *are* hyeading that way, it just takes time to get them there. The whole ‘hurry up and wait’ government bit.
3:33 pm on July 19th, 2006 2
Like everything else Chimperor, here is yyet another example of the gutting of our capabilities.
Hopefully this one won’t cost the number of American lives lost in New Orleans due to the incompetence of the Chimperor and his gang of clueless cronies.