Yes. They are the ones responsible. Who else do you think I'm talking about?
Those responsible for the attack happen to be the folks who sent the bomb at the ship. Any questions on that?
As to who I know, I spent a year with Kirk Lipold. I've been contacted by a mutual professional friend to petition on his behalf, but that's a few years ago, based on Senator Warner's moves to use him (and by extention the USS Cole) as a scapegoat.
For nearly eight years now all we(the families of USS Cole victims) have been exposed to and have been given are excuses, sidesteps and more excuses.
Let's look at what "presence" is, showing the flag. It's the same thing the Samuel B Roberts was doing when it hit a mine. Port visits, other than for mundane things like repairs and refueling, replenishment, are a political show of the flag. It's what the Navy's been doing for, oh, two hundred years or so.
The Saudi that's being brought to trial today isn't reliable.
I don't doubt that for a minute.
That is exactly why I said what I said to begin with. Quite frankly, we went to trial and found other reponsible, directly linked.
So who do you want hanged from the highest yardarm in Norfolk?
This isn't for our benefit. I'm not expecting money. I want to make it damn painful and a financial nightmare for any other nation or party to support terrorism and I'd think that any American would be able to not just understand it but support it wholeheartedly.
Got it.
But if you want to think I'm pissing on someone's grave, fine. You have your opinions. You don't know us. You don't know what we've been through. Not a single person of a single family has offered a single politician a single excuse for what they did or did not do to prevent the death of our loved ones.
Give me a fast ship, for I intend to go in harm's way. Sailors have been going into harms way for a very long time, and yes, the Mid East is full of potential harm. That is not unique to Yeman.
There was absolutely no reason for the ship to be in Yemen.
That's a curious statement. Navy ships make port calls all over the world, every day, but this one "there was absolutely no reason for."
Intelligence was ignored.
I don't doubt that intelligence on a possible attack was around, just like intelligence on potential attacks is put forward darned near any time a US ship pulls into port. We got threat briefings in Alexandria, back in 1979, when I was on the America. There were potential threats to the ship. The Marine Detachment manned three machine gun nests on the flight deck as part of the risk mitigation.
When I was in port on a destroyer in Haifa, the risk of a frogman attack was well known. One of the mitigations to that risk was rather strange, but seemed to be effective. The Israeli harbor patrol would now and again drop grenades into the water near where we were birthed.
To claim intel was ignored pretends that the J2 or the N2 is in the business of crystal ball gazing. Sorry, that isn't how intel works. It works in the realm of the unknown, the possible, and decisions are made with risks considered. You would be mistaken to think that you can apply a zero defects standard to risk management for port visits in that part of the world.
As to the investigation, the reason CDR Lipold was not slam dunked by the CNO's investigation: it was apparent that, to a certain extent, he and the Cole were at risk for the attack without the means to preempt it. All they could do was react. Had that not been the finding, he'd not have been on the promotion lists that Senator Warner used as a political tool.
I don't know if you've met CDR Lipold, but for my money, he and his crew did a damned fine job of saving that ship.
DR
