So the Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine Hartford and the Navy LPD New Orleans (which is an amphibious dock ship, meaning essentially it can launch and recover amphibious boats for landings:

Improved LIFT - strategic and tactical - is critical to the sustainment of power projection operations. The SAN ANTONIO class is the functional replacement for four classes of less capable amphibious ships equipped with 1970's and early 1980's technology, including its predecessor, the USS AUSTIN (LPD-4) class. Each LPD-17 class ship has 25,000 square feet of vehicle storage space, similar to the larger WASP (LHD-1) class multi-purpose assault ship and double that of the LPD-4.

The LPD-17 ships are the first amphibious ships designed to accommodate the Marine Corps' "mobility triad" - Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAAV), Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC), and the Marine Corps' new tilt-rotor MV-22 Osprey - for high-speed, long-range tactical-lift operations. Just as "littoral" has come to mean operations that begin well "over-the-horizon" (OTH), as far as 600 miles from an adversary's coastline, the "mobility triad" will ensure our ability to "reach out and touch someone" hundreds of miles inland, at revolutionary speeds.

They collide.

Running into one of these can ruin your whole day:

And no, it doesn't help if this is what you're driving:

As you may imagine, this is not a good thing. The best possible news out of this wreck is that the sub's power plant sustained no damage. Its crew were not so lucky, and nor was the sub's sail, with its sensitive and expensive equipment.

Reuters reports shipping in the Strait wasn't disrupted by or after the wreck. Howsomesoever, comma ... with 15 sailors hurt aboard, and the sail damaged, the sub's commander is more than likely in more trouble than one Naval career can sustain.

Prayers, if you be so inclined, please, for all the folks on both these vessels -- not to mention the folks, fishes and others in the vicinity, because the New Orleans' fuel tank was gutted, sending a boatload (literally) of diesel fuel marine into the already anything-but-pristine Hormuz.

This is what the sub looks like, after:

There are a couple different ways something like this can happen.

I'm with SoBe: WTF?

Talk about your security breaches: A New Zealand man bought a used MP3 player for $15 only to discover it came with 60 pages of sensitive U.S. military data:

The files Ogle found on the MP3 player contain the names and personal details of US soldiers, including some who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are no details on exactly how many personal records are contained within the documents (most of which date back to 2005), but they also have information on mission briefings and equipment deployment.

This incident is probably not the worst breach of military data in recent memory. [...] Still, Ogle's situation is a bit bizarre in that no one knows how or why this sensitive information was stored on an iPod, or how that MP3 player slipped out to a used hardware vendor. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), some of the phone numbers from the MP3 player's records still work, and the identified individuals indeed picked up on the other end.

"The more I look at it, the more I see and the less I think I should be [seeing]," Mr Ogle told ABC. He says he will hand the player over to the US Defense Department should it ever ask.

WTF? You mean, they haven't asked?

This is one of those stories that inspires me to write foily fiction. What do you think is going on here? My first guess is that someone on our team is selling data to 'the enemy.' Like, a contractor.

Until 1947, the United States habitually told the truth about at least one thing. The job title of the Pentagon's highest ranking civilian was the Secretary of War. But the recent slaughter of tens of millions in the Second World War had given the Pentagon's real function a bad name. So Democrat Harry Truman rebranded the Department of War, naming it the Department of Defense. From that day, the Secretary of War became the Secretary of Defense. War plants, war expenditures and bloodthirsty war industries became more benign-sounding defense plants, the defense expenditures and the patriotic defense industry.

It's all lies. Or distortion. Or confabulation. Or misdirection. But I found this example rather egregious. I bet you DFHs remember this sort of thing from back in the day:

Radio Sawa broadcast on December 11 the good news from the American forces that the regions of Arab Jabour and Al-Buaitha had been definitively cleared of the last vestiges of AlQaeda. Here's what their website reported that day

Joseph Inge, fourth brigade, third American infantry division, said his forces with the aid of the Awakening forces had been able to clear out the last strongholds of AlQaeda in the regions of Arab Jabour and Al-Buaitha south of Baghdad. He told Radio Sawa: "We have secured the area by freeing it from the threat of AlQaeda, with the assistance of local citizens". And Captain Inge called on the families that had fled to return to their homes in those areas, promising every type of support and assistance to those families.

On Thursday 40 "targets"--described by the miitary as "reported AlQaeda safe-havens"--were hit by a total of 40,000 pounds of bombs dropped on Arab Jabour in a 10-minute raid by the American Air Force assisted by another brigade, the second, of the same third American infantry division that had invited families back into the area only three weeks ago. The military had no information on how many people it killed.

The Bush War Department sent 2,600 soldiers from the Minnesota National Guard to Iraq for two years.

From Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC recently -- pay particular attention to the last 45 seconds please!

Al Qaeda in 60 countries, or more? Dave Petraeus used by the Bush administration?   Read more…

He includes photographs of soldiers who served with him in Iraq.

From a recent Anderson Cooper 360 broadcast, originating Over There:

Between 1952 and 1962, Boeing built more than 740 of these planes. Not a one since.

Ok, I just listened to this (short, worth your time):
Sergeant Todd Bowers - Listen to the audio clip (or download)

And besides being pissed that Chimpy has made one more American drop out of college and join the race for lifetime underemployment, I'm pissed at the Democrats. I'm slow and can't keep up with all the developments these days, but since when has the Montgomery Bill (education for vets) package been so shitty? And for how long are the Democrats going to sit around and do nothing about it? I remember the package when I was in, and for some reason it didn't seem as bad as it's described in that clip- I seem to remember there was more. Even if I'm wrong, isn't right now a great time to get moving on something like this? It's a win, win, win situation, no voter would be against it and no Republican could be for very long or very loudly in the last few months of the campaign cycle. Sigh. It just seems so obvious to me.

That the Dems' new "VETS" education package doesn't increase the amount of money given for books or tuition, I'd have to call it "better than warm shit." Just what our returning vets deserve, right? Christ, what hypocrites and idiots rule us.

  Read more…

Gingrich, pondering a White House bid, claims he's sick of Georgie W.'s vacations (and Congress's, too.) Quote: "As an American, I am sickened that the political leadership of America could continue to go on vacation and do nothing," he said. "Why are the August vacations for the president and the Congress more precious than the lives of young Americans who are being killed because of government incompetence and inaction." But it isn't our soldiers he

At the official site, DOD now confirms 3,622 dead in Iraq.

Mismanaged, preemptive war of whim is Hell:

During an interview on NBC's Today show Wednesday concerning Malaria Awareness Day, Laura Bush talked to Ann Curry about "other challenges her husband is facing."

"You know the American people are suffering watching --," Curry said to the first lady.

"Oh, I know that very much," Laura Bush responded. "And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this, and certainly the commander in chief, who has asked our military to go into harm's way."

I wonder if they put butter on his wounds.

An airman received second-degree burns April 4 during a test of the Defense Department’s nonlethal millimeter-wave heat beam at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., according to Marine Corps Maj. Sarah Fullwood, spokeswoman for the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator program, Quantico, Va.

This makes my blood boil:

Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town's neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town's wounds were actually caused by a "personality disorder." Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.