Well, I’d blush if I could. Coulda swore you’d talked about a couple of daughters. Early onset Budweiser’s.
It’s the world’s loss, I know, but what can I say? 
Look, John, if you’re trying to avoid child support, I’ll understand. I’ll turn you in, but I’ll understand.
In other words, you’re blowing smoke out of your ass. Go figure.
Ahh,** Carol**, my dove. How we’ve missed you.
the irony. It burns.
If we ever have a real naval engagement with Iran, I just hope they don’t prove Lt. Gen van Riper was right. I don’t want to imagine the consequences of having a carrier sunk in the Persian Gulf.
Well, that’s convenient, ehe? You’ve been singing this same bullshit song for years now. And when we finally shake the dust of Bush’s administration from our boots only you and a few of the other tin foil crowd will be surprised when there is no war with Iran. Skim off a few thousand troops to grab a couple of towns in Iran just before he leaves office? Man…you need to up the voltage. A LOT!
-XT
Hey, the bitch said she was on the pill!!
Especially when it’s coming out of one’s ass! 
You know, while I’ll agree that Der Trihs is a wanker, I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that didn’t happen. (Not saying that I think it will, mind you.) The neocons are utterly convinced that Islam and the Mid-East are a greater threat to the US than the USSR ever was. Don’t forget that we pulled the bulk of our forces out of Afghanistan to invade Iraq, even though the job there was far from done.
No, it’s intelligent and prudent. Gambling is stupid, pointless and self destructive.
Yup, I’m crazy. Next thing you know, I’ll be claiming that Bush will start a war with a country that’s no danger to us, using fake claims of weapons of mass destruction to whip up war fever !
Crazy, huh ?
Bush is in Israel. Think he might have mentioned to them what a great idea it would be to bomb Iran. If he thinks it would be hard for him to get away with it, then encouraging Israel to go ahead might solve his “Iran Problem”.
Iran IS a problem. I just keep getting the image that he WANTS a scrum. To “put 'em in their place” or soften them or something…
I just don’t see any of that going well if it involves the military.
Couple of things (besides our agreement that Der Trihs is a wanker that is :)):
The biggest is that, while you are quite correct that we DID pull forces out of Afghanistan (as well as bring them in from Europe and the US) to invade Iraq we were pretty VISIBLE doing so. I’ve seen no such indications that we are doing something similar wrt Iran. The current force mix in Iraq is not suited to invading Iran or anywhere else. They don’t have the build up of logistics in preparation for an invasion of Iran. In short there are zero indications that we plan to invade Iran.
So…that is out. Der Trihs’s assertion that we are going to simply nip in and take a couple of towns is pretty much nuts. If we aren’t going to do a full scale invasion we certainly aren’t going to attempt an unsupported/unsupportable quasi-invasion of dubious worth. I don’t care how crazy Bush is or maybe the military would flatly refuse something that stupid.
That leaves us with air strikes. That is plausible, though again I see no indication that we are heading in that way. We COULD have launched air strikes into Iran for years now…the President has the authority to launch them any time he pleases after all. He doesn’t need Congressional approval for such an action. Yet, to date, all this Iran hand wringing has been just that…hand wringing over nothing.
Again, I think air strikes COULD happen before Bush leaves office. I’d give it, say, a 20% chance (as opposed to the negative snow ball in hell’s chance anything Der Trihs mutters about actually happening). I wouldn’t be surprised Bush et al were THAT stupid anyway…though I doubt they will be. Myself I think Bush will spend the remainder of his time in office polishing his image (such as it is) and keeping a relatively low profile foreign policy wise. It’s just possible that if he keeps his head down and Iraq doesn’t blow up again he might get out of this looking slightly better than, say, Fillmore…
-XT
If the order is given to “take out"an Iranian speedboat, what do we use? A 3” deck gun, or a Hellfire Missile? Would such a target be hard to hoit? And, can we be sure that nothing would be left? I can see blowing a small boat out of the water-but we should do it in a way that allows for no survivors.
Hey, its not like people aren’t warned -you approach a warship with hostile intent-you soon join allah!
At least I’m not a bloody handed apologist for the Bush Administration and religion. You are vermin.
I can’t answer definitively, but my ship (USS Virginia CGN 38), when it went to the Med had some additional weapons installed on pre-existing hardpoints specifically for use against gunboats, because our deck guns, 5"/54s, weren’t expected to be fast enough to hit the little buggers.
These guns were 25mm cannon, looking not unlike what you might get if you took a WWII era manual fired/loaded cannon. Here’s a page with photos of what seems to me to be a revised mod compared to what was on my ship in the early 90s.
This isn’t to say that the main deck guns on a ship threatened by a gunboat won’t be firiing - I imagine anything that might get a hit is going to be firing. Given the lack of armoring on modern naval vessels, I think that even an anti-tank rocket fired by someone on a gunboat could do impressive damage to many modern US naval vessels. And that’s an improvised weapon, at least for naval combat. Sea skimming missiles (Like the Exocet, which Wikipedia claims Iran has.) are often installed on such vessels.
In the last “urgent budget requests” to fund the war, there was a request made for $88 million dollars to modify stealth bombers to use bunker busters in operations “outside the current theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Now, maybe the Pentagon just wants some shiney new toys to play with, or perhaps they’re planning upon expanding the war.