Often times, it is the scenic route that, by encouraging one to resist the easy path, leads most directly to enlightenment. Which doesn’t mean, of course, it is a good idea to fly sorties into Iraq out of freakin’ Okinawa.
Because that’s just crazy talk.
Not that Okinawa. He meant the one in the Middle East.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about the Arab Okinawa.
Be sure to try the fish skewers.
I think Murtha was analogizing the role Okinawa plays vis-a-vis Korea, but he forgot to set it up as an analogy.
As such, I’m not going to bury the dude for what looks like a senior moment.
I don’t quite see the benefit of staging assault forces out of country in the hopes that they get there in time since Okinawa’s role was to help what was left of US/ROK forces on the Korean peninsula after the DPRK rolled south. As far as I know there’s not an actual horde of AQ/Insurgents who’d overrun the borders the way that the North Koreans did … it’s more an amorphous bunch, these insurgents. As such, sufficient troops ought to stay in-country to be able to counteract the insurgents. And you can’t do that if you’re getting into a helo out of Kuwait.
But have fun with the “Okinawa” bit.
.
Reckon Jack has looked at the price of jet fuel lately?
TW: horse – as in fuck the one Jack rode in here on.
There’s always Diego Garcia. A bit closer than Okinawa, but also a bit smaller.
Ah, the old fool let the cat out of the bag! Our next generation fighters can do the round trip in 32 minutes.
So much for OpSec.
I know… if there is a problem in Korea we send troops from Kuwait.
Problem in Iraq we send them from Okinawa…
Murtha’s problem is he really doesn’t know how to implement his own ideas. Because he didn’t think it through to start with.
I have zero military experience, but I did good in geography in third grade… so I figure it’d be better to have rapid response forces as close as possible so the response will be ummmmm rapid.
We need to avoid a “Black Hawk Down” fiasco which means we need some type of armor…. close enough to be “rapid”. It’d be nice if some helicopters were nearby so they didn’t have to leave to refuel after ten minutes overhead too.
Hmmmm. Sounds like the only logical place for rapid response bases is within Iraq itself and it sounds like we’d need to maintain several.
On another site I said that the Democrat “course” on the war looks like a map of a Roomba vacuuming a maze, but right now I think there is a Roomba banging around in Murtha’s head.
The only problem with that is that he forgot to set up the analogy multiple times—over the span of months. Youda thunk someone would have pointed out the error—and coached him not to do it again.
Okay, ya got me, now I got Diet Pepsi up my nose.
You really want people who’ve forgotten how to tell the difference between Kuwait and Okinawa deciding how your life should go?
There’s a reason for the concept of “retirement”.
Regards,
Ric
Can a vacuum run in a vacuum? Is this the secret to the Murtha Time-Warp?
I don’t know, we’ve done some of our best work flying out of Missouri.
Sure Jack,
Convince yourself that Bharain, Qatar, Kuwait, even Okinawa wants more US military roaming around. Jack forgot the Ensure before he spoke…..
PS Lou 2 weeks on the over
CARPET-BOMBERS!!!
Of course, there are boots on the ground to tell that bomber exactly where to drop its bombs.
But I guess we could subsitute a whole shitload of UAVs……
Geez, I wonder…
If we mistakenly bomb a building and kill innocent civilians, flying out of Okinawa, will Murtha call it “cold blooded murder”?
I would remind everyone at this point, “Ignore Actus!!!”
… but he seems to have disappeared. Along with all the other trolls. What happened? Why aren’t they here to point out how much safer our troops would be in Okinawa than illegally invading a sovereign nation?
SW: I’d like to think that even trolls have a limit to embarassment, but the data so far hasn’t supported that conclusion.
Murtha is a Marine, you don’t coach a Marine.
… and live.
I think we “deploy from Okinawa” the way we “wait for Godot”…
You can teach a Marine.
You just can’t teach him much.
SB: course
thataway
I’ll say one thing for Murtha: if you cut off his head and then beheaded Ted Kennedy, I’m pretty sure you could store the Ted-head in the Murtha-head quite handily.
Now that’s a big melon.
Say “beheaded Ted Kennedy” five times fast.
It’s quite calming.
Diego Garcia isn’t a good place to redeploy to, although it’s decent for flying missions out of. Plus, only one runway (as far as I can see); the airstrip and taxiway barely fits.
Google Earth is awesome.
Alp, if some hip-hop artist sampled that it would make one hell of a rhythm line.
And you could lay a base line down with
MURRRTHA THUMP THUMP MURRRTHA THUMP THUMP
When he said ‘Okinawa’, he meant ‘Hawaii’.
Aw c’mon! How’d you like to be stationed on Okinawa and missing all the fun? Maybe they could let ‘em fly over on weekends..
“ZEPPELINS! BIG BLIMPS! We can put a marine division on Zeppelins and they can just circle the globe and they never have to land ANYWHERE and…”
“Nurse, the Congressman has found his way out of committee again…”
Speaking of crazy talk, our friends at TruthOut/LiesIn have concocted some truly mind-numbing nonsense that proves Rove was indicted. Really.
“No comment” means “you bet your sweet ass”, apparently. Forget for a moment that Nerheim actually disclosing anything would probably be a violation of Federal law…
The voices in their heads are serious, man.
Yeah, well, fortunately Iran is a little closer than Iraq or flying them there sorties out of Okinawa might be a problem. But I think y’all are missing the bold progressive masterstrokes implied here. To fly sorties from Okinawa we have to cross over Iran, so clearly we have to take over Iran and then we’ve got like even more oil, which will help keep the price down. But to get to Iran from Okinawa we have to cross over China, so we need to take China out. With China gone, oil prices will fall even further, we take care of that pesky defending Taiwan problem, and Wal-Mart will go out of business without anything to stock their shelves.
I mean, come on folks, this is a progressive win-win-win!
Turing Word; problem, as in, if I can’t see a problem then it can’t see me.
[raising hand to chin, nodding]
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
I like what I see, charles austin. You’ve done a good job truth-in-ing this thread on the plus side of Murtha-ficting the battlespace all the heck over Asia.
I read that Truthout stuff and I know we make jokes about them drinking the Kool-aid, but at least the Jim Jones Kool-aid had the decency to kill you.
These people are babbling left speak in unison and it reminds me of Ugandan despot Idi Amin’s syphlitic ramblings… I personally would rather die.
[picture of the Banana Lady flying a kite]
Well, I’m sure the next time he drops a little idea around here we can bring it up to get his opinion. Like maybe when he tries to work in a Katrina angle about something unrelated we can suggest that FEMA run it’s operations out of Okinawa and get where they are needed faster.
Anything to get this broken record off of “telephone pole.”
At this point, Murtha is an ex-Marine.
I have heard one person mention that Murtha might have been referring to a base named Okinawa in Kuwait, any one up on our bases in Kuwait know more? I can’t imagine that his meaning could have been that simple without one of the retards coming in to point that out.
And the seafood schwarmeh is to die for…
Nothing through google. Even found a list of US bases that included four or five in Kuwait; none of them named Okinawa.
Seems to me it would be a really bad choice of names, given there already exists an Okinawa base that’s in active use.
Not unless CENTCOM built another base since I returned from Kuwait in November 2005, Sortelli. This has a map of all US bases that were ever in Kuwait (look on the right side)…..and several of those were shut down or were being shut down (or consolidated) during my stay in that sandy nation (New York, Doha, NaviStar, Shu’ Aybah).
Only one new base was in the works while I was there, and it was nearly finished by the time I left (a new reception/return facility [RSO&I] at Ali Al Salem Air Base).
In Kuwait we use the Ali Al Shalem (sp?) Air base for basically all of our ops out of Kuwait – there is no Okinawa base there – he (Murthra) is talking about basing out of Japan for Iraqi operations.
He is, in fact, quite disturbed.
I suspect I could take ‘em at this point in his life. And his weight and intellectual, uh, state.
I just finished a job supporting repair teams working out of Kuwait. I pushed pallets of spare parts in and out of areas all over the Big Sandbox.
There are no Okinawas in Kuwait.
There’s a secret airbase in, oh, I don’t know, Bahrain, called Okinawa. So of course you wouldn’t know about it. The whole thing is hidden underground; there’s these huge doors disquised as sand dunes that just slide back, and the whole thing raises up on these enormous hydraulic cylinders.
Pretty cool, if you ask me.
And then if you try to break into the restricted zone it’s in, whole armies of zombie Miyagi-san clones come out of the ground and kick your ass. So of course word hasn’t leaked out about it.
You guys are failing to consider how gorgeous the beaches on Okinawa are. Verc would love them.
Slart, is that the one guarded by the sharks with frickin’ lasers shooting out of their heads?
Throw me a bone here.
My bad….that’s what I get for blogging before going to work.
In fact, there was another base being built when I demobilized, a new entry/exit point on the Kuwait/Iraq border, a replacement for NavStar, to go with a new military highway also under construction. And this new facility is strictly a customs/security check point for convoys.
It wasn’t named when I left, but I seriously doubt that they’ll call it “Okinawa”. As someone else noted, we already have a base named “Okinawa”.
Shhhh, McGeehee, this stuff is all super tip-top secret. Actually, that base is going to be obsolete in the next decade or so, as we’re busy hollowing out the Earth using black holes generated by Brookhaven’s RHIC so that we can put in a SERIOUS base. THEN we can strike from anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice!
As soon as we get those wormholes operational, that is.
Plus, Slart, don’t forget Murtha’s fall-back position – Salusa Secundus! A military genius like the Murth-man would clearly look to borrow some of Shaddam IV’s Sardaukar, no?
Just to add some to what Jeff and others are saying-most of the base camps in Kuwait were named after the states that were attacked on 9/11 (Virginia, New Jersey, etc). Some of them have changed names-for instance Camp Beuhring was what became of Virginia (I think).
In Qatar we have Camp As Saliyah (Army) and Al Udeid Air Base (USAF).
No Okiniawa I know of.
P.S.-when I passed through Ali Al Salem in 2003 en route to Camp Cedar II we were shown a building pock marked with what appeared to be bullet holes.
We were told that that was where the Iraqis lined up captured Kuwaiti airmen in 1990 and shot them.
Anybody else who has been there see that, or hear that story?
Everybody knows Salusa Secundus is unviable, don’t they? I mean, it takes at least six hours to get to Ramadi from there, even by wormhole. Plus, it’s currently overrun by Fremen jihadis.
It wouldn’t be out of bed with other things they did (and have done elsewhere), so I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised.
Plus, it’s currently overrun by Fremen jihadis.
Yeah, those dudes are all over the place. All because some kwisatz haderach had to keep his pimp hand strong. Me? I blame the Fish-Speakers.
Virgina is still around, 91B30, it’s between Ali Al Salem and Camp Beuhring. Beuhring used to be known as Camp Udairi (Udairi Range still exists, and is near Camp Beuhring), renamed in honor of a soldier killed in Iraq.
Probably true, although I never saw that building myself. One contractor unearthed a grave site at Ali Al Salem while I was there, Kuwaiti airmen who had been executed by Iraqi troops. Same thing happened at Kuwait Naval Base, I’m told.
But if you go through the Kuwaiti gate at Ali Al Salem, there’s a park right there, poorly maintained. In the center is a flag pole, from which no flag flies. Ever. Story is, the Iraqis hung the base commander from that flag pole. That’s why it isn’t used anymore.
And then he went and imposed a spice embargo. Damn OSEC.
Ok, what’s worse – that you used this reference or that I got it?
You may be onto something there, Master Tang. For all we know, what we’re thinking of as “Murtha” might actually be a Face Dancer in employ of the Bene Gesserit. Always screwing with our politics, those witches.
That’s a more palatable explanation than anything currently circling blogdom, anyway.
Late to the party, but I see we’ve moved on from the Far East to the really, really, really Far East. Stop ragging on Murtha the Hutt for leaving out the middle of his analogy (Iraq is to bases in Kuwait as Korea is to bases in Okinawa – just don’t tell him about those surgeons in the 4077th who live at the 38th parallel). When you’ve repeated your lines that often, the mouth often goes into autopilot, then the brain starts thinking about lunch, and next thing you know you’ve insulted a Bene Gesserit by initiating a Fish-Slapping dance without her consent. There, I got Star Wars, Dune, Monty Python and MASH. Who can work in Mary Tyler Moore, and maybe Teletubbies?
TW good, “Too good to have much truthiness.”
The problem, Slart, is that conjures up the image of Murtha having a vial full of Kerry gholas surgically implanted in his chest.
Where’s Duncan Idaho when you need him?
Shacking up with an Alia ghola, I imagine. I hear her favorite song is:
I’ve found some mentions of a Camp Okinawa in Kuwait through Google, but the bewildering thing is if that was any kind of a base to run operations out of you guys who were THERE would know about it.
Ah, Jesus, I’m pretty sure at this point I have put more thought into this than Murtha has. I’m going to bed!
I now have this image of Murtha running around in winged underpants stuck in my head. Thanks guys.
Sortelli, I wasn’t in Kuwait during the invasion build up, but I was told there were literally dozens of bases across the desert. The majority of the terrain is wide open; imagine any desert scene in a Foreign Legion movie, and you have an excellent picture. Setting up a base meant establishing a perimeter away from the few cities, and then trucking in supplies. EVERYTHING. Including water.
So it’s possible that there was a Camp Okinawa back when. But it was shut down and cleaned up; there is an extensive desert reclamation project going on for former Coalition and Iraqi positions. And yes, I do mean “desert reclamation”. It’s not an oxymoron when you have to clean up garbage, asphalt, concrete, tires, sewage tanks, and so on. We even have to test for depleted uranium.
So if there was a “Camp Okinawa”, it’s gone now. There is no current base by that name.
And if Murtha is thinking about that base you found, he needs a current situational brief. Or a medical check up.
TW: city. This AI is creeping me out again!
Awesome JeffS, thanks for the info.
U’ve got good pics, the site could use a tiny bit of work (no offense) its still awesome