PrintJune 20, 2010
Where's the Navy?
The Arthur Conan Doyle story, " The Adventure of Silver Blaze" has a famous verbal exchange between Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Gregory, the Scotland Yard detective.
Inspector Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
The Deepwater Horizon explosion, fire, and pipeline rupture also has a "curious incident" where "the dog did nothing."
There is one organization that has more extensive deep ocean, industrial scale marine engineering expertise than any other on the planet, the United States Navy. Currently the U.S. Navy is a virtual non-participant in the operational execution of stopping the oil leak. Oh yes, the Navy is doing a bang up job using aircraft to trace the spill, planting a few sea bed cameras, and supplying oil booms but in reality BP engineers with the "welcome assistance" of Homeland Security are taking the unsuccessful lead in stopping the oil flow.
From navy.mil we read:
SUPSALV has been the Navy's oil pollution experts since the 1970s, as required by the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. They provide technical, operational, and emergency support to the Navy, Department of Defense and other federal agencies in the ocean engineering disciplines of marine salvage, pollution abatement, diving, diving system certification, and underwater ship husbandry.Naval Sea Systems Command's (NAVSEA) Supervisor of Salvage and Diving (SUPSALV) has positioned equipment and personnel from Texas to Florida to support the oil spill response efforts led by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security.
But the Three Stooges-like effort has continued to be poorly managed by the Coast Guard and Homeland Security. (In March 2003 the Coast Guard was formally transferred from the Department of Transportation to the newly created Department of Homeland Security.) Why does it continue to be poorly led? Well, this Administrations' primary concern has been to manipulate media spin, so that political considerations override the logical planning of operations by the Coast Guard and BP' to stop the leak and clean up the oil.
Additionally, more than 90 [U.S. Navy] personnel and three contracted offshore supply vessels are supporting the Coast Guard's oil response efforts.
Ninety personnel and three contracted vessels is a laughably small Navy contingent.
Wouldn't you have thought that a President, upon learning of the explosion and oil leak a mile under water off the Louisiana coast, would have immediately placed a call to the Secretary of the Navy and simply ordered the U.S, Navy to "seal that damn pipe, yesterday!" While SUPSALV is based in Washington D.C., the trained manpower, the specialty deep-sea equipment, the engineering proficiency, and the materials fabrication facilities to do the job quickly are all located at Norfolk Navy Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia.
So, what the heck is going on? We can logically conclude the following; the Navy is out of the critical decision loop, the Navy's marine engineering expertise has been replaced by dubious advise from Homeland Security and the Coast Guard, the oil spill responders remain under strictly control of the "West Wing" political operation, and the Navy has been told to "shut up and don't say anything to anyone."
It is now clear that Obama and the senior operatives of this Administration have such a deeply held anti- military fixation that it does not allow them to use the Navy's real world engineering expertise to quickly stop the oil spill. These progressive/socialist radicals would prefer to have the Gulf coast beaches coated in oil, while continuing to milk the crisis for partisan political gains (such as cap and trade legislation and a renewed oil drilling moratorium), rather than allow the U.S. Navy to receive the credit for preserving the Gulf coast and its economies. Why else does the oil continue to gush forth from the mile deep wellhead?
