US military budget: How would you change it?

[Patroklos]

To avoild you guys deluding yourselves, US ships make up more than half of the Somoali anti piracy effort at any one time. I was jus there in NJovember, feel free to tell me you know more based on google searches you won't post.

[Asher]

Where does half the freight in that area end up?

[Whoha]

I'd imagine that anything traveling through there is headed from Asia to Europe.

[MikeH]

To avoild you guys deluding yourselves, US ships make up more than half of the Somoali anti piracy effort at any one time. I was jus there in NJovember, feel free to tell me you know more based on google searches you won't post.

Did anyone say they weren't?

Do you need an aircraft carrier for it?

[Egbert]

I would give me a huge contract. $700 billiob to supply a bag of pencils.

[David Floyd]

And in related news, it seems that Al Qaeda fighters are joining the Libyan rebels. Wonderful, this seems like exactly the sort of revolution we should be supporting.

[Asher]

If only people could've seen that coming.

[David Floyd]

I've been saying since the beginning we shouldn't be supporting these Arab revolutions, as most likely they will just put Muslim extremists into power. Better the devil you know, as they saying goes...

[C0ckney]

is there any, you know, evidence for that statement df?

(i mean apart from gaddafi's pronouncements)

[David Floyd]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8407047/Libyan-rebel-commander-admits-his-fighters-have-al-Qaeda-links.html

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links
Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against 'the foreign invasion' in Afghanistan Photo: AFP By Praveen Swami, Nick Squires and Duncan Gardham 5:00PM GMT 25 Mar 2011
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".

His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries".

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.

US and British government sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.

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Even though the LIFG is not part of the al-Qaeda organisation, the United States military's West Point academy has said the two share an "increasingly co-operative relationship". In 2007, documents captured by allied forces from the town of Sinjar, showed LIFG emmbers made up the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq, after Saudi Arabia.

Earlier this month, al-Qaeda issued a call for supporters to back the Libyan rebellion, which it said would lead to the imposition of "the stage of Islam" in the country.

British Islamists have also backed the rebellion, with the former head of the banned al-Muhajiroun proclaiming that the call for "Islam, the Shariah and jihad from Libya" had "shaken the enemies of Islam and the Muslims more than the tsunami that Allah sent against their friends, the Japanese".

[C0ckney]

the telegraph any more respectable sources?

i can well believe that some islamists in libya will have thrown their lot with the rebels, but i'm very weary of attempts to portray the rebels as a tool of al queda, as certain sections of the media are currently doing.

[David Floyd]

I don't think the rebels are necessarily a tool of Al Qaeda. I DO think Islamic extremists will make a strong attempt to step in and fill leadership voids in Egypt and Libya and elsewhere. US foreign policy should be about supporting US interests - if those interest dovetail with democratic movements, then great. But sadly, in this case, I don't think they do.

[Hauldren Collider]

Yikes.

[C0ckney]

I don't think the rebels are necessarily a tool of Al Qaeda. I DO think Islamic extremists will make a strong attempt to step in and fill leadership voids in Egypt and Libya and elsewhere.

we will see about libya, it seems that among the rebels there is a lack of leadership and direction, so there is a void to be filled, it's too early to say who will though. i think in eygpt the muslim brotherhood will play a significant role in its future, but i think that many people are simply wrong in their characterisation of them as extremists. if you look at their actual record in parliament, they behaved like a real opposition, trying to hold the ruling NDP to account, and their actions in the demonstrations were positive. they did things like guarding copts as they prayed and their message has been a moderate one. most of the analysis i've read (other than that from the american right or israelis) sees them as a fairly moderate organisation. i certainly believe that a new eygptian government will be less friendly towards israel. i don't see this as a tragedy, although i think it explains a lot of commentators trying to paint them as extremists.

[Dinner]

They missed the old Canadian Oberon-class subs. And the Victoria-class ones are much, much quieter.

Not to mention a diesel sitting in the shallows or on a muddy bottom will be very hard to detect even with active sonar.