Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Friday, February 20, 2009

That Ship is So Fraked!, Part III

The USNI blog has photos and links to photos. Some serious damage there.

6 comments:

montag said...

The pics don't look bad, but if the keel was hogged, she won't sail right no matter what they do to her. The upside is we could rename her the George W Bush.

lahru said...

since all I know is that they weren't meant to be dragged across the bottom of the ocean it looks bad. Kinda like borrowing your brothers car and coming hone with only a door handle.

Comrade Misfit said...

Montag, look at the damage done to the props and then think of how much force got transmitted to the shafts in by smashing them into the coral. The sonar dome is probably trashed and getting those kinds of scratches on the hull that high implies that they probable bent the living shit out of things.

That sort of twisting moment can get transmitted all throughout the ship,knocking all sorts of sensitive gear out of alignment. A lot of bad damage could have been done very high up in the superstructure.

I suspect that if the Captain had served in a few other navies I can think of, he'd have already been offered his last cigarette and a blindfold.

Cujo359 said...

Did you check this link from that article? I know the usual budgetary wars stuff when I see it, but it looks like the navy would have had a tougher time dealing with this emergency in a year or two.

BadTux said...

I did check that link, Cujo, and it looked like the usual bullshit of the Pentagon privatizing organic capabilities in order to "save money". Inevitably the contractors they privatize to end up charging more money than the organic capabilities costed, while providing less capabilities in an incompetent. Just ask any of those poor GI's electrocuted by KBR or who died after KBR gave them food poisoning. Oops, you can't, 'cause they're *dead*. Would have never happened if the Army still had organic temporary base construction capabilities rather than relying on contractors, and if the Army still ran their own PX halls instead of contracting them. And deal is, they're paying *MORE* to get electrocuted and food poisoned than they would if they'd simply retained those organic capabilities...

But hey, ideology. Ideology says, "it can't be that government could provide anything for cheaper than private business!". Even when you show them proof, they close their eyes and put their hands over their ears and shout at the top of their lungs, "I can't hear you! I can't see you!" and pretend you and your unseemly proof do not exist. Sigh. Religious nuts. Can't do anything with them because they are all about faith, not facts.

- Badtux the Organic Penguin

Cujo359 said...

I've watched the DoD get slowly "privatized" over the years, and it hasn't been pretty, that's for sure. Part of the trouble is that the uniform and GS folks who are actually employed by DoD don't do the work any more. They just supervise it. Often, that means they've never actually done it themselves.

Iraq is a different story, though. I worked with defense contractors for quite a few years. I never saw anything remotely like the chaos in Iraq. There was no auditing, no effective oversight, and corruption that is mind boggling. Don't forget, KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton, and we remember who had all that Halliburton stock, don't we?