The USS Reagan In South Korea

It's currently in Pusan after joint operations with the Japanese Navy in the Phillipine Sea. This is mildly good news, given that I doubt the US will attack Iran unless the USS Reagan is there, what witha all the symbology surrounding Republican Party ancestor worship and America's cinematic pseudo-savior.

The USS George HW Bush, dedicated by the former naval aviator of the same name last October, won't be ready until 2009, so it will miss the party. Speaking of symbology, the USS John F. Kennedy was decommissioned on March 23rd of this year and is being sent to a Philadelphia scrapyard. Lest any foam-skippers come here and tell me what an idiot I am for linking the decommissioning of the Kennedy with the Bush being laid in, or with the Reagan cruising generally east-wards, here are a few facts: the US Navy traditionally names its vessels for former sailors, for naval victories, or more rarely for heroic high-ranking military officers from other services. John F. Kennedy was a former naval officer who served with distinction, whereas Ronald Reagan wasn't and didn't, although he made some spiffy propaganda movies having something to do with the Navy (as in, "Hellcats of the").

You can bet the Bush Administration wouldn't have allowed, say, a vessel named the USS Barry Goldwater to be decommissioned even if it was armed with muskets and had to be rowed into combat by the combined efforts of all the contestants in the Cambridge/Oxford Regatta. So although I could be wrong the USS Reagan is clearly intended to be a symbol of Republican might, and the impulse to venerate Ronald Reagan is nearly reflexive, one which would urge the carrier into attendance at Iran's comeuppance. That, and it is the most technically advanced aircraft carrier in the arsenal, so the Navy would naturally want to try it out with a well-readied crew, one which just got off conducting a few joint wargames.

Again, I could be making too much of one ship, and the signs of an imminent attack on Iran keep building: the Russians have pulled their construction staff out of the nuclear plants and facilities they were building; there is a flurry of troop activity on the Iraqi side of the Iranian border; Patriot missiles have been deployed in strategic areas; 15 British Marines were captured while boarding a ship in Iranian waters; Iran's President was barred from attending UN meetings; the UN meetings resulted in a vote for stiffer sanctions on Iran; and things are generally heading in a crappy direction. All I've got to bolster my happy yellow-alert mood is a hunch. Still, the location of the USS Reagan would seem to be a pretty useful piece of information, and it's something I try to keep track of. Let's hope my hunch is right.