-Caveat Lector-
[I just heard that a preliminary conclusion from those shards,
other Navy officials, said, was that the attack was not carried
out from a Zodiac-type rubber inflatable as originally believed,
but from a boat with a white fiberglass hull. Also, I thought
that even LARGE vessels could be raised and/or kept afloat by
inflating ballons within the hull?? --MS]
Cole Struggles to Stay Afloat After a Bulkhead Collapses
By JOHN F. BURNS
DEN, Yemen, Oct. 15 — With 12 dead crewmates still lying trapped
in buckled, flooded compartments below decks, sailors of the
destroyer Cole struggled again today to keep their stricken ship
afloat, winning praise for their heroism from commanders who were
forced to cancel a memorial service for the dead.
The collapse of an underwater bulkhead early this morning sent
tons of water flooding back into parts of the Cole that had been
pumped out in the frantic struggle that began when a small boat
laden with explosives rammed the guided missile destroyer on
Thursday morning. Seventeen sailors died in what American
investigators describe as a terrorist attack. By nightfall
today, more than 16 hours after the bulkhead caved in, the task
force commander assigned to head efforts to save the Cole and
bring the ship home safely described the collapse as a
"catastrophe," but said that worse had been averted.
"We've got it patched up," said Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald,
deputy commander of the Navy's Central Command, based in Tampa,
Fla. "They've stopped the flooding and saved the ship."
Admiral Fitzgerald, like others who have visited the Cole and
seen the devastation caused by the explosion, spoke with emotion
about the crew, many of them recent enlistees and most in their
late teens or early 20's. He said the sailors had shaken off the
shock of the attack and worked relentlessly, with little sleep,
to keep the ship from sinking. "It was a heroic effort," he said.
The crisis occurred when generator-driven pumps on the Cole
failed, causing water pressure to build up and collapse the
bulkhead.
American officials, describing the ship as "a crime scene," said
evidence gathered so far had thrown into question one element in
initial accounts of the explosion, the kind of boat used in the
attack. A senior Navy officer said "thousands of pieces" of
"confetti sized" debris from the boat, including possibly human
remains from the two men who were believed to have carried out
the attack, were spread over the decks of the Cole.
A preliminary conclusion from those shards, other Navy officials
said, was that the attack was not carried out from a Zodiac-type
rubber inflatable as originally believed, but from a boat with a
white fiberglass hull.
The Navy was forced to cancel the memorial service for the dead
that was to have been held at midmorning on the Cole's upper
deck. Then, worried about men and women who had worked four days
in debilitating heat to keep the ship afloat, it began rotating
crew members onto three other Navy ships that have formed a
protective cordon around the Cole since the blast. Sailors from
the other ships were transferred to the Cole to take over.
Eventually, but probably not for a week or more, the Navy plans
to make the Cole sufficiently seaworthy to tow it from its
sheltered position in the Bay of Aden to a rendezvous with a
Norwegian-owned ship that is a combination of a seagoing flatbed
and drydock.
A Navy announcement in Washington said plans were made for the
Norwegian ship, the 700-foot Blue Marlin, now in dock in the
Persian Gulf state of Dubai, to build blocks on its deck to
support the Cole. It will make the five-day journey to Aden,
then slide under the Cole in the open sea and begin a 25-day
piggyback journey back to the United States.
For now, the 9,100-ton Cole, a four- year-old, billion-dollar
vessel packed with some of the most advanced military technology
afloat, still lies listing heavily, several feet lower in the
water than normal. But with onshore fire mains linked up after
the bulkhead collapse, it is successfully pumping water out
faster than it can flow back in.
As water levels receded, the search for the missing crewmen,
described by the Navy as its next highest priority, began again.
This afternoon, teams of Navy divers with underwater strobe
lights and metal-cutting equipment began probing the twisted,
blackened compartments behind the gaping hole on the destroyer's
port side, trying to cut through twisted steel, collapsed
deckheads and masses of tangled cables to reach the areas where
the dead sailors were believed to lie.
Having concluded from searches of the harbor floor that none of
the dead sailors were thrown out of the ship, the Navy was hoping
to begin recovering the bodies during daylight on Tuesday before
starting them on the long journey home.
Navy officials said probes conducted soon after the blast had
fixed the location of two dead crew members, whose bodies had
been identified but not removed because of the difficulty of
freeing them. Ten others officially still listed as missing were
believed to be trapped somewhere in an area said to be about the
size of four large hotel rooms, comprising what was the engine
room, associated engineering quarters and three below-deck mess
halls. The bodies of five crew members recovered previously were
flown back to the United States on Saturday.
Thirty-three of the sailors wounded on the Cole arrived at their
home port of Norfolk, Va., this afternoon to a welcome from 1,500
sailors and hundreds of relatives and neighbors. A receiving
line of wheelchairs and gurneys glinted in the afternoon sun, but
most of the sailors, several using crutches or canes, walked off
the gray C-141 that brought them from Germany. The control tower
on the Norfolk airfield was decorated with red, white and blue
bunting and a hand-lettered banner that said, "Our Heroes/We Join
Hands and Hearts to Welcome You Home."
Once the bodies are recovered, the Navy said it planned to
concentrate on solving a troubling mystery: how two men in the
kind of small, outboard-powered boat that could be rented or
bought in almost any harbor in the world were able to infiltrate
the flotilla of service vessels gathering around the Cole as it
prepared to refuel here.
In dingy cafes and other gathering places in this dilapidated
port, angry young Yemenis hostile to the United States because of
its Middle East policies, or jealous of American power, have
begun speaking of the attack on the Cole as a sort of David-and-
Goliath metaphor for how their world — mostly poor, mostly
Muslim, widely resentful — can strike back devastatingly at the
Western power in whose shadow they live.
The view is a fringe one here, at odds with opinions voiced by
most people in this ancient port, who have expressed sympathy for
the sailors and good will for the United States.
Aden, and Yemen as a country, are still emerging from decades as
outcasts, rejected by the West for links to the Soviet Union, and
in the last decade Iraq, as well as for the country's history of
harboring Islamic terrorist groups. From that there has flowed a
residue of frustration and resentment toward the West, and
therefore of satisfaction for some at the attack on the Cole.
"You Americans thought we could do nothing!" a young man who gave
his name as Gamal said in a cafe today. "But look — look — at
your ship now!"
Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president, met with the American
ambassador, Barbara Bodine, today. Reversing previous
statements, he acknowledged for the first time that the attack on
the American ship was the work of terrorists, and not, as he had
previously maintained, an "accident" brought on by an explosion
aboard the Cole. American officials said they expected Mr.
Saleh to confirm his conclusion in public.
It was not clear what caused Mr. Saleh to change his mind, nor
why he had chosen to insist for several days that the blast was
an accident when anybody who looked out at the Cole from the Aden
harborside saw that the metal plates of the ship were buckled
inward by the blast.
But senior American officials, relieved, were not disposed to
quibble, and suggested that the Yemeni leader had shifted his
position after conducting his own inquiry. "He's not going to be
dependent on what we tell him," an American official said. "He
came to his own conclusion."
Although the Americans insisted for the record that the Yemenis
had cooperated eagerly from the start, and had detained and
questioned about 75 Yemeni port workers and others in their own
inquiry into the blast, Navy officials acknowledged that some
recovery operations had been hampered by high-handedness from
Yemeni security officials.
By tonight, the Yemenis had appointed a senior official
answerable directly to Mr. Saleh to oversee Yemeni liaison
efforts, and Aden harbor had taken on the appearance of an
American outpost. Apart from the four Navy ships in the harbor,
the sky above buzzed with Navy helicopters, and marines in desert
camouflage carrying rifles and pistols were on guard wherever
Americans went. Sophisticated military communications systems
were set up on the harbor side and in a nine-story hotel
overlooking the port.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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