US sends Marines to middle east to deal with Iranian attacks on shipping

 CNN:

The US is deploying thousands of Marines and additional forces to the Middle East following recent Iranian attempts to seize commercial shipping vessels, the Pentagon announced Thursday.

This latest deployment comes after the Pentagon said earlier this week that it would be sending F-35 and F-16 fighter jets to the Middle East, as well as the USS Thomas Hudner, a guided missile destroyer.

The new forces will consist of an amphibious readiness group and a marine expeditionary unit – known as an ARG and MEU, respectively – which typically consists of three ships and approximately 2,400 Marines.

Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the commander of US Central Command, said the forces would add “unique capabilities” to the region in order to “further safeguard the free flow of international commerce and uphold the rules based international order.”
...

It is not clear why Iran is attacking merchant ships in the region.  The US has also deployed some A-10 aircraft to police the area. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more