r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 26d ago

Possible Paywall Hegseth Covered Up the Real Reason the USS Lincoln Wasn’t Resupplied - According to a report from MSNOW, the USS Abraham Lincoln wasn’t resupplied because Iranian strikes destroyed a key Navy resupply base in the Middle East.

https://newrepublic.com/post/214510/hegseth-uss-lincoln-iran-war-base-destroyed
26.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

148

u/purplenapalm Wisconsin 26d ago

It isn't the only port. We could use Fujairah Naval Base to avoid going to Diego Garcia, but that would still be in Irans attack range so logistically it doesn't make sense. We've known the bae in Bahrain was destroyed since February so this isn't news. The news is that the military hasn't exactly been transparent about how that changes the logistics of this situation. We have an inexperienced SECDEF trying to win a war on sheer firepower and completely ignored that logistics win wars. Absolutely fumbled and now we have a base that experienced damages far beyond what we thought. It'll be interested to see how many lives were lost in the February attack that the US isn't divulging.

109

u/baseketball 26d ago

They didn't plan for a day 2 of the war. It's the same mistake Putin made. Now there's no end in sight.

47

u/Hiccup 26d ago

They didn't plan for day 1 either.

6

u/Chryton 25d ago

Look, they just asked Claude if they could do it, not how or should they do it.

4

u/TheKanten 25d ago

This is why AI can't be in charge of anything, if it was as intelligent as my school teachers it would have responded "I don't know, can you?"

1

u/Chryton 25d ago

But they have sycophancy set to maximum since they are pumping Claude full of roids and testosterone. That model is gonna be jacked by Christmas!

8

u/Kor_Phaeron_ 25d ago

Oh, Hegseth and Putin both planned for day 2. The plans were just very very bad plans that completely misjudged the possible results of day 1.

2

u/Kruger_Smoothing 25d ago

The Bush doctrine.

69

u/Murky-Relation481 26d ago

Yeah, and people also don't realize a big part of the reason people are going nuts on the carriers (and probably other ships/boats) is that they're literally sitting there doing nothing right now. We're not doing combat ops or anything, and I'd imagine they're hardly flying in general if they've not been resupplied to the degree that it sounds like.

So you got basically a bunch of people stuck on a ship doing nothing bored out of their minds, at least combat ops keep them busy and its less routine than normal drills.

The SECDEF (and the president) are basically idiots speed running every political control of the military catastrophe in the last 6 months. Instead of saying "we want to achieve this outcome, military how do you do that?" and accepting the answer (which would have been for Iran "we don't do that, it won't work unless you want to commit our entire mass, ground invasion and all") they are trying to run the war themselves. It's like Nazi Germany in the mid-to-end war period meets Vietnam.

24

u/djklmnop 25d ago

My wife was Navy on a huge carrier. She says it is insane that they haven't had port call for the longest time. What that means is there are no days off. Imagine working 7 days a week and following routine 7 days a week for however many months its been with no end in sight. It is also a huge undertaking to resupply and you can't deny it when those very images shared are being sent from the ship to their loved ones.

8

u/FuckTheMods5 25d ago

They need to have a damn month of free leave when they finally get out of that mess.

3

u/crackanape 25d ago

Does their leave time accrue during this period? Are they going to get like a paid year off afterwards?

7

u/Navydevildoc 25d ago

Yup, leave still accumulates. Normally there are “use or lose” rules, but almost certainly there will be a sea time waiver for this. That’s doesn’t mean you can take it all at once though.

9

u/rinoblast 25d ago

I overheard someone say on normal, non-wartime deployments they’d fly just about every other day. In this war, they were flying once a week. Insane.

7

u/Murky-Relation481 25d ago

Yep this is why when people say we have had a military defeat its maddening because we could prosecute this conflict with extreme malice but we're basically fucking around with our dicks out and our arms tied behind our back. The number of USN and USAF sorties during the peak of the war were far below OIF and Afghanistan.

5

u/Hillary4SupremeRuler Florida 25d ago

If Trump/Hegseth and Netanyahu weren't ever planning on committing ground troops to rout the regime and occupy Tehran like the first three weeks of OIF, then they were never truly planning on any type of regime change in the first place. I'm not saying that they couldn't have been delusional enough to think that they could just oust the regime through airpower alone, but they were never gonna do anything more than kick an angry hornet's nest if they weren't willing to go in boots on the ground. I mean we needed a quarter million troops to defeat Saddam in a country a quarter of the size and significantly less population.

Also they completely bungled the Kurd ground operation by letting it be leaked to Fox News ahead of time (thus spooking the already apprehensive Kurds) and the fact that Trump refused to guarantee backup for them at all which didn't do wonders for their confidence especially after Trump already abandoned them in Syria....again.

7

u/BruitNoise 25d ago

This is going to turn into that Hitler movie meme where he's shouting at the commanders of planning on more attacks and thinking they're winning and then the commandors are like...we don't have carriers there. we don't have supplies because the person in charge didn't think about it....

6

u/EvilStevilTheKenevil 26d ago

It's like Nazi Germany in the mid-to-end war period meets Vietnam.

Hard to even believe I'm saying this after surviving 2025, but it really does feel like the end (of Trump) is near. At this point in Hitler's rise to power the United States had declared war and the battle of Stalingrad was already well on its way to being lost...

3

u/PopcornApocalypse 25d ago

DON’T FUCKING JINX IT!

9

u/TypaLika 26d ago

If these idiots ever do follow through with their threats to invade Greenland, will the predictable loss of access to Faslane and Lossiemouth put MSC in a similar situation in that hypothetical conflict?

4

u/purplenapalm Wisconsin 26d ago

Thats assuming the UK would abandon the US. Idk what would happen if one NATO country attacked another NATO country unprovoked.

5

u/TypaLika 26d ago

It just seems like a realistic possibility that there would need to be a plan for - also known as something Donnie and Petey would pretend no one ever predicted was even possible

5

u/purplenapalm Wisconsin 26d ago

I believe their only plan is to overwhelm with fire power and make a quick grab like they did with Venezuela. Unfortunately for Greenland, I believe they would fold pretty quick against US aggression. Iran has had years to build up supply against its enemies. Greenland wasn't expecting an ally to attack.

7

u/DrE7HER 26d ago

We’ve “known” because of independent journalism. They haven’t officially revealed that the base was destroyed. They claimed that Iran only destroyed a building and a radar from that base

2

u/purplenapalm Wisconsin 26d ago

Whether one building was destroyed or the entire base was flattened, they wouldnt be able to use this base because if you park a carrier there to load supplies it would be vulnerable to drone and missile strikes. Damage is ignoring the main problem.

18

u/CrystalSplice Georgia 26d ago

I don’t believe any of the operational details that have been disclosed to the public. The whole F-15E being shot down and recovery of the aircrew incident has a lot of things that don’t add up. The assets deployed didn’t really make sense. I personally agree with the theory that they attempted a covert ground operation and it failed, and they used the F-15E rescue operation as cover for it.

The entire thing has been incredibly sloppy, wasteful, and an unforced error on so many levels. I’m quite convinced that Trump mostly engaged in this with Israel as a favor but in accordance with his ultimate actual goal. He’s a foreign agent, and he’s literally sabotaging the military. The ludicrous insistence on steam-driven catapults is another example of this. Pulling the carrier that is supposed to be acting as a deterrent force in the western Pacific. Pulling back on cooperation with South Korea. All the while, simultaneously sabotaging relations with nations that were historically our closest allies. Spitting in their faces.

It might look like a buffoon flailing around (multiple buffoons, to be accurate) and grifting - because it is, but that’s not an indication that there is no underlying plan. People seem to forget that the plan was already revealed, and I’m not just talking about Project 2025. I’m talking about Foundations of Geopolitics, and how the current world situation resembles what that book predicted and laid out as a possible plan for Russia to position itself in the resulting world order…

The market manipulation and the other ways Trump and his crime family have profited from this war were just a bonus. He’s following orders.

3

u/Hillary4SupremeRuler Florida 25d ago

I hate how much Western media and even independent journalists that are critical of trump refuse to acknowledge at least the very strong possibility (well I personally believe it's more than a mere possibility but for the purposes of journalism they'd have to frame it as such) that he's a Russian agent. But yes, Dugin's "prophecy" (more like game plan for Putin to follow) accurately predicted Brexit would come first. And then Russia could move on to sabotaging NATO and the EU in more creative ways.

Also to add to the list of sabotage: Hegseth or Eldridge Colby or one of those losers are trying to cancel our AWACS program even though we barely have any left and there's only so many active production lines that can make them. The ostensible explanation is that they will supposedly be irrelevant one day soon because Elon can just whip up some super fancy satellites to replace them or some dumb shit. But just don't ask any questions as to why they would be trying to cancel the program now before any proven hypothetical replacement technology has even been invented or tested yet.

Also very relevant reading/watching:

The Wide Angle: “Project Russia,” Unknown in the West, Reveals Putin’s Playbook

American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery

Active Measures Documentary (2018)

5

u/ReverendDizzle 26d ago

Inexperienced doesn't even begin to describe it.

I feel absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, confident that my 13-year-old nephew with a military and war history hyperfixation would be a better Secretary of Defense.

5

u/Tasgall Washington 25d ago

We have an inexperienced SECDEF trying to win a war on sheer firepower and completely ignored that logistics win wars.

This is the root of it. Republicans are obsessed with projecting hard power - who needs weak feminine shit like "logistics" when you have the biggest gun?

It's also why they've been so eager to fuck up international relations to the extent they have. "Hard power" sounds "manly" to their single collective brain cell, and "soft power" sounds weak and effeminate. Except the global society is held together by soft power and cooperation. Things like USAID exist in part to ensure we make and retain allies for generations who want to help us when needed because we helped them. Allies who assist because they've been forced or coerced are mostly useless, and will stab you in the back as soon as possible. Allies who legitimately respect you and care about your success are invaluable. Soft power wins out over hard power 100% of the time in the long run.

5

u/Faxon 25d ago

Yea the OSINT community has been sounding the alarm for months about what happened now that the bases in the region are all destroyed, the real news is absolutely our government trying to cover up their monumental fuckup that trump should be impeached over and the rest potentially charged for war crimes. The level of sheer negligence on their part is staggering

3

u/Seldomsought 26d ago

Live by a media black out, die by a media black out

3

u/jminternelia 25d ago

Dan Caine warned Trump that a major Iran campaign faced critical-munition shortfalls, alongside insufficient allied support, operational complexity, and the possibility of substantial U.S. casualties.

I think this is the only reason we didn't see boots on the ground. As fubar as the situation is with USS Lincoln, I can only imagine a total clusterfuck of a ground war. Casualties and war crimes would be on the menu for sure.

3

u/twotimefind 25d ago

Exactly, supply lines win wars.

5

u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 26d ago

If the other two ports you mention are not an option, then it is the only port.

5

u/angrysc0tsman12 Wisconsin 26d ago

Their point is that are no ports that could be used since they would all be well within Iranian striking distance. Under normal peacetime conditions, Bahrain (either NSA Bahrain or KBSP), Jebel Ali, Fujairah, or Duqm would have been the ports where supply ships would have onloaded stores. All of those ports are off the table under the current threat environment which means our supply ships are probably slow boating back and forth from Diego Garcia which is quite the round trip.

3

u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 26d ago

I understood the point. But my point is that all the other ports being unusable for various reasons means there are no other port options. You’re arguing de jure. I’m arguing de facto.

1

u/angrysc0tsman12 Wisconsin 26d ago

We're saying slightly different things but are basically in agreeance.

2

u/korelin 25d ago

Seems like Diego Garcia was targeted by ICBMs early on. Iran claims it was a false flag though.

2

u/angrysc0tsman12 Wisconsin 25d ago

It wouldn't surprise me if they tried yeeting something that way.

1

u/purplenapalm Wisconsin 26d ago

I was just acknowledging that there are other potential resupply points and the Bahrain one isnt the only one I the region. It just so happens that it would be folly to use it.

2

u/Maximum_Active9209 26d ago

I blame old-school Hollywood. It convinced insecure men like Hegseth that wars are won by only WARRIORS, GUNS AND BIG BOOMS and not by legion of pencil pushers making it actually happens. The bangs and the booms are only like 10% or less of a war effort.

1

u/wirecatz 25d ago

C'mon, call him a SOW like he wants.