The Gulf of Mexico

Sorry, I had a 1966 flashback over this story…..

The Houston Chronicle has reported that Texas Senator John Cornyn, based on a report in a right wing newspaper called the Washington Free Beacon has demanded an explanation from the Navy as to why and how a Russian attack submarine was able to patrol in the Gulf of Mexico during the months of June and July undetected and unchallenged by the American Navy. The name of the body of water involved is the Gulf of MEXICO, not the Gulf of American Territorial Waters by the way, and our territorial rights end 12 miles from the low tide mark of our land mass.

Cornyn wrote in this letter to the Navy, “This submarine activity reportedly occurred in June and July, simultaneously with incursions by Russian strategic bombers into restricted U. S. airspace. The submarine patrol, taken together with the air incursions, seems to represent a more aggressive and destabilizing Russian military stance that could pose risks to our national security.”

Okay, there were these two Russian bombers who were engaged in an Arctic region exercise who got a little too close to the ADIZ, the line of airspace surrounding Alaska. They were met by NORAD fighters and turned back before actually breaching the ADIZ. Remember how Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house? Well, Russian airspace and American airspace abut each other in the Arctic. The hype over the “Russian incursion” was also complements of the Free Beacon.

Remember a couple of other things as well. The right wing drew all kinds of warped conclusions over an accidental open-mike exchange between then President Dimitri Medvedev and President Obama over the European missile defense shield in which President Obama said he would have more flexibility to talk about the shield after the election. Medvedev said he would pass that on to Vladimir Putin. The shield in question would be built in Europe, and faces opposition within the European Union.

Second, there was Mitt Romney’s statement that Russia is our greatest geo-political threat, a statement that Democrats derided as so-o-o-o 1950s.

The Free Beacon is feeding stories to the Republicans that they can use to bolster Romney’s statements and supposedly embarrass the President. The airspace incursion story had Congressman Michael Turner of Ohio saying that the incident proved how dumb it was for our President to pursue a “reset” of our relationships with Russia.

We are left with dumb, stupid question of the week about this: if the sub went undetected by our navy for two whole months, how did the Free Beacon find out about it?

Related articles

• Russian nuclear attack sub patrolled Gulf of Mexico undetected…
• Senator demands answers from Pentagon on Russian sub in Gulf of Mexico
• Cornyn demands info on Russian sub incident