Iran's Speedboats Of Mass Destruction

When the old news of the face-off (?) in the Straits of Hormuz came to my attention, my first memory was of the USS Cole and the boat that ran into its hull in Yemen, setting off some explosives and doing a good deal of damage and mayhem. However, I am quite sure this is not what was in the mind of the naval personnel on those US naval vessels looking through their binoculars at the speedboats.

What they were remembering was the Pentagon war games of August 2002 called "Millennium Challenge" which took two years of planning ( placing us back to the year 2000 - notice this is before 2001.) In these games the USA was the Blue Force and the Gulf Power enemy was the Red Force. The commander of the Red Force was Marine General Paul Van Riper.
The Red Force won...until the Pentagon resurrected the Blue Forces and changed the rules.  
Slate http://www.slate.com/id/2080814/  
War-Gamed
Why the Army shouldn't be so surprised by Saddam's moves.
By Fred Kaplan Posted Friday, March 28, 2003, at 4:55 PM ET  

"Robert Oakley, a retired U.S. ambassador who played the Red civilian leader, told the Army Times that Van Riper was "out-thinking" Blue Force from the first day of the exercise." Among of the things General Van Riper did were: "For instance—and here is where he displayed prescience—Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to Red troops, thereby eluding Blue's super-sophisticated eavesdropping technology. He maneuvered Red forces constantly. At one point in the game, when Blue's fleet entered the Persian Gulf, he sank some of the ships with suicide-bombers in speed boats. (At that point, the managers stopped the game, "refloated" the Blue fleet, and resumed play.)"

This is what the Navy was thinking of. The Fifth Fleet is in a dangerous place without much room. Stuff happens. Some people want stuff to happen. General Van Riper finally quit the games in protest. Recall that this was Rumsfeld's Pentagon where one apparently switched the facts to fit the script.

"Finally, the paper quoted a retired Army officer who has played in several war games with Van Riper. "What he's done is, he's made himself an expert in playing Red, and he's real obnoxious about it," the officer said. "He will insist on being able to play Red as freely as possible and as imaginatively and creatively, within the bounds of the framework of the game and the technology horizons and all that, as possible. He can be a real pain in the ass, but that's good. … He's a great patriot and he's doing all those things for the right reasons." Clearly, the Pentagon needs to encourage obnoxious Red commanders, not suppress them. Scripted war-game enemies may roll over, but, as we're seeing, real enemies sometimes think of tricky ways to fight back."

There's a lot here: invasion plans going back to the years before 9/11, Pentagon brass surpressing creative generals, results of the war games published and coming back to haunt us... What kind of irony is there in having someone kick us in the backside with speedboats while we are sitting on our fat and ignorant asses watching smart bombs on TV kill people? I believe I hear Shaka Naw ( shock 'n' awe, shock 'n' awe, gonna bomb ya, shock 'n' awe!) when all I used to hear was "Hey, young fella! The Navy has news for you! To travel and get the pay you want, get into the Navy blue!..."