Because the security of Diego Garcia is that much easier to enforce when only the people you have vetted are allowed to be there. If no one lives on the islands, then any unidentified boat is an obvious security threat. But with the islands inhabited, that boat could just be a local fisherman slightly off course.

Also, it’s a lot easier to do sketchy shit in your top secret military base in the middle of the ocean if there’s no one within ~1000 miles that isn’t already involved.

Everyone loves sodium cooled reactors until they have to deal with a loss of coolant casualty.

Because, as the warships are US flagged, all that matters for their conduct (until a UN resolution is passed or ICC takes action) is US Law.

Since the USN vessels are not within the internationally recognized jurisdiction of Yemen, Yemeni laws don’t apply. So it can’t really be illegal, then? Or is the law that no one, anywhere on earth, is allowed to disagree with them?

Yes it does. Look up the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, if you’re not being purposefully obtuse.

And as much as we may not like it, with the way US laws currently are, there is nothing illegal about USN vessels being in the Red Sea

Yes it does. Ships of any nation have a right to transit international waters.

When Iranian ships (or ships of any nation, really) engage in acts of privacy, then they open themselves up to the consequences, whatever those may be.

If a ship is in international waters, it has every right to be there, regardless of nationalities involved.

Yeah that doesn’t make hijacking a boat and taking the crew hostage okay by any stretch of the imagination

No civilian causalities…because we’ve been shooting down all the missiles. The Houthis have been firing off rockets, drones, and missiles pretty indiscriminately at passing cargo boats, some of which do have US nationals aboard. If the US and allies hadn’t been there, there’s a good chance there’d be a half dozen cargo ships at the bottom of the Red Sea, and then there would be civilian causalities.

Oh completely agree. I just wouldn’t think that the parts required to fix a steam boiler are high enough tech to be impacted by sanctions.

The most charitable excuse is that it requires parts they can’t get due to sanctions.

At the same time, it’s a boiler in Russia. How high tech could it possibly be???

Also, a falling soldering iron (or knife) has no handle

That vinegar one feels way too specific to have come about naturally. Did that happen to you at one time?

It’s not unheard of for groups to claim responsibility to gain clout, and seem more capable than they really are. So this more of a “trust but verify” scenario than really a blame game.

Plus, the CIA probably feels the need to flex a bit by saying they have sources that far inside ISIS.

And maybe they don’t. Maybe it’s a fucking massive shell game. Because that’s all Intelligence really is, isn’t it?

While technically accurate, the water could still transport entrained fission daughter products, so there still might be a significant spread of contamination outside the pool, even if the water itself isn’t activated.

But here is the scenario I think you’re referencing!

The act of nuclear fission is not safe. What is safe is how we design the systems that contain the reaction and protect the workers, the public, and the environment. We should never ignore the potential dangers of nuclear power, lest we become complacent and really screw up. Instead, we should continue constructing, operating, and maintaining nuclear power plants with the highest appropriate levels of safety.

The reason people have to come out of the woodwork to “go to any length to ignore it’s dangers” is that the “dangers” reported in the media almost always pose absolutely zero risk to the public, and only serve to inflame anti-nuclear rhetoric.

Take this case: 14L of liquid spilled inside a closed and sealed containment building. There is zero chance of any of that radioactivity encountering the public or the environment. The operators noticed the problem, and are (as far as we know) taking appropriate recovery actions. Really, it shouldn’t even be news. But it is, because nUcLeAr bOgEyMaN sCaRy.

I don’t know that I can say anything to really convince anyone otherwise, especially not without sounding like the nuclear simp you mention (even more than I’m sure I already do), but truly, (given the facts at hand) there is zero danger to the workers, public, or environment from this isolated incident.

FWIW, I read “heat blanket” as one of those reflective metallic emergency blankets you find in wilderness first aid kits. Better than nothing, but no true heat source, as it isn’t powered, electrically or otherwise

The one surefire way to trigger an overwhelming US military response is to shoot down one of our helos. So unless they want the entire Somali Yemeni coast glassed (which, to be fair, they might as part of a larger geopolitical strategy), they would have to be very stupid to shoot at a USN helicopter.

ETA: corrected location; my bad

They were creative!

This was a third story window, not a second story one.

According to the USNI Fleet Tracker, the entire Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group (CSG-2) and the Bataan ARG are in the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea. So that is a significant amount of firepower in the region, not even counting PATFORSWA or other nations warships.

FWIW, Business Insider is reporting that the CCP offered him $15 million to land his Chinook on one of their carriers. So that adds some perspective