To: DMaA who wrote (241455 ) 3/11/2008 12:27:36 PM From: Alan Smithee Respond to Where is the navy? The challenge is daunting. The United States has 95,000 miles of coastline, and more than a hundred seaports capable of handling large ships. It is the most active sea-trading nation on earth, accounting for a large percentage of long-distance maritime traffic worldwide, and annually accommodating more than 60,000 port calls by oceangoing ships, the great majority of which are foreign-flagged and many of which are operated by fictitious offshore companies, whose real owners are difficult or impossible to identify. The owners are mostly ordinary businesspeople (and quite a few are American), but they could easily include terrorists as well, and they certainly do include smugglers of goods and drugs and people. Moreover, the ships are crewed by several hundred thousand nearly anonymous foreign sailors drawn on short contracts from a much larger pool. Many of them are Muslims, and almost all come from troubled parts of the world, where America is resented, corruption is rife, and authentic documentation can easily be bought. These sailors necessarily bypass all the standard screening procedures by immigration authorities, and arrive with their vessels in American ports. It is believed that in the past many jumped ship, though how many is unknown, because the captains had no reason to report their losses to authorities on the shore. Procedures have tightened somewhat now, but the United States remains utterly dependent on these crews, trust them or not. Their ships bring in six million containers a year, 3.7 million vehicles, 53 percent of the nation's oil, and mountains of other goods and materials too numerous to name; and they take away significant amounts as well. They carry more than three fourths of American foreign trade as measured by weight, and somewhat less than half as measured by value. Interrupt the flow with a terrorist attack, and the backup would instantly reach around the world, with devastating results. Institute heavy-handed inspections and other procedures to head off an attack and the damage could be even worse.
