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Cargando... Front Burner: Al Qaeda's Attack on the USS Colepor Kirk Lippold
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Front Burner is the story of the attack on the USS Cole, written by the Cole's captain. It explains how attack from those who experienced it. A major point is that there was a major failure of intelligence; after 9/11 this is quite obvious. I found the naval perspective a bit too dry, even though the themes are important. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
On October 12, 2000, at 11:18 a.m., an 8,400-ton destroyer called the USS Cole was rocked by an enormous explosion. The ship's commander, Kirk Lippold, watched as tiles tumbled from the ceiling, mugs of coffee tumbled to the floor, and everything not bolted down seemed to float in midair. Lippold knew in a matter of moments that the Cole had been attacked. What he didn't know was how much the world was changing around him. Eleven months later, he was debriefed by the CIA and told about Osama bin Laden. By some unbelievable coincidence, that meeting occurred on the morning of September 11, 2001. In a scene that seems almost tailor-made for movie treatment, at the end of this early morning meeting about the looming threat of al-Qaeda, Kirk remarked, "I don't think America understands. I believe it is going to take a seminal event, probably in this country, where hundreds, if not thousands, are going to have to die before Americans realize that we're at war with this guy." Mere moments later, the first plane struck the World Trade Center. The CIA agent who had debriefed him said, "Kirk, I can't believe you said what you did this morning." The truth is that it wasn't so unbelievable: Lippold had known for eleven months longer than the rest of the nation that al-Qaeda was at war with America. His story has remained untold-until now. In this thrilling first-person narrative, Lippold reveals the details of his harrowing experience leading a crew of valiant sailors through the deadliest attack on an American vessel since 1987. He also explains how this event was overshadowed by 9/11, swept under the rug by bureaucrats and political operatives, who eventually attempted to lay blame for the attack on Lippold himself, denying him promotion and halting his career. An essential volume that belongs side by side with The Looming Tower, Ghost Wars, and The 9/11 Commission Report, this book restores a crucial story that has until now been lost in the fog of the war on terror. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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The Cole attack was one of the early Al Qaeda attacks against U.S. interests. Because of the lack of intelligence, the USS Cole was unprepared to properly defend itself during what was thought to be little more that a routine refueling stop in Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in the attack, and another 39 wounded. Commander Lippold explains that Naval Intelligence failed to identify the danger of a possible Al Qaeda attack to ships visiting Yemen, and as a result, security steps taken while refueling in Yemen proved to be ineffective in protecting the ship.
A small boat managed to came alongside the Cole, detonated its explosive cargo, resulting in the Cole being severely damaged and threatened with sinking. Lippold describes the gaping hole blown in the side of the ship, the flooding of the engineering spaces, loss of shipboard communications, the deaths and injuries to the crew, and the real fears of losing the ship should flooding continue unabated. Throughout the book, Lippold talks extensively of the heroic steps taken by the crew to save the ship, however I felt the book would have been made more interesting if Lippold had been able to include more details of those heroic actions through the eyes of the crew members rather than from his own perspective as the commanding officer. It is Lippold's story, so being told through his eyes and his perspective is understandable, however I continued to have the feeling that in some passages, he made his story sound a little more self-serving and self-centered than needed. To me, the book would have benefited more from better capturing the perspective and specific stories from the rest of the crew, those with their hands on the emergency equipment and struggling to stop the flooding, keep the generator running, rig casualty cables, etc. Also, and perhaps it's my own bias based on one or two other Annapolis graduates I knew (an extremely small minority I should add), but I didn't feel he made himself to be a particularly likable or sympathetic character in the book.
At any rate, the book ends with a bitter detailing of the fact that his advancement and promotion from Commander to Captain was prevented because of political interference. Thus, even though he was exonerated of blame by investigation into the bombing, the attack on the Cole ended up ending Commander Lippold's career in the Navy. That was hardly unusual, in that historically, a ship's Captain has always ultimately responsible for his ship. And while Lippold makes it clear that he did not have the information needed to make the necessary decisions to better protect his ship, to some in the Military and Government, someone had to be held accountable. Lippold was obviously sensitive to being blamed, and understandably, sounded somewhat defensive this otherwise significant story of a precursor attack against U.S. interests prior to 9/11.
Note: to anyone interested in knowing more about the investigation into who was responsible for the Cole attack, I recommend Ali Soufan's "The Black Banners" as a good source.
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