NORFOLK, Va. - The USS Cole is heading to the Middle East for the first time since a terrorist bomb killed 17 sailors aboard the Navy ship in Yemen's port of Aden nearly six years ago.
The Norfolk-based guided missile destroyer is one of seven ships with 6,000 sailors and Marines leaving the East Coast next week to conduct security operations in support of the war on terrorism, the Navy announced Friday. They'll be gone six months.
Some ships will leave Tuesday, while others, including the Cole, will depart Thursday, said Lt. Mike Kafka, a spokesman for the Navy's Second Fleet, in Norfolk.
The ships will deploy to the Fifth Fleet's area of responsibility, which includes the Persian Gulf, Kafka said. He said he could not give details about where the ships will go, for security reasons.
The Fifth Fleet's area encompasses 7.5 million square miles and also includes the Red Sea, Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean.
None of the sailors who were aboard the Cole during the attack was still on the ship now, Kafka said.
"The Cole has gone through an extensive certification process, and they are ready to deploy," Kafka said when asked whether the Second Fleet has concerns about the Cole returning to the Middle East.
The ship's commanding officer was unavailable for comment Friday, said Paul Taylor, another Navy spokesman.
The Cole was refueling on Oct. 12, 2000, when an explosives-laden boat rammed into it. The attack, blamed on Osama bin Laden's terror network, blew a huge hole into the Cole's side.
Saved by the crew from sinking, the $1 billion ship underwent $250 million of repairs at a Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard.
In 2003, the Cole embarked on its first deployment after the attack, spending six months in the Mediterranean Sea supporting NATO and the war on terrorism as it escorted ships through the Straits of Gibraltar and made diplomatic port calls.
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taken from yahoo's news page
i find it interesting to see so many ships leaving all of a sudden..... could be a pretext to war, or not we shall see.....
-------------------- PEACE
zippoz "in times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings - artists, scientists, clowns, and philosophers - to create order. In such times as ours however, when there is too much order, too much m management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption" "People do it every day, they talk to themselves ... they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have, to just run with it."
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