Yesterday, as U.S. and British war planes fired missiles at suspected anti-aircraft positions around Baghdad, Iraq, it was business as usual at the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands. “We continue to do vigilant watch-standing,” but with
Yesterday, as U.S. and British war planes fired missiles at suspected anti-aircraft positions around Baghdad, Iraq, it was business as usual at the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands.
“We continue to do vigilant watch-standing,” but with no heightened security measures in place, reported Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell of the Navy’s public affairs office at Pearl Harbor.
In the meantime, reaction on Kaua’i to the missile attack was sketchy, as were details on the attack at presstime yesterday.
“They’re calling it a ‘routine mission.’ I wouldn’t call any time you launch missiles or you’re dropping bombs a ‘routine mission,'” said Gregg Gardiner, an ex-Marine and former national director of the Navy League.
“My take on that is, I think that probably the president wanted to send a message pretty quick that he wasn’t going to tolerate any of that kind of stuff,” Gardiner said about the President Bush-ordered military response to return fire at ground-based anti-aircraft guns near the no-fly zones over Iraq.
“I don’t know enough about what’s happening over there right now. I do know we don’t want this guy (Saddam Hussein) building up any weapons of mass destruction, and the no-fly zone is in place for the protection of everyone, to keep conflicts to a minimum,” Gardiner said.
“Iraq is kind of like a fly that just won’t go away. They just keep testing and testing and testing and testing. So, every once in a while, when they keep testing you, you have to swat them back down,” said Gardiner, who is still active in national defense initiatives from a civilian standpoint as one of only two Hawai’i members of the Defense Organizers Conference Association.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
