McCain would never have made Admiral - that's just a political story to support his Presidential run

A recent New York Times article claims that John McCain was offered an Admiral's star, but declined it to retire and run for Congress.

At a meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to attain his life ambition: becoming an admiral. [Snip]

With Mr. Tower’s [conservative Texas Senator John tower]encouragement, Mr. McCain declined the prospect of his first admiral’s star to make a run for Congress, saying that he could “do more good there,” Mr. Lehman recalled.

The story is, however, sourced to John Lehman, who was Secretary of the Navy for only the last two months before McCain retired. John Lehman is an adviser to McCain's Presidential campaign, and there are no earlier reports that anything like this event ever occurred. Also, this story contradicts all earlier stories about the reasons for McCain's retirement from the Navy, including those told by McCain.

Why should such a conversation with the Secretary of the Navy have occurred? Such a conversation with a Captain being considered for promotion to Admiral would be highly unlikely, even unethical. It is also unlikely that the Secretary of the Navy would extend such an offer, since the Secretary of the Navy is not part of the Admiral selection process. The approval process, yes, but not the selection process. Potential Admirals are selected by other Admirals. To make the story even more unlikely, the supposed offer is said to have occurred only two years after McCain was promoted to Captain. Such a very short period of time between promotion to Captain and promotion to Admiral would have been an unprecedented.

Jeffrey Klein has this to say about McCain's prospects for promotion to Admiral:

All of the evidence, indications and comments that the New York Times published a flattering lie about McCain's career on its front page are easy for John McCain to refute. All he needs to do is sign Standard Form 180, which authorizes the Navy to send an undeleted copy of McCain's naval file to news organizations. A long paper trail about McCain's pending promotion to admiral would be prominent in his file. To date, McCain's advisers have released snippets from his file, but under constrained viewing circumstances. There's no reason McCain's full file shouldn't be released immediately. There's also a recent precedent for McCain signing the simple form that leads to full disclosure: Senator John Kerry signed the 180 waiver, which made his entire naval file public.

The Navy may claim that it already released McCain's record to the Associated Press on May 7, 2008 in response to the AP's Freedom of Information Act request. But the McCain file the Navy released contained 19 pages -- a two-page overview and 17 pages detailing Awards and Decorations. Each of these 17 pages is stamped with a number. These numbers range from 0069 to 0636. When arranged in ascending order, they precisely track the chronology of McCain's career. It seems reasonable to ask the Navy whether there are at least 636 pages in McCain's file, of which 617 weren't released to the Associated Press.

Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush's.

Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class, McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment -- to become an aircraft carrier pilot. According to military historian John Karaagac, "'the Airdales,' the air wing of the Navy, acted and still do, as if unrivaled atop the naval pyramid. They acted as if they owned, not only the Navy, but the entire swath of blue water on the earth's surface." The most accomplished midshipmen compete furiously for the few carrier pilot openings. After four abysmal academic years at Annapolis distinguished only by his misdeeds and malfeasance, no one with a record resembling McCain's would have been offered such a prized career path. The justification for this and subsequent plum assignments should be documented in McCain's naval file.

In short, the May 29th New York Times article has to be considered as nothing more than a political puff piece, a myth created three decades after the fact in order to bolster McCain's current run for President.

If there is any truth to the May 29th story, all McCain has to do is authorize the Navy to release his naval records to the Press as John Kerry did. Any selection proceedings that had been undertaken would appear all over the records.

Don't hold your breath.

U.S. Navy and Iranians tiptoe carefully in Persian Gulf

The U.S and Iranian Navy operations - in addition to extensive shipping operations - in the small Persian Gulf cause real risks of accidents. It's crowded and busy. The U.S. and Iranian naval operators especially have to communicate frequently and carefully. The LA Times reports on the situation:

in the cramped sea routes of the Persian Gulf, U.S. and Iranian warship sailors and fighter pilots speak to each other daily.

They have to. They're practically jostling one another in courteous games of surveillance, counter-surveillance and geopolitical posturing.

"We are operating very close to their territorial waters in a very confined space with a tremendous amount of traffic, be it the small dhows, be it the supertankers going up to the oil platforms," said U.S. Navy Capt. Sterling Gilliam Jr., commander of air operations for this nuclear-powered supercarrier and its associated ships.

"The margin of error is smaller in that the space is more confined. That would be the case even if anyone was your ally, just because of the sheer small size of the Arabian Gulf," Gilliam said, using an alternative name for the body of water.

Even mundane changes of direction require chitchat with Iranian counterparts. When sedate gulf winds fade to a whisper, for example, this 100,000-ton carrier whips up to the 25 knots required to hurl jets into flight from the 1,092-foot flight deck.

But first the vessel alerts nearby forces of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and the organization's navy.

"We would do the standard international maritime measures," said Capt. Bradley Johanson, commanding officer of the aircraft carrier.

"We would call them on their radio and say, 'Sir, I just wanted to let you know that we're going to be turning to port and be coming to this course so that we're into the wind in support of our flight operation."

The Iranians respond professionally and courteously, Johanson said: " 'Thank you very much for the information. We will move off to the starboard position. We very much appreciate the heads-up.' "

Nearly half of the U.S. Navy's 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, alongside most of Tehran's estimated 140 naval surface ships and six submarines, according to GlobalSecurity.org. More than five dozen aircraft are aboard the Stennis, along with dozens more aboard the Nimitz, another U.S. aircraft carrier in the gulf.

If either the U.S. or the Iranians want to threaten war it will be very easy to do. Worse, the risk of another accident like the U.S. Navy shoot-down of the Iranian airliner in 1988 remains very high.

I'm sure Dick Cheney is very much aware of the possibilities of threatening or starting a war in the Persian Gulf. The rest of us (and especially Secretary of Defense Bob Gates) need to keep in mind how to stop him. The same risk exists on the Iranian side as current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard tend to lose support to the more liberal elements of Iranian political society.

(See prior post Internal Iranian politics from Friday, July 06, 2007.)