Journalists: have LAYERS of editors and fact checkers. Sure you do... - Granite Grok

Journalists: have LAYERS of editors and fact checkers. Sure you do…

USS Missouri (BB 63)

This from the Associated Press:

Four battleships move within striking range of Syria as President Obama weighs military options after a reported 1,300 are killed in nerve gas attack on Damascus

Battleships, eh?  Do these nitwits even BOTHER to do any kind of checking?  I spent a whole 5 seconds on Google and found a bunch of links address “last commissioned US battleship”.  I figured that the best one was a list of the former BB (Battleship) designated ships maintained by the US Navy itself.  Zippo left – not a single one.  And as part of their report was this, confirming the above headline:

Military officials told the Associated Press that four battleships have been moved within the striking zone of Syria and could be used for a Tomahawk missile attack

and as a caption to a picture with the piece was this:

At the ready: Four battleships have been moved to within striking range of Syria as President Obama weighs his options following a reported use of chemical weapons against citizens Wednesday

Now, do we have “battle capable ships” “steaming” (to use the old term when steam engines were used (most are diesel or gas turbine)) towards the Middle East?  Yes.  Would they participate in a “battle” if one to occur?  Yes, given the orders.  Are they actual battleships, a specific term?  Do we have anything in the fleet that even vaguely looks like the USS Missouri (above)?  Nope.

No.  Last large scale use of battlewagons was in WW II.  Nowadays, the capital ships are all aircraft carriers; the closest to a battleship, if one has to press, is an Aegis class cruiser firing missiles and their main armament isn’t even things that go boom – it is their integrated radar-comms platform.  And I’m not even a former Navy guy or even a DOD guy.  Yet, they deride we bloggers as they have “layers of fact checkers”.  Yet another instance of journalists that haven’t a real clue about the subject matter – and not bothering to find out?

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