USS Cole Skipper Won't Be Promoted

I suppose it's a little better than being demoted, but Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, skipper of the USS Cole when it was bombed by terrorists, has been removed from the Navy's promotion list. The Reno Gazette-Journal reported Tuesday about the decision.

It's a hard thing to understand, the way the Navy makes decisions about ship captains, and I talked to my dad (20 years in the Navy) about this after I read In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors. Even though it's nobody's fault, if we lose a Navy ship, the skipper is responsible. Period.

Cmdr. Lippold appears to understand this.

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen said in 2001 that blame extended throughout the Pentagon and Navy leadership. The chief of naval operations, the Navy's top uniformed officer, and the Atlantic Fleet commander agreed that even with security measures in place as prescribed, the attack would not have been prevented. They praised Lippold and his crew for "heroic action" in saving the vessel and ordered that no disciplinary action be taken or placed in their files.

"If you want accountability, there was one accountable officer on that ship, and that was me," Lippold said. "If you want someone to blame, blame Osama Bin Laden. He financed this, planned it and executed it."

"There is a collective responsibility," [then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern]Clark said on Jan. 19, 2001. "We all in the chain of command share responsibility for what happened on board USS Cole.

"The investigation clearly shows the commanding officer of the Cole did not have the specific intelligence, the focused training, the appropriate equipment and on-scene security support to effectively prevent or deter such a determined, such a pre-planned assault on this ship."

It's a shame to see a good skipper and a good Navy officer, which Lippold appears to be, being forced to accept responsibility for something out of his control. But sometimes life stinks, and you just have to accept it.

In a 2002 speech in Carson City, Lippold tried to put the attack in context, citing unheeded warnings.

"You have to remember that we had gone almost eight years of being sensitized to being hit by terrorists and really taking no affirmative action other than putting a couple of Tomahawks (missiles) downrange," Lippold told the Rotary Club. "In '93 there was the World Trade Center (bombing), in '96 there was (the bombing of) the Khobar towers. In '98, there was (the bombing of) the embassy in Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and the Cole in 2000 before the (Sept. 11 attack on) the World Trade Center hit us."

"I think that was a failing and that was one of the things that came out of the investigation when I was hit," he said. "It wasn't just one person who failed. It was failure up and down the chain of command and it continued on a very large scale even after my ship got hit. We ended up jeopardizing our nation in so many ways. It was just inconceivable that that depth of hatred existed and that people would go to those levels to attack us."

Let's see, that's 1993, 1996, 1998, and 2000. Remind me, who was President then?

I won't be holding my breath waiting for him to face the music for his failures that led to the bombing of the USS Cole. Cmdr. Lippold will have to face the music for him.