"15 Miles Offshore, Safeguarding Iraq's Oil Lifeline," by James Glanz, New York Times, 6 July, p. A1.
This story is such a repeat of the front-page one Chip Cummins did for the Journal on 30 June that you almost wonder why the Times bothered to run it. Glanz is a great writer, but he should almost list Cummins as his second on the piece.
I cite simply for the inevitable:
"A visit to the Khor al Amaya terminal begins with a 50-foot climb up from the water on an old rope ladder that is missing one of its wooden rungs.That's it. Inside the Pentagon Waterworld knocks Mad Mad and Blade Runner off the top of the heap of movie-inspired alternative global futurescapes. I don't expect to see any naval intell briefs in the future that do not include that phrase.
Up top is a scene that could have come from the movie 'Waterworld': misshapen catwalks with pieces of scrap metal tossed over gaping holes, heaps of parts from broken pumps and cranes; bullet holes and shell damage from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war; a row of big pressure gauges on a series of pipes that read dead zero. A humbled Manitowoc 3900 crane looks as if it has not been pained in 30 years. It was once red.
The southern section of the platform is not used at all, because it was heavily damaged in one conflict or another. But elsewhere a black and red Indian tanker called the Gandhar is riding high in the water, taking on oil, patrolled by a lone man in a blue hard hat way up on the deck."
Waterworld has just such a neat Gap feel to it.
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