Excerpt: "The United States has deployed F-22 stealth fighters to Qatar for the first time, its military said, adding to a buildup of US forces in the Gulf amid tensions with Iran."
A photo handout showed five of the jets flying above the Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar. (photo: FS)
US Deploys F-22 Stealth Fighters to Qatar Amid Iran Tensions
29 June 19
F-22 fighter jets deployed to Qatar for the first time, US military says, adding to buildup of US forces in the Gulf.
he United States has deployed F-22 stealth fighters to Qatar for the first time, its military said, adding to a buildup of US forces in the Gulf amid tensions with Iran.
The Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighters have been deployed "to defend American forces and interests", the US Air Forces Central Command said in a statement on Friday.
It did not specify how many of the hi-tech planes had been sent.
A photo handout showed five of the jets flying above the Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar.
Tehran and Washington have been locked in an escalating standoff since US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from a multi-party 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic republic.
Tensions spiked last week when Iran shot down a US drone over sensitive Gulf waters following a series of tanker attacks that Washington blamed on Tehran, which has denied involvement.
Since then the arch-foes have been locked in a war of words, which escalated this week when Trump announced new sanctions against Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Iran has threatened to abandon some of its commitments under the nuclear deal unless the remaining partners - the United Kingdom, China, France, Germany and Russia - help it circumvent US sanctions and let it sell its oil.
In May, the US Air Force deployed several nuclear-capable B-52 Stratofortress bombers to the Gulf in response to what the Defense Department described as a possible plan by Iran to attack US forces in the region, as well as an aircraft carrier task force.
The F-22 was created as the replacement of the successful F-15 Eagle in the early 2000s. The US Air Force claims it "cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter aircraft".
Costing about $150m apiece, the F-22 Raptor is a fifth-generation, single-seat, twin-engine fighter jet, designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but also has ground attack and signal intelligence capabilities.
Lockheed Martin, the prime manufacturer, built most of the F-22's airframe and weapons systems and conducted final assembly, while Boeing provided the wings, fuselage, avionics integration, and training systems.
Service officials had originally planned to buy a total of 750 planes but in 2009, the programme was cut to 187 operational production aircraft due to high costs.
Al Udeid serves as one of the most important overseas US military bases with operations throughout the Middle East launched from Qatar.
The base hosts about 11,000 US and US-led coalition forces and over 100 operational aircraft.
In the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, the US and Qatar signed a military cooperation agreement after which the US military moved to Qatar in 2003, evacuating the Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia.
Strategically placed, about 80 percent of aerial refuelling in the region is being done from Al Udeid, according to Qatari officials.
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The last sentence gets many points from me.
I'm just a common ol' git who likes to play with language and chuck phrases around in context to see where else they lead but as long as there's a bit of genuine humor in there, I'll listen to almost anybody; -never had much idea what "framing" really meant.
As Emma Goldman once said, "If I can't dance, I won't come to your revolution"!
Can anyone suggest a way in for someone who is not familiar at the moment with all the vocabulary? Something like a Linguistics For Dummies?
Edited later
Silly me. Should have checked Amazon before posting. There is a Linguistics For Dummies! Is there anything else that people might suggest?
Check out Lakoff's book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. It's thick but fascinating. And your Goldman quote, one of my favorites.'
If you want to approach real linguistic knowledge, the invisible genius of the language you wield effortlessly and unconsciously, throw yourself in with the big dogs.
Being Chuck, he went further. Sentences that looked very different have meanings characterized by the same frame. Chuck sold the book to Paul for $10. Paul bought the book from Chuck for $10. The book cost Paul $10. Chuck got $10 for the book. Moreover, each verb defined by that frame has its own grammar associated with it. With sell, the Seller is Subject, the goods is direct object, the buyer is marked by to and the price is marker by for. With cost, the goods is subject, the price is direct object and the Buyer is indirect object."
My superficial reaction is: So? Is this not obvious? What good does it do us to have a theory and a word "frame" to describe an automatic process? And where's the proof? If one is running a political campaign, for instance, one will frame everything because that's how you influence the masses. One doesn't need a name for this natural process to be able to exploit it.
I'm skeptical too, by training and from experience, to the point that I've become skeptical of my own skepticism. I've been skeptical of Lakoff's message since he became something of a celebrity a few years ago. I didn't know who he was and neglected to look, and suspected that his "framing" was just another bit of pop culture with some significance but not a lot of depth, sort of like Transactional Analysis in the 1960s-70s. (TA fans, I don't mean to discount it, but it's more fun than fundamental.)
But I know just enough of the references here to realize that this is pretty deep stuff. It also "just happens" (synchronicity - Jung) that I have been googling around in some closely related areas this week. It has to do with fundamental aspects of how we think and communicate, that humankind is just now becoming able to explore, just as 350 years ago we were just becoming able to explore how material bodies interact in space. It's worth some further reading if you're ready for some heavy sledding!