Whilst there is an ever seemingly louder slanging-match being engaged in between Iran and the US and it's allies about the Straits of Hormuz, what is so important about those Straits? The Global Post brings us up to speed.
"These days, the Strait of Hormuz is like a a child of divorce caught between two angry parents. Not exactly a fun position to be in. But what exactly is the Strait of Hormuz, and why are the United States and Iran engaging in a back-and-forth war of words over it? Here are five key facts about it.
5. It is a narrow strait located between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. Iran borders the Strait of Hormuz to the north, and the United Arab Emirates and Oman's Musandam Peninsula border it to the south. See the map in the slideshow above.
4. Much of the Persian Gulf relies on the Strait of Hormuz to export its petroleum and reach the ocean, making it one of the world's most important oil supply routes.
3. About 15 million barrels of crude oil pass through the Strait of Hormuz on a typical day. About a fifth of the world's oil supply goes through the strait.
2. The strait is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, and despite Iran's threats, it has never managed to cut it off completely to traffic.
1. Close to 300 people died in the Strait of Hormuz in 1988 when a US Navy missile cruiser, USS Vincennes, shot down an Iran Air Airbus A300 passenger jet over it."
Only a gigantic bureaucracy could get away with spending of such dimensions - and the amazing waste involved in part of that ginormous spend. Think US Pentagon..... "From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades. Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represe...
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