US Navy – The USS Iwo Jima amphibious ready group returns home and the Navy continues transitioning from amphibious ready groups to expeditionary strike groups. Meanwhile, the new deployment schedules of expeditionary strike groups will be similar to that of carrier battlegroups – no more routine 6 month long inflexible deployments.

• Virginian Pilot: Iwo Jima group arrives home after uncertain deployment
• Virginian Pilot: Marines’ ships come in, but none go out in policy change

Canadian Navy – The Upholder-class submarines have difficulty operating in warm climates.

• Times Colonist: Sweltering sub puts sailors in a tropical sweat

Nigerian Navy – Nigerian pirates are now using tankers to siphon oil out of Nigeria’s pipelines.

• The Guardian of Johannesburg: Nigerian smugglers start using tankers to steal oil

US Navy – A look at what U.S. patrol boats are doing off of Iraq today.

• StrategyPage: Cyclones, Firebolt and the Persian Gulf Pirates

US Marines – How one Marine general led from the front in Iraq.

• Inside the Pentagon: Marine General: Leading From Iraqi Battlefield
  Informed Key Decisions

Background – Intelligence – Seymour Hersch on how conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraqís weapons of mass destruction.

• The New Yorker: The Stovepipe
• The New Yorker: Behind the “Mushroom Cloud”