as the senator of the united states of america. over in cannes with too many drinks in him probably waving a piece of paper saying it s from french intelligence that the u.s.s. normandy, a proud cruiser of the american fleet with 450 patriotses aboard shot down a commercial airplane. you know it was prepost oh rous. it was the rantings of a whacko on the internet. it was not a report from french intelligence. vess,e went forward. i called the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff prior to that. we looked at every military asset in the area. we interviewed every member of the u.s.s. normandy. by the way, they were out of range by about 200 miles of the twa flight. that s a preposterous thing to say. it hurts the families. that s the thing that irritates me about this thing now. it s basically b.s., in my view. the families have to go through this whole thing.
correspondents in tripoli and benghazi reporting two fronts. reporting on what he hears obviously it s very difficult to cover this type of story. you ll have competing versions of what has happened. you already have that. gadhafi saying civilians have been killed, maybe that is true or not true. we have no way to verify it. the hospital pictures are already being trotted out of supposedly innocent victims. this is a tough, cynical circumstance in which to try to cover this story. what about the risk to journalists? you have some experience. with cruise missiles. you were there in bosnia. very first cruise missile fired from the uss normandy. they fired 16 of them that day. the most experience i had and show how difficult this is was exactly eight years ago this week. i was inside iraq waiting for our country to invade us.
on board the other ships they have about 750 u.s. sailors on board roughly. that means already right now in the gulf of aden, the u.s. has about 3,000 u.s. sailors and marines already there, as that convoy of eight or nine iranian ships heads right for them. those 3,000 or so u.s. sailors and marines already in the gulf of aden they are about to get a very large influx of friendly neighbors into this crowded neighborhood. and the egyptians already having their ships there, and the seven u.s. navy vessels already there, in addition to all of that the navy has now decided to send as well a guided missile cruiser called the uss normandy which has about 400 u.s. navy personnel on board, and also this little guy. the uss theodore roosevelt which is an air kraflcraft carrier.
the principle role of this operation is to maintain freedom of navigation and free flow of commerce in the gulf of aiden and the red sea. we have concerns about iran s support for the hussis including supplying them with military equipment. the uss theodore roosevelt is being escorted by the uss normandy. there are a total of nine u.s. navy war ships and three support ships operating in the area stretching from the southern red sea to the arabian sea. they are enforcing a u.s. armed embargoes passed by 14 nations excluding russia last yeek. iranians deny their convoy contains weapons. this development will be