The food shortages and other problems that sparked outrage over substandard conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln stemmed from Iranian attacks that devastated a key Navy base on the island nation of Bahrain — leaving the ship to rely on supplies from an outpost about 2,200 miles away.
The Navy's Persian Gulf base, known as Naval Support Activity Bahrain, is the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet, which in 2004 unveiled a $25 million, state-of-the-art nerve center to support maritime military operations across the Middle East.
