In a brazen display of Michael Moore style triumphalism (and a slap in the face of all World War II veterans), the San Francisco City Council has refused to allow the historic U.S.S. Iowa a home in San Francisco's maritime museum:

The USS Iowa joined in battles from World War II to Korea to the Persian Gulf. It carried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran conference of allied leaders, and four decades later, suffered one of the nation’s most deadly military accidents.

Veterans groups and history buffs had hoped tourists in San Francisco could walk the same teak decks where sailors dodged Japanese machine-gun fire and fired 16-inch guns that helped win battles across the South Pacific.

Instead, it appears the retired battleship is headed about 80 miles inland, to Stockton, a gritty agricultural port town on the San Joaquin River and home of California’s annual asparagus festival.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a former San Francisco mayor, helped secure $3 million to tow the Iowa from Rhode Island to the Bay Area in 2001 in hopes of making touristy Fisherman’s Wharf its new home.

But city supervisors voted 8-3 last month to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military’s stance on gays, among other things.

"If I was going to commit any kind of money in recognition of war, then it should be toward peace, given what our war is in Iraq right now," Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said.

Feinstein called it a "very petty decision."

"This isn’t the San Francisco that I’ve known and loved and grew up in and was born in," Feinstein said.

San Francisco’s maritime museum already has one military vessel - the USS Pampanito, an attack submarine that sank six Japanese ships during World War II and has about 110,000 visitors a year.

MORE: Ross Mirkarimi, the supervisor quoted above, is a gun-toting gun-grabber (yes, there are such things) who takes his lessons in Constitutional Law from Michael Moore films:

“Supervisor-elect Ross Mirkarimi, who himself owns two handguns because of his job as an investigator in the district attorney's office, said he supported the ordinance.

"How many more Michael Moore films does it take to tell us that the Second Amendment is absolutely archaic, and other nations do it better than we do?" said Mirkarimi, who plans to donate or sell his own guns. "We should absolutely go forward with it despite the constitutional challenges."

MORE: Considering the title of this post, it occurred to me that the polite thing to do would be to at least provide a link to San Francisco's secessionist movement.

UPDATE (08/23/05): August 20, 2005 seems destined go be a date which will live in political infamy, as many Republicans are on record as agreeing with Dianne Feinstein. Writing for GOP Bloggers, Jason Smith (in a piece called "Mark this date: I Agree With Diane Feinstein!") supplies this list of how San Francisco supervisors voted:

Tell them what you think:

Supported the Permanent Berthing of the U.S.S. Iowa as a Museum at the Port of San Francisco: