HellOnWater.com is a social networking site where members of the military with maritime experience can share videos, photos, and comments about their on-the-water experiences.

So, how does this work? First you sign-up for an account. Then you login to your account to post videos, photos, and comments. The interface is intuitive so you’ll quickly get the hang of it.

Hellonwater.com has no rules, other than asking you to be sure about the copyright status of what you post. That’s it. This is your space, so you can do whatever you want. The group of members will direct you through comments and a general understanding of what’s appropriate will develop.

Our SEAL advisor suggested a blog thread for frogmen and their friends and family, so this is it.

The two retired RECON Marines who helped us develop this site insisted on a place just for Marines, this is it.

Beginning early next year, U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning.

These Pakistan-centric operations will mark a shift for the U.S. military and for U.S. Pakistan relations. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the U.S. used Pakistani bases to stage movements into Afghanistan. Yet once the U.S. deposed the Taliban government and established its main operating base at Bagram, north of Kabul, U.S. forces left Pakistan almost entirely. Since then, Pakistan has restricted U.S. involvement in cross-border military operations as well as paramilitary operations on its soil.

But the Pentagon has been frustrated by the inability of Pakistani national forces to control the borders or the frontier area. And Pakistan’s political instability has heightened U.S. concern about Islamic extremists there.

According to Pentagon sources, reaching a different agreement with Pakistan became a priority for the new head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, Adm. Eric T. Olson. Olson visited Pakistan in August, November and again this month, meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman Gen. Tariq Majid and Lt. Gen. Muhammad Masood Aslam, commander of the military and paramilitary troops in northwest Pakistan. Olson also visited the headquarters of the Frontier Corps, a separate paramilitary force recruited from Pakistan’s border tribes.

Now, a new agreement, reported when it was still being negotiated last month, has been finalized. And the first U.S. personnel could be on the ground in Pakistan by early in the new year, according to Pentagon sources.

U.S. Central Command Commander Adm. William Fallon alluded to the agreement and spoke approvingly of Pakistan’s recent counterterrorism efforts in an interview with Voice of America last week.

“What we’ve seen in the last several months is more of a willingness to use their regular army units,” along the Afghan border, Fallon said. “And this is where, I think, we can help a lot from the U.S. in providing the kind of training and assistance and mentoring based on our experience with insurgencies recently and with the terrorist problem in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we share a lot with them, and we’ll look forward to doing that.”

If Pakistan actually follows through, perhaps 2008 will be a better year.

In fact, according to Saudi daily Al Watan, US Special forces based in Djibouti have been instructed to look for Al Qaeda terrorists in the south of Somalia. Among them the most sought after terrorist is Al Qaeda chief in East Africa Abdallah Fadul, the mastermind behind the two 1998 bombings against US embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salam and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. His two main lieutenants, a Sudanese and a Kenyan, are also actively chased.