The AM Forum

April 12, 2009 3:22 PM

A senior US official tells me that President Barack Obama approved a recommendation by Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen to dispatch special forces to the US scene on Friday.

These special forces were authorized to take action "in extremis" against the Somali pirates holding Maersk Captain Richard Phillips, 53, hostage on a motorized lifeboat off the coast of Somalia.

A senior official tells me that when the fourth Somali pirate was on the Bainbridge ship, Phillips moved to side of the lifeboat to relieve himself.

At that point, U.S. special forces saw their opportunity and took other three pirates out.

Captain Phillips is now safe aboard a U.S. vessel.

It's "going to make a great movie," a U.S. official adds.

--George Stephanopoulos


By Stephanie McCrummen and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 12, 2009; 4:11 PM

Mombasa, Kenya, April 12 -- An American captain being held by Somali pirates was freed unharmed Sunday in an operation carried out by U.S. Navy Seals, U.S. military officials said. Three of the pirates were killed and the fourth was captured.

The captain, Richard Phillips, who had been held in a lifeboat adrift in the Indian Ocean since Wednesday, was initially taken aboard the Norfolk, Va.-based guided missile destroyer USS Bainbridge. He was later flown to the USS Boxer, where he received medical attention and phoned his family. The operation took place at 7:19 p.m. local time, the Navy said.

He is "resting comfortably," said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

"This was an incredible team effort, and I am extremely proud of the tireless efforts of all the men and women who made this rescue possible" said Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. "The actions of Capt. Phillips and the civilian mariners of Maersk-Alabama were heroic. They fought back to regain control of their ship, and Capt. Phillips selflessly put his life in the hands of these armed criminals in order to protect his crew."

At the White House, President Obama released a statement saying he was "very pleased" that Phillips had been rescued and calling Phillips "a model for all Americans."

--------------------------------------

I'm proud of the nastiest of our nastiest...

We FINALLY did something!!
OK now we have to give some revival vitamins to Steven Segall

Fred

Just exactly the way I hoped it would go down.
Keith

This IS a great outcome,--Am really proud as I do have a nephew who is a Navy Seal,
and secondly Capt. Phillips lives just up the road from me, (about 2 miles) in a small
neighboring town of Underhill Center, Vermont.
This is a great Easter gift for his family.

                                       73, K1MVP                                               

Piracy on the high seas should always be dealt with in this way.
No trial, save the public the cost, and end it quick.

This is not the first time we've been bothered by the savages in that area, and it likely won't be the last.
Unfortunately, there is a long history of piracy, ransoms, even slavery to the American and European crews.
This is a lesson Jefferson taught the Barbary pirates, hence the "shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Corp hymn.
It is apparently a lesson they need to be taught once again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirate
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to negotiate with Tripoli's envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman . Upon inquiring "concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury", the ambassador replied:
"It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once."


God bless these true American heros, and the brave captain!  ;)

What took so long? Those clowns should have been dead long ago. Better late than never.

Bruce makes a good point. Taking out these few does not solve the problem. There are many more where those came from. Gotta hit the shores.

The first American-flagged ship to be taken by pirates in 200 years. I guess they forgot why they shouldn't do that.

http://www.cargolaw.com/2009nightmare_maersk.alaba.html

scroll down.

Huz, I think that was the first clean shot they had at all three idiots. The only way to guarantee a safe return of the American. A fourth idiot gave up. I heard the life boat was in toe. I bet the rope was slowly getting shorter to get a better range.

Yup, time to drag out the old B52s. The problem is the rest of the candy ass world would prefer to pay ransom.

I figured the Seals would take them from below. Maybe the swim in the open sea was too far/dangerous.

Glad they zapped them. Now let's get the rest.

Tom Vu recommendation:  All vulnerable boats need impassable 10kv wire grids installed on the sides of hull.

When out in open sea, any pirate-fags try to climb aboard meet 79 virgins - instantly. 

T

Why don't those ships carry defensive weapons to protect themselves in what is known to be highly treacherous waters?  A '45 or two on board or even a 22 ga. hunting rifle would have been enough.  No huge arsenal would have been necessary.

A handful of ragtag pirates in a lifeboat with a couple of automatic rifles and RPG's can take a huge cargo ship?  They should have been blown away the moment they tried forcefully to board the  ship.  The pirate crew in that dinky little boat would have been sitting ducks to anyone willing to challenge them.  Navy Seals and Special Forces shouldn't have been necessary.

Mainly insurance rates and the harbor/port laws of various countries.

No-one would have had to know the weapons were there unless they actually had to use them.  I don't think authorities at ports of call are allowed to board and search a foreign flagged vessel without permission from the country where the ship is registered, since the ship is considered foreign soil, much like foreign embassies.

You want a weapon with more range than the typical arms used by these clowns.  You also want something that will punch a hole in the hull to sink the boat to feed the large fish.

I could be wrong, but I think the lifeboat is what they escaped in, not what they used to board.  These pirates have a fleet of stolen ships to use for boarding. In fact they were attempting to do a search and "rescue" operation with these craft when our military scared them off.

Given the RPG has an effective range of 900 meters, (more or less) and that you'd be targeting a small fast moving boat (sport power boat) or perhaps something like a trawler, you'd need a couple of 0.50 cals mounted on the super structure (minimum) as well as a standing watch and trained crewmen.

The tactical problem of defending a large ship with limited weapons and relatively untrained personnel would require a military team on board. There are huge blind spots on large vessels Dead zones where weapons coverage is either limited or nonexistent.

All of those factors plus the afore mentioned laws and regs of different ports of call make arming merchies tough. 

Maybe convoys with armed escorts would be a better short term solution, of course the pirates could avoid engauging the harder targets and wait until something soft and juicy shows up.

Better to catch the pirates on the ground.  But good luck with that, these guys have brought in over 100 million USD to an impovershed 3rd world country. The indiginous population thinks they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, so you would not only have to fight the pirate force, but a wholly supportive civilian population ready to help and replace them.
 You'd need to erode their popular support to the point they would have no place to call home (no replacements, resupply or support). Then blast them in the open ocean.

No one is going to be giving the somalies any financial aid or industry to get their economy going any time soon, so the whole pirate thing is hear to stay, until either the combined Navies get them, or something else changes.

I'd settle for them avoiding any ship flying Old Glory from the mast.

Excellent insight, Ed.

Actually, they can and do for inspection purposes. International law prohibits the carrying of arms other than war ships too, IIRC. Some companies have reportedly gone to carrying security teams, but have to get them onboard after the ship has left port and offboard before they enter, no doubt for the same reasons.

Some of the reports seem to indicate that the president gave the order, but all indications are that the okay was given last week to take action if the captain's life appeared at risk. Apparently when he was taking a whiz, one of the pirates had a gun pointed at his back and the others all made themselves visible to the extent needed for a clean shot. Simple definition of 'at risk' was fulfilled when they took him hostage.


Yep, they used a faster skiff offloaded by a mother ship, but the skiff sank last week. Access is easy as these cargo ships leave a ladder hanging overboard at all times, including while underway. They used the ship's lifeboat to make their escape, but it crapped out shortly after launching and there they sat. The Navy boat was supposedly towing them to safer waters (or keeping them at a close range).

I got a kick outta the one the crew took prisoner after sticking an ice pick through his hand. Run whatcha brung! :)

Fly Old Glory and make sure you know what happens when you screw with Old Glory.
The old B52 works for me. At 50,000 feet raining 500 pounders. We don't have time to police another race of subhumans. Excessive force trains even the most stupid very well.

An interesting side story. The Arleigh Burke-Class Destroyer Bainbridge (DDG 96), at the center of this rescue, is named after Commodore William Bainbridge. See the story for more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bainbridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bainbridge)

You know if some country with say satellites in orbit could be looking for the infrared signatures of  small boats leaving larger ships and going towards container ships operating on the high seas. And said small boats and the mother ships that launched them just ceased to exist with no other information posted to the public.....
Don't you suppose that it would be a little more difficult to find willing Muslims to take their places? They would probably soon run out of virgins also.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
I don't want to hear a thing about it on the Clinton News Network.
Keith
WA1HZK

The delay between the satellite imagery and a strike of sufficient strenght and organization would make it tough to execute.  Maybe they'll get a budget though, now that they boarded a US Ship.

As far as finding other willing subjects, as long as the money is there, volunteers will be also... Piracy is, and always has been about the Cash!  or Booty!

 

 ;D ;D :D

Further, it would be impossible to cover all the ships at sea with the sats. Real time sat imagery and retasking as shown in the movie "Enemy of the State" is pure fantasy.

....by miles in short order of minutes like they did in that movie, physically impossible.

Anyone remember the part when the Gov was monitoring comms on a ham rig tuned to the 40m band?

Gather the inteligence.
Find the home port of some pirates. Don't mater if u get 'em all.
Give a 20 minute warning by dropping leaflets from the air.
Saturate the area with cluster bomb units.
Repeat as necessary.

As in a previous post, its all about the money.

klc
 

Intelligence?  You mean like all them WMD's in Iraq?  Seems like military intelligence is an oxymoron.

Aye, there's only two kinds of men what wears earrings and I don't see no pirate ships round here! AARRGHH!

Within one inch at 100 yards.

Incredible.

From a moving ship, to a bobbing lifeboat.  That is Some Shot!

If, in fact, that's how it actually went down. I rather doubt it went down the way it's being presented in the news. Lots of strutting and preening going on and it sounds just a little too Hollywood to be real.

As for intelligence, sometimes it's right, sometimes it's not. Intelligence is trying to learn things others don't want us to know. By definition it isn't usually going to get all the info all the time. Why would anyone think it would?

The WMDs are a bad example since the entire world, even the UN, thought Iraq had WMDs. And, in fact, they did, since poison gas killed thousands in previous years. Hollywood and the news media want us to think you can push a button and out comes 100% correct intelligence, every time. The news weenies ignore the fact that they get it wrong more often than does intelligence, even though their job in getting it correct is far easier.

It's crazy that I can legally carry more weaponry in a bass boat than a multi million dollar ship can carry in international waters.

If'n it was me, I'd opt for the "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" philosophy, and stock a couple of deer rifles and a couple 12 gauges. Besides, if you turn some would be Blackbeards into shark chum, who's to know?

John K5MO

But in almost any country, a private bank, factory or warehouse can hire its own armed security guards to protect whatever is inside.  Since a cargo ship is essentially a floating warehouse, why can't the shipping company arm its own team of security guards?  There is a company called Blackwater whose speciality is providing that kind of service.

A couple of Bofors 40 mm AA guns from WWII hidden on a few ships would really reach out and blow most of those boats in half.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bofors_firing_USS_Hornet.jpg

Besides, they're loads of fun and look great!

I don't care.  For all the money and technology this big country spends on the CIA, IMHO, they aught to be able to get it right, otherwise, it's money down the toilet. (Not to even mention the billions spent on a war predicated on false information.)

Gathering intel is always tough, and you never know if you were right until you've acted on it, or not (Pear Habor?).
I remember pouring over reams of intel data to brief my guys, and never knowing really how much was worth the effort, but affraid to not put it out since if it was real, they'd need to know.

The armchair generals always know though... right off of CNN, then ask "how come you guys didn't see that coming??"
as if it was soooo easy to find out something some else wants desperately kept secret.

Blackwater et al.  =  Mercenaries  and you might get what you pay for.

As for the bofors, they are cool, but a 20mm Oerlikon is also a nice choice still produced and used too.

Although I always thought the quad .50 was the coolest thing, but I love the M2 Browning HB.

Of course, simply not leaving your boarding ladder deployed 24/7 might help.  It'd be tough to chuck a grapple and scale the 40-50ft shear steel walls of a ship under way, not to mention simply dropping heavy things ont op of the climbers and their boat. (old school that, very old school).

Well, at least you aren't bitter, John.

Back on topic, another US ship was attacked by pirates today. This saga is not over. Like one of the crew members of the Maersk Alabama  said at the new conference, "Wake up!"

Fr Ed: As for the bofors, they are cool, but a 20mm Oerlikon is also a nice choice still produced and used too.

Yeah baby.

(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7726/800pxhmascastlemainegun.jpg)

It's only logical that we'd like classic/old buzzard guns too!

Concerning real time limits of satellites, I see the Navy used RPV's in the lastest intel foray.  Some of those are way cool; some of the earlier models were about as close to model airplanes as we knew them as the military ever got.  Even had wood props... 
Of course the current models are light-years ahead of their ancestors.

Anyhoo., it takes a lot of money and will-power to maintain a fleet in the horn of Africa... longer shore line than east or west coastal US.  With our flighty, current congress and upwards exec. branch, big, long-term expenditure committment is about as vapourous as the rest of the trillion dollar vapourware attempts to control the uncontrollable.

I see the latest intended US freighter victim was shot at, grenaded.. and just kept on steamin.'    Should've run over the nearest slow boat for emphasis while they were at it. 

On a modern freighter, even an RPG would be relatively ineffective, Unless they were able to take out the entire bridge crew, and all equipment, which while possible is probably a one-in-a-million shot.

Since the typical RPG is an armor peircing round (they do have other warheads, but not that common), it'd punch a hole through the hull, and unless the compartment behind that was holding something explosive, flamable or critical equipment, then probably not much more that a leaky boat,which I would think that a trained crew could deal with.

I doubt that rounds from any of the small arms they carry would penetrate the hull. Though again they could shoot up the bridge and superstructure and keep the crews mobility down.

Still I'd have to give the advantage to the freighter as long as the pirates can't get aboard.

Remember the cruise ship captian who's response was to move the passengers to inboard cabins, go to full speed, and keep the ship moving erraticaly.
He eventually out ran the small boats, and came close to bumping them (I think). 

I imagine a freighter could do the same, even though they are a lot slower than a cruise ship.

"Q" ships  set up with some quick launch, well armed bording parties...

grab a few of the rats, find out where they live, and go after the families of the pirates....   its not nice, and probably  'illegal', but it may be helpful...

Peace

klc

actually the Q-ship idea is Great!!  get a couple old freighters/tankers armed to the teeth, filled with balsa wood and when the pirates sneak up on the soft target... blammo!  you wouldn't need to go hunt them down on land, eventually the population would be radically reduced.

Any good plan for peace involves a certain amount of cleansing by fire.

A buddy of mine in the Navy posted this on Facebook last night.

He forgot... and for no extra charge!

Funny how those reports of the skipper getting up to relieve himself to create that magic moment vanished from the media.

I still do not understand how it really happened.

The most recent graphics show an xray view inside the lifeboat of a guy with a gun to his head and two guys sticking there heads out of hatches.

How did they target the guy with the gun if he was inside the raft?

Or how did the skipper take a pee if he was "tied up"?

They also claim it was pointing the gun at the skipper that prompted the shoot.  Never mind they were telling us for days that they were pointing guns at him.

And then, ponder the IQ of these guys who would agree to be "towed to calmer water" by a warship with a crew eager to eat them for lunch.

They are 30 miles from land so where is this calmer water?  Can't you just see the guy on the winch slowly winding up the tow line?

You must agree that the mighty Seals got some help from God when the brains were passed out.

js

You guys forget who you are dealing with. Find the town where 100 generations of stupidity thrive on this shit and let the Air Force dig a pit with a dozen or so B52s raining 500 pounders right down the main drag.
Then make sure anyone left knows this is what you get when you screw with the USA. But then I would have nuked tora bora.

We can't do that anymore. Too many people get all up in arms about us dumping all this money into a sandpit. They complain that we're spending all this money on a poor desert nation instead of spending it here, and that we're...

...shoe fits a little different on the other foot now, doesn't it?

No arguing that the planet is a better place without Saddam Hussein, but why did it have to essentially be only American lives and money spent to  get rid of him, while the entire world reaps the benefits of his absence?

Every country, including USA, France and Russia, that has had ships attacked, should declare these attacks an act of war, and join together to create a task force to impose a total naval blockade on Somalia, with each participating nation equally sharing the task of enforcing it.  Put it on notice that any Somali vessel at sea would be blasted to oblivion on sight.  No reason to blow away the poverty-stricken wretches on land, the majority of whom had nothing to do with the piracy (and are probably not even aware that it exists), but who are only trying to survive while imprisoned inside that hell-hole.

There are no known oil reserves in Somalia.

Bingo!

Historically no one has given a rats a$$ about what happens in Africa.  Becaue like you say, there are no oil reserves there. There some other natural resources, but not enough for anyone to care about that continent.
Once the european colonies were disolved, it was business as usual for the locals. (Just like the Russian departure of the balkans).

The Somalies went to piracy because it was an industry that was open to them.  If you kill this crop of pirates, you only generate a more adebt group in the next generation.  It is the same result with terrorists(the primary difference is pirates operate for cash, terrorists for Ideals). Not that each group should be tolerated to exist.

So you have two options left:  Genocidal actions that destroy the entire populations that generate these groups or  
fight the existing groups, while at the same time destroying their reasons for existance.   

Think of it as the difference between curing cancer (you still can get it, and it may still kill/hurt you) or finding a vaccine (you'll never get it ever) the first option works, but there will still be casualties.

Read Sun Tzu. (sp?)

There are plenty of oil reserves in Africa. Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda, to name a few have oil. China is doing extensive oil exploration in Kenya.

Do not insult our Allies like Britain, Australia, Poland, etc, by falsely claiming only American lives have been lost. Something like 40 countries have or had troops in Afghanistan. Similar numbers were/are in Iraq. Even Albania sent troops!

About 70 miles from where I live is a city called Lewiston.

Until a few years ago, its people were largely of Acadian descent. Spoke French, them. Now there's a huge Somali population.

I got the chance to talk with some of these people when I worked at Idexx.

To listen to these people talk, there's no such thing as a Somali government. The country is in complete anarchy. The only form of government is from the various tribes, and they're all at war with each other.

If there were a government in place, and some semblance of order, the piracy problem would wane pretty quickly.

This will happen. Out of chaos, some order eventually is established. The question is what form that order takes.

The chaos in Afghanistan eventually gave rise to the Taliban. Ruthless pricks though they were, they were able to exert control over more of Afghanistan than most governments and occupying forces before them could, and one could say more than the current government there can.

Now that a bunch of armed Somalis have called the recent rescue an act of war, we're stuck with it. We didn't break it, but now the rest of the world is going to consider us the owners of the problem. If we get the bad guys out and do nothing more, it will be exactly like us arming the Afghanis to push out the Russians, then leaving once the Russians are gone. We're still paying for that one.

Unfortunately, with the current mindset here at home, it's impossible to win a war. There are too many people who claim defeat before the first shots are even fired. Being anti-war is "in", so everyone's doing it. It's what their neighbors are doing, after all, and it's what schools and the media tell them to beleive in.

We've nuetered ourselves socially, leaving us too impotent to actually deal with situations like this. All we can do is rescue the hostages, and hope.

Tom, Don't sell us short. Take the news of last Sunday as a taste of what happens when we get pissed off.

Aside (maybe) from the people of Iraq, can you spell out the "benefits" that the entire world reaps from his absence?  Aside from Israel, (the driving force behind the invasion), I can't think of a single benefit to any other country.  Another aside, of course, is the "military industrial complex" of all countries who participate.

Perhaps, "the entire world" did not have such a clear view of those "mushroom clouds. WDM" and other such war mongering hype.

>Every country, including USA, France and Russia, that has had ships attacked, should declare these attacks an act of war....

And then what?  It's like declaring murder a crime.

The solution is arming the crew not sending the world's navies out on an impossible boondogle.

Just picture some punk climbing up a grapling rope on the side of a large ship.  He is a sitting duck.  How dangerous can he be until his feet are on the deck?

Give the skipper a .45 auto or even a knife to cut the rope and the "pirates" are history.

The fact that unions, crews and the populace are willing to accept the fact that arming the crew would drive up insurance rates, means the problem will never be solved.  Allowing the management to offer up the crew to keep insurance rates down is the root of the problem.

It is the Ship of State that is floundering, not the merchant ships that get what they deserve.

Where are the unions when they could actually do something useful?

js

Well they have government air marshalls - why not specially trained government sea marshalls?  The whole program would probably be way cheaper than sending even one aircraft carrier.  Like air marshalls, they don't even have to be on all the ships, just enough to be a deterrent once the word got out. 

Unions have NOTHING to do with this.

The problem seems to be that many countries have laws concerning firearms in their territory.

For example, once a ship crosses the 12-mile limit, they are subject to local laws. Consider a foreign freighter arriving on an east coast US port where everyone is armed to the teeth. Once within 12 miles, they are subject to the local laws of New York state, or wherever. I guarantee you they'd have a problem with civilians holding grenades, automatic rifles and etc. in the local harbors.

Other countries have even stricter regulations.

Don't blame the maritime unions (as screwed up as they may be).

Here...Go out on a boat loaded with grenades, rocket propelled grenades and machine guns. Doesn't have to be a sea-going freighter, a 30-foot cruiser is fine.  Cross the 12-mile boundary and into any major US port. Declare your firearms to customs. You're busted, dude.

Don't mess with the French Navy either, apparently.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-04-10-france-pirates-sailboat_N.htm

One of the guys I work with was on that boat three weeks after the release.

Jack just trolled you Bill! Get that hook out of your mouth before it digs in any deeper.  ;D

I'm not selling us short, Frank. That pic I posted came to me from a sailor with sniper training. I know what these guys can do. I've no doubt he could kill me from twelve wavelenths away if I were on 1885 kHz and he had his .50 cal.

Don't forget, those bullets and RPGs those pirates using against passing ships is only leftovers from the ones they use on each other. They won't be easily impressed by being bombed. Happens all the time in their lives. More often than holidays. That's why so many fled here.

Yes, militarily we can flatten them overnight. Million Dollar Question: then what?

These attacks are not happening 12 miles off shore.

>Consider a foreign freighter arriving on an east coast US port where everyone is armed to the teeth.

A .45 and a hunting knife is armed to the teeth?

>Don't blame the maritime unions (as screwed up as they may be).

I am not blaming them but it does seem that they are in a position to apply a bit of pressure.  Unions disrupt businesses for reasons a lot less serious than the risk of members being taken hostage.

If the crews refused to board the ship unless the skipper had a gun, he would have a gun in a wink.

>Here...Go out on a boat loaded with grenades, rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.

You are hyperventilating.  I said a .45 and a knife.

js

Of course they're not!

The problem is what happens when a civilian ship carrying arms crosses into a nation's territorial waters. Are they supposed to pitch the arms into the sea before entering a port?

A personal observation..I once did radar repair on commercial ships..Sometimes, the captain and crews on freighters are not very nice people at all.. Folks that I would not want armed when docked in a place like Long Beach. You never met the Captain Pissgums that I did.

Oh, but some are.

The Cole was in port in Yemen when it was bombed. The issue in that case was the rules of engagement. They weren't allowed to fire on encroaching vessels, so one blew up next to them.

It's not just a question of who we arm. If a freighter from another country shoots holes in what turns out to be a perfectly peaceful small craft, that could get really nasty, really quick.

I'm all for protecting the merchant marines, but I'd hate to put them in a position where they could accidentally start a war.

The freighters don't need to carry a huge arsenal.  Just a few personal small arms would do the trick.  Even a .22 would stop someone trying to climb up a ladder to board a ship.  Hell, a wasp was enough to abort my ladder climb once when I was painting my house, and I narrowly escaped serious injury.  A bow and arrow should be sufficient if someone was waiting for them from a  safe vantage point when they reached the top.  What about electrified razor wire stretched round the perimeter of the deck.

Evidently sometimes the pirates carry their own ladder. It was recently in the news that one attempt was aborted when their ladder turned out to be a wee bit too short. Darwin Award candidate.

I can't believe we need rocket science to make a huge tanker or cargo ship invulnerable to attack by a ragtag gang of thugs in a tiny fishing vessel or motorboat.

But OTOH, a gang of 19, armed with nothing more than box cutters and fake bombs, were able to launch what historians may someday look back on as one of the earrly battles of WW3.

You don't think about it, but you *don't* want to arm the unhappy crews on some of those 4th World flagged ships..It's call mutiny on the high seas. I believe those ship captains would rather face the small risk of piracy than the greater risk of arming their own crews! Even one armed and intoxicated whackazoid could be a real problem. Even today, some of those foreign crew members are the scum of the earth.

..Especially on a ship loaded with gasoline, ammonium nitrate fertilizer or whatever.

Might be different situation on US flagged merchants, but that's what it is.

bomb...then what.....screws with us or they get it again.
Kind of like getting spanked when you are a kid

We can't do that. We must try to understand them. Then we must stop calling them pirates. That's a word steeped in negative stereotypes that serves only to widen the gulf between us. We should hold talks with them with no preconditions. A new era in foreign policy is needed. The old warmongering must cease.

Yes, after all, it's our fault they didn't have a happy childhood.  Besides, the maritime-law-challenged are simply seeking a more equitable income redistribution to make their world a better place.

We just did HUZ
We understand thay may need additional spankings
No war required problem addressed at the source (3 rounds cheap)
Next

I'm wondering what artillery the Seals used on the three pirates.

.50 cal Barrett sniper guns would be my guess.

Nope. Those guys had rights and we violated them. We can't go around acting like the world's policemen. Bring the troops home. War is not the answer. This is all about oil. They don't want any oil tankers hijacked. Same crap different day. The warmongering must stop. Do it for the children.

You are confusing a terrorist action with piracy for ransom.

When a small boat in a sort of friendly port approaches a warship, it's intentions are anything buy obvious.

I tied my ski boat up to a nuke sub when I lived in Grotton.

On the other hand, when cruising in pirate infested waters and a typical "pirate ship" pulls up and a grappling hook lands on the deck, the intentions are not very ambiguous, are they? 

Are those lobsters in his hands or an AK47?

Do they have to fly the "Jolly Roger" to justify "discouraging" them from boarding?

js

I wish I could take credit for this one:


"The way we see piracy these days is certainly not romantic: no swashbuckling going on now. Now it's more like the guys who wash your windows when you get out of the Lincoln tunnel in New York city. They want a lot of money for a little bit of work. A similar occupation would be an attorney; A whole lot of money for a little bit of work. So the way I see it, the pirates in Somalia should be called, "East African Attorneys." Has a nice ring to it."

You say that as though holding people hostage at gunpoint until your demands are met is something other than a terrorist action. Well, you're completely wrong about that. Sorry, Jack.


You speak like someone who has spent a lot of time on Navy destroyers in foreign ports in the last ten years. Why don't you share that experience with us? Otherwise, I'll continue to get my information from people who have.

To this day, if a military ship is in a foreign port, and some other unidentified vessel floats up alongside, the military vessel can only give verbal warnings and request the unidentified vessel to back away. They can't back those requests up with anything, not even if the threat is tangible and obvious. All they can do is take cover until they're back in international waters, unless they have clearance from pretty high up the ladder.

Those are the rules of engagement. We've handcuffed our military into sitting there peacefully while people try to kill them. Why give the merchant marines more authority to fire on someone than our military has? That makes no sense at all.


Only because they let you. So what? If they didn't want your ski boat there, you wouldn't have been tying it there, and you know it. That's Apples and Dump Trucks. Give me a break.


By that time, it's too late; you don't have a shot at them anymore. A little thing called "the hull" blocks your shot.


I don't know, Jack; I wasn't there any more than you were.

Using your Cole logic, all they need to do is keep the weapons hidden until they're right alongside, because then "their intentions are anything but obvious". Once they're alongside, you have no clear shot at them. Your argument defeats itself.


Why don't you ask the people who are responsible for crafting the rules of engagement? It's tons more productive and sensible than fencing with me about it.

You're talking about "what should". I'm telling you what is. Take it up with the Navy, Jack. I don't write the policies, so go wave it at someone else.

If it's so damn easy to fix as you think it is, piracy wouldn't be something that has gone on as long as there have been ocean-going vessels. That's a fact you can take to the bank.

You show me someone with an "easy" solution, and I'll show you someone who didn't put much thought into the actual problem.

after a whole little thought "Shoot To Kill"

Or keep a pot of boiling oil on the deck

Admit it, Frank: if the previous aministration were still in power, you'd be hell-bent against using any military force anywhere for any reason whatsoever, just like you have been for the last eight years.

Now, suddenly, you think we'll automatically win every skirmish we engage in using the exact same soldiers, sailors, and weapons we've been using right along? Not just a little blinded by our hatred of one man, are we?

That is bull crap. I have no problem with this country defending itself and spent most of my working life making sure the hardware was the best.
I guess the last clown would use this as a reason to invade Poland.

Thank you. You just proved my point.

Lotsa armchair warriors argue about how to do a job they don't have to do...  or couldn't do.

Defending a ship by attempting to shoot down on a man climbing up a rope along your hull means that your head, and most of your torso is exposed to enemy fire since any of the boarders can spray an area target with an AK-47, it only takes one bullet to kill the defender who's exposed.  It only takes a few to keep the defender pinned down behind the rail, assuming the rail is substantial enough to stop the rounds.  It always makes me a bit angry to hear folks talk about how they would do this or that, when they have never been under fire.   

Killing the three pirates made everyone feel better (well except the pirates possibly) but really did nothing to stop or deter the whole operation. Those Seals did a great job, quick, clean and well done, but their job was to get that captain away from the guys that had him, not end an entire large scale operation.  I would bet that there was probably 10 new volunteers for each one of those that were shot.  Remember that to the population they support, THEY were the heros there.
So we're back to the option of large scale military strikes against civilian population centers, which the general american public would not stand for, especally after CNN and Co started publishing pics of mutilated children hit by US ordinance (or the local clan war ordinance, accuracy in reporting isn't a priority with the media of late). 

So the somalis have no reason to fear us, as they will accept some casualties as the cost of diong business, and we will not do what we need to to end the operations. (niether militarily nor through humanitarian actionsm and both would be required to really end it).  What would end the pirate operation?  Go in there like the Mafia. Make them an offer they couldn't refuse, quit operations, and we will put you to work so you can earn a decent living, or we'll kill you. Period. 
 It's been my experience that MOST people that have the ability to put provide for themselves through peacefull means will.  Some won't though,  so you've got to kill them eventually.  Especially now that all the enemy combatants are protected by the Constitution I guess that means take no prisonersm err I mean no one surrenders. ::)

Maybe the UN will "strongly protest" the actions of the pirates, and put sanctions against the somalis... Like anyone trades with them anyway.

I'm not for putting our troops on the ground in any of these rat holes but have no problem spanking bad guys from the air or by remote control.
They take unarmed ships and we shoot at them so they can't shoot back sounds like a fair game to me.
Beats having 10,000 Americans limping around with missing legs or worse yet 6 feet under.

Sure kill innocent people from afar. That's noble. I can't see killing anyone for big shipping. There's clearly a money connection here. Bring the B52s home. They should never had left this country in the first place. Outside of the USA, they are tool of imperialism.

I know that you mean well with that Ed, but it was that same thinking that almost lost Europe to the Nazis in the 1940s. Some folks, or in this case, governments, are just evil, and need to be destroyed.
The jackboot of Nazism was defeated, but the jackboot of Islam is marching across the world.

As for Somalia, and much of Africa for that matter, those folks can't provide for themselves for one reason, they have a value system that oppresses human liberty and freedom. Liberty is a right given by the Almighty God, it is the rule of evil men and evil institutions which takes that God given right away.

Poor nations do things to keep themselves poor, which is why throwing money at the problem is simply a waste. Trillions have already been spent in Africa, and that country is as backwards today was it was 50 years ago. In fact, it could be strongly argued, that Africa was actually better off UNDER colonial rule than it is today.

The sad fact is that liberty and personal responsibility are advanced concepts, and many in the world simply are not cognitively able to grasp and implement such. It is not our job to save the world, it is our job to preserve, protect and defend the United States.

Our Founding Fathers warned us to avoid foreign "entanglements", and every time we've not followed those words, our country has suffered for it. Unlike Europe in the 1940s, the fate of Somalia has nothing to do with the United States, and we have no business solving problems the Somalis must solve for themselves.

As for those evil men who chose to steal human beings as a source of income, they got exactly what they deserved. But they have an even bigger surprise awaiting them in the afterlife.

But we seem to have a collective learning disability.  Following the VietNam debacle, we managed to get ourselves mired in Iraq.
Agreed, but that does not extend to tolerating piracy against our own ships on the high seas.

You mean to say they won't be getting their fourteen virgins as promised?

Responding to all this point by point would turn into a dissertation  on reading comprehension.

I will respond to just two of your points.

A.  Bringing the Cole into this discussion was a red herring and I should not have risen to the bait, so to speak.
That is a military problem related to official rules of engagement which are irrelevant to the pirate situation.

B.  These pirates do not suddenly appear like the Terminator on deck, in the dead of night.

They chase after their prey in broad daylight.  The prey try to out run and out maneuver the pirates using tactics that don't work very well but are about all the management is willing to expend to get rid of them.

The successful pirates eventually pull along side the ship and start haggling with the crew and eventually board the ship with primitive tools like grappling hooks and ropes.  The crew stands around like a bunch of sheep heading for the butcher and get what such behavior deserves.

Lately, they are trying a new gambit of locking themselves up in the engine room to buy some time but this is rather futile as they essentially turn the ship over to the pirates.

It does not take a rocket scientist or a bunch of Navy Seals to visualize the obvious advantage the crew would have if they had a few simple weapons to prevent boarding.  And, I am speaking of American crews of American ships.  The rest of the world can and should solve their own problems.  As a point of interest, I believe these very few aid ships are the only ships flying US flags anyway so it's not a big problem for us.

I am starting to sound like a broken record so this will be my last.

js

I was responding to the assertion that American-flagged ships only get attacked in the high seas. That's not a red herring, just an annoying fact.

Rules of engagement would have to be crafted for the merchant marines, too. That's the other reason I mentioned the Cole. Just giving them guns doesn't solve anything by itself, you need to decide who can shoot who, when. Yes, even on the open seas. Don't ask "why", the answer is "for the same reason the Navy has rules of engagement".


Again with the eyewitness testimony, Jack? Let me reiterate: you weren't there. You have no earthly clue what the crew does in those situations; and if you're just going to talk trash about them to make your argument seem more valid, don't bother talking about them at all.


Good idea.

Funny, but those big $ shipping that you decry are moving humanitarian aid (well the US flagged ones are).   Lotsa money there I'm sure.

"If you would have peace, be thou prepared for war."  Is as true today as it was in ancient Rome.  Believing that everyone just wants to get along is lunacy, and deadly in todays world.
 Why do some people in this country fail to understand that there are other people in the world who just want them DEAD. Because they do, period.
These same people love to blame America when we take care of such threats.

I'm sure they also believe that the Iranians are making Uranium for 'peaceful power generation" too.  and that if we just make nice, the other fellows wont shoot us.   Once there is a mushroom cloud over an American city, these same idiots will be screaming for the blood of the people who they prevented from protecting them in the first place. 

That's the sort of academic "Disney-it's-a-small-world" mentality that gets people killed.  Reality is tough, Wolves eat Bambi in real life.  People kill people in real life, because they want to.  Humans are an inherently violent species, that have spent more effort killing ourselves than in any other endevor.  If you think a few friendly words on paper will change a million years of evolution, good luck.   Any of us who survive the coming holocost will try and see you get a decent burial.


Yep, I agree, my following sentance was

I do think however that keeping potential enemies at bay is a neccesary foreign entablement.   I'd rather fight them over there, than in my back yard.  Of course, if we were fighting them over here, I'm sure the peace loving liberal types would be decrying the slaughter of innocent terrorist lives as well.

All this is pointless however.  Our new leadership has already issued a retreat date (a retreat is when you leave the field of battle for any reason other than victory) for Iraq, and it won't be long before the same happens in Afgahnistan I'm sure.  We're empting guantanimo even though there is a high recitivism rate amongs those "poor detainees". 

Why do the liberal factions prefere to see dead americans over dead anyone else??

Once again washington swatts a fly to show that they "Did Something".

Cooler heads might ask why anyone would make such a patently absurd statement.

js
 

I don't decry it Ed. I'm just taking the same flawed line of reasoning (so called) that the antiwar hypocrites did with Iraq - it's all about oil, etc. But now, it's OK to use military force to protect big business. That's why I call them hypocrites. If war is bad, then it's bad. If big business is bad, then it's bad. It can't be bad when one guy is president and not bad when another is. In other words, I'm illustrating how absurd these hypocritical anti-war types really are.

I'm all for big shipping and world-wide trade. And I'm for protecting our interests, where ever they may be. Quoting the no entangling alliances is bogus too. It's a world wide economy, with world-wide trade and world wide travel. Isolationism is not the answer now and has been since the invention of the airplane.

Steve, regrettably, I don't agree with you here.

We were *not* under attack by Saddam when we last went into Iraq and took that government down. Hence the divisive opinions on the war that exist today.

OTOH, we, or a critical allied government *were* under attack when we stopped the invasion of Kuwait in Gulf War 1. We had a treaty to protect Kuwait. A conflict which I believe very few Americans were opposed to. No one thought that conflict was unjustified. President Bush 1 apparently weighed the options and decided not to completely take out Saddam, even though we could have.

Again, the act of piracy on the Alabama is viewed as a direct attack on the USA and its citizens, and hence the support for taking the pirates out militarily.

There are significant differences. In the danger, perceived or otherwise, and our response to same. The necessity for the current war in Iraq was not sold very well to the American people.

hg

You bring up some good points here, Bill; but you're largely talking a matter of perspective, which is kind of what Steve was (and several more of us are) eluding to.


He shot at our military every day between the end of the Gulf War and our forces entering Baghdad. Ask any of the guys who patrolled the (U.N.-imposed) no-fly zones, you were guaranteed to get shot at. Not just anti-aircraft machine guns, either. They had plenty of rockets and missiles they lobbed at us for a full decade.

So, he wasn't exactly sitting back and doing nothing, either.

Everyone forgot that, and the long list of reasons we gave to go in. Instead, they focused on the one reason that turned out to be bogus (that the entire planet also believed to be true) as a reason to claim the whole thing was made up. We're a very myopic society.

That's perception for you.


Very few people were against it, the few that were started the rallying cry of "this is all about oil". They, of course, were exactly right then. It was about oil, but like we've seen in the last couple of years, disruption to the oil supply causes huge upheaval in our lives here. Massive changes in the flow of money took place when the price of oil doubled, jobs were lost, and the other cracks in our foundation were seriously stressed.

So a war about oil isn't as petty as naysayers like to make it sound, unless they want to go back to $4.00/gal gas again. Seemed to me like most of those same people were also the ones who complained the loudest about that, too.

This time, it wasn't all about oil, but that rallying cry continued, and people fell for it. That's particularly odd (and hypocritical), because the orignal Gulf War was far more about oil than the current conflict is, but they all supported that.

Besides, we owed it to the Kurds, in my opinion. We convinced them to rise up against Saddam Hussein, but unlike the Afghanis in the '70s, we didn't arm them. We just sat back and watched by sattellite as they got slaughtered (by the chemical weapons that supposedly didn't exist) in the uprising we encouraged. They've lost more people than we have, and many of the survivors would probably prefer death.


Exactly! The perception is what is screwed up, here. Now that we have a different President, the "mistakes" made in the last conflicts simply won't be "mistakes" anymore! They'll work beautifully now. America went from "we're stretched too thin across the globe" to "we can wipe out this country in a day, let's declare war" almost literally overnight.

This is hypocrisy, plain and simple, brought about by a perspective molded by misinformation, rumors, irresponsible journalism, and in many cases outright lies.

That's what I've been saying, that's what Steve's been saying, and to some extent that's what Ed's been saying (though I think Ed's trying to focus more on "stick to what you know, sunshine").

I'm not so much disagreeing with you as providing a different point of view on the same things, Bill.

We weren't under attack when we went into Yugoslavia. We weren't under attack from Germany in WWII. We weren't under attack by Saddam in Gulf War I. The alliance you speak of lead to numerous UN resolutions - many of which were reason for the recent invasion. Read the Congressional resolution. There were like 19 reasons in it.

There was NO Congressional approval for the recent military action. To use your logic, we should have been taking military action against terrorists since at least the 1970's, since they killed or kidnapped American blew up Embassies, etc - direct attacks on the USA and its citizens. Yet I heard nothing from the anti-war (so called) crowd. Why? American citizens are attacked on a nearly daily basis, somewhere in the world (criminal, narco, etc). Yet no calls for military action. Why?

So, I still see glaring discrepancies and more than a little hypocrisy in those now cheering military action when in the past they were staunchly against it (or so they said).

I resemble that remark.  I was against the Iraq war long before it was a war but not for any of the reasons you cite, more like these reasons:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I

Besides I was extremely skeptical of claims of Al Qaeda in Iraq since those guys hated the government in Iraq and Sadaam Hussein.  He was third on their list after the Saudis and us.

So that's just a cheap shot.  Calling people who were against the Iraq war hypocrites because of a line of reasoning you made up for us which, in fact, had nothing to do with what I was thinking or saying.

No cheap shot. If what I'm saying doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't apply to you. Why would you be upset at remarks not directed at you? I didn't call all those against the Iraq war hypocrites, just those who used flawed reasoning but now are all for military action. It's not about the stance, it's about the reasons/principles (or lack thereof) behind the stance.

That said, and once again, the UN and Congressional resolutions spoke of far more than Al Qaeda in Iraq. To single out that one item, while possibly correct, is a rather narrow plank on which to form the basis of a stance.

BTW, it's good to hear you say Dick Cheney was right.  :o

My head was not cool at the time.... some times it happens.

I get that way because the things I mentioned make it appear to me that the men who died in afganistan and iraq did so for nothing. 

The closing of gitmo, with the associated application of constitutional rights to EPWs, and the soon to follow release of many who gladly will kill americans again and again.

The retreat from the field of battle after so many troops died for that mission to succeed. (which proves that those who "support the troops but not the mission" are so very wrong).

The certainty that the only message we've sent is that any opponent is that he only has to wait it out, and the ADHD american public will hand him a victory (Vietnam took 7 or so years, Irag took 9, Afganistan? we'll see) and that any ally will be left to die when we pull out.   

The final certainty that because of the first three reasons, more Americans will die, because we made ourselves fail.

Americas final defeat will never come from an outside aggressor, we will surely decay from the inside out and hand our nation to whom ever has the determination to take that from us which we no longer have the will to hold. 

War, play to win or don't bother.
Yea, all about oil, why don't we end up with the oil. We just turn it over to the next crack pot in line and get screwed again. I seem to remember the people of Kuait headed for the hills while we cleaned up their mess. I don't recall any appreciation. Iraq, yea they will sure pay us back for cleaning up their mess.
I don't remember sad man insane shooting down a single plane in 10 years. He got a regular spanking too. He was in the box.
 

Actually Kuwait payed us a ton of money. Did any of the EU countries pay us back for WWII not to mention the Marshall Plan? Hitler was in his box. Why did we need to clean up their mess? Oh, that's right, it was white people invovled, so war was good. Now that is not white people involved, it's a rat hole and war is bad. Hypcritical and racist. How low can you go?

Steve, that's a bit harsh...

Some might say the same about popping those poor, impoverished pirates in the bean with a high powered rifle too, Bill. ;)

Some indeed might.

The Somalis are "in their box" and "get daily spankings".

I didn't say "shot down", I said "shot at". The Somalis haven't sunk a single freighter, either. They just shoot at them. Okay, they boarded one. That's still less reason than we've ever had for any military action.

Reality is harsh. No matter what the news tells you, the recent election didn't cure racism.

If that's all they ever did, then how have those pirates managed to amass fortunes worth millions of dollars and currently hold over 300 hostages?  They have seized four more ships with 60 hostages since the incident with American freighter captain Richard Phillips.

But since this is an international problem involving countries all over the world, any action against Somalia should be international in nature, with other victim countries pulling their share of the weight, sharing the burden equally with the US as equal partners.  Why should it always overwhelmingly be American soldiers who die and American dollars that are spent when in many cases, one of which is Iraq, other countries are the  primary beneficiaries of the action but we are the ones so quick to jump in, play World Cop and bear the major burden?

Don't tell me the action in Iraq was "international" in nature and that we are mere partners in a "coalition", when at the peak of the action we had some 160,000 U.S. troops there, the next largest contingent was from the UK, 5000 troops at most, while other partners in the coalition furnished a few hundred and in some cases tens of troops.  Europe and the rest of the middle east have far more at stake regarding Iraq than the U.S. does, save one thing: oil.

I suspect any one of those 4400 soldiers who will never get to lay food on U.S. soil again, along with their families and loved ones and those who returned maimed and disabled for life, would have gladly paid $5/gallon if that meant history could be re-played.

None of which are American ships, which was the context in which I was replying.

Taken out of context, you can twist my words any number of ways, if I let you.

I am talking about a clear double-standard. The previous conflicts were bad ideas, we were stretched too thin, we had no reason, they were no threat, etc. Somalia? Exactly the same kind of situation, yet these same people think it's a great idea. We'll win overnight. Exit strategy, what's that? We'll just kill everybody, and the whole world will respect us for it this time.

When pressed to present some logic or reasoning that isn't based solely on hatred of one man or nationality, they can't do it.

What I said stands. Only one of our ships has been attacked. That's still less justification for military action than we've ever had in history.

Interestingly...A Canadian Navy ship foiled a shipjacking a few days ago in response to a call for help. The pirates were captured but then released. The statement issued by the Canadian government stated that because the pirates did not attack a Canadian-flagged vessel or Canadian citizens, they had no legal grounds to hold them for prosecution.

"...Forces boarded a pirate skiff, found a rocket-propelled grenade, and interrogated and disarmed the pirates before releasing them.

NATO officials say the pirates cannot be prosecuted under Canadian law because they did not attack Canadian citizens or interests and the crime was not committed on Canadian territory. .."

So, what *are* the rules of engagement?

http://cfra.com/?cat=3&nid=64591

Bill,

I saw that same story and nothing should surprise me anymore but that did.

Being the bad sort, I would be in favor of just sinking their little pirate boats and let the sharks and their chosen deity decide their fate.  But since we are bound by civilized rules in an uncivil part of the globe at the very least they should be held instead of this catch and release.

Until the risk/return trade-off for this behavior changes the pirates are taking the rational approach.  It is long past time to GREATLY increase the negative risk of piracy.

"Shoot on sight" works for me.

Which is exactly what I said.  If there is to be any kind of military action at all, it should be a joint effort by all countries that have been victimised.  The last thing we need is to get involved in anything unilateral.  In this case the U.S. has, at most, justification to take a lesser role in the operation than Russia, France and numerous other countries that have suffered greater losses than has the U.S.  I'd say the U.S. handled the situation appropriately when an American crew member was recently captured.  So did the French Navy when the French crew was taken.

Somalia doesn't even have a functioning government, so wouldn't it be kind of hard to bring about a "regime change"?

The following episode in US history was taught in my high school class when I was a  student.  I would hope and assume it still is:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/barbary.htm

Then what was the point of your previous post? You knew I was responding to what Frank wrote, you understood the context of what I wrote, so what was the point of calling me out on something you knew I wasn't saying?

I think you are reading more into this than was intended; you said there had been only one ship attacked; when I read your message I wasn't thinking only in terms of US ships.  Besides, we are only one nation of many using those busy shipping lanes. If pirates are going after unarmed French and Russian vessels, our undefended ships are bound to be sitting ducks as well.

You may recall that that one of the justifications our leaders used to sell the public on entering WW1 was to protect "freedom of the seas".  "Remember the Lusitania"... reminiscent of "Gulf of Tonkin" and "WMD's"?.  To-day, historians are still debating the causes and objectives of that war and why we and other nations entered it.

When vistiting Boston, I wouldn't go strolling in Roxbury at night all alone and unarmed.

Nope, that's not what I wrote, either:


That doesn't even come close. In fact, that says they do attack them.

They haven't sunk a tanker yet, but they have captured a number of ships.  Remember the one from a former Soviet-bloc country (I forget which) that was  loaded with tanks and other war materials that they captured?  If they had managed keep control of it and to offload that weaponry, the international threat that would have posed would not have exactly been trivial.

We don't need to be looking for some excuse to go to war with what amounts to a  non-country, but yet it is insane to be cruising those waters in ships that aren't carrying some kind of even minimal armed protection.

Now, how about that AM activity on 40 metres?

Ah-HAH!! Jumped back into the QSO without catching back up on the conversation, didn't you?  ;)


Finally worked Todd on 40 last night, or would have if it weren't for the static. Then I tuned up the band a bit and caught a few minutes of Iran's take on "the zionist Obama's racist aggression against the people of Somalia" (their words, obviously, not mine).

Small world, isn't it?

I still like Tom's/K1JJ's idea, an electrified fence (like 10kV) around the hull. Or light the hull up with a Tesla coil.  Just the mere sight of arc's flying all over the place would keep me away.

That's one of the things I love about shortwave.  It fills me with such a nice sense of nostalgia.  Radio Havana is really good for this.  Time has stood still.  And now if they aren't coming in so well there is the voice of the mullahs.

And that Obama guy.  He must be one of the first black racist Zionist Muslims.

Actually, I often spend time during the evening  hours listening to Radio Ethiopia on 7110. With the sync detector, the audio quality is fairly decent.  Having lived in the region years ago, I enjoy listening to the familiar sound of their music.  If they finally do move the station out of the ham band, I hope they land on a clear frequency somewhere.  Their presence on 7110 doesn't really bother me because, due the ridiculous US subband restrictions on 40m, 7100-7125 is a wasteland anyway, except maybe to the "hello-g'bye ur five-nine pse QSL 73 QRZ?" crowd working split frequency.  Radio Sudan plops down on 7200 every night, with their LSB slopping below 7.2.  But the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict spilling over into SW broadcasting with that jamming crap that wipes out anywhere from 7155 to 7185 every evening starting at 0400Z, is the real PITA.

He's a Muslim? Where did you get that information? I know Jeremiah Wright talks like a mullah, but last time I checked that was a Christian church he was preaching at.

One thing many of you are missing is the sociatal evolution of many of these perole that we are at odds with.

Many of these people do not know or understand civilization as we know it. In their sociatal evolution, they are still several hundred years behind us. All they understand is a feudalistic warlord society. He who carries the biggest stick and kills the most people is the leader!! you have to PROVE to them that you can and will wipe them out EFFORTLESSLY any time you please. All that they understsnd is that you can easily kill them any time you feel like it. It is just that simple. Organized civilization as we are accustomed to is not something they comprehend period!!

So, I have no problems giving them what they want and appreciate! Just simply kill a large quantity of them and the rest will fall into line. short, sweet, and simple.
Just teach them that in a modern scociety there are prices to be paid for your actions!!

                                                                   the Slab Bacon

You must be Italian
All so simple
Play by the rules of the game
Play to win

So put your money where your mouth is. Go over there and fix the problem.

No? Why not? It's so simple, by your logic. Three bullets will stop the whole problem, right? You've got three bullets, use them! Judging from your venom and vitriol, it obviously means that much to you, so do it. Put up or shut up.

Otherwise, you're just proving the old idiom: the empty can rattles the most.

Just my Point on this:

 If yer not serving there, living there, operating there, you have no Idea what, where or when...First of all....BUT GO NAVY MAN....... :D kick butt...

 Second I used to agree with Slabs ideals, I really used to think that...just wipe up a few and all will fall...Not....

Anymore my thoughts are on Feeding and Civilizing them....we need to get into these places any way we can and Civilize these people....like up to Date would be gud... :) and stop baby sitting Israel...

It's just my opinion...


73
Jack.

how the hell else would I know how to make pickled eggplant  ;D ;D   

Jack,
       you miss the whole point, you cannot civilize these people!! And they do not want it.
How many of these countries have we suported and fed with foreign aid? Only to have them turn around and bite us!! Dogs are more civilized than some of these people!! Lets face it, at least a dog doesnt turn around and bite the hand that feeds it!!

There isnt much you can really do but show them what the consequences are and leave it at that. They dont understand (or want to) anything else.

You just cant take shit and make ice cream out of it no matter how hard you try.

                                                                      The Slab Bacon

Slab that's FB...I don't have a problem...

I just know of what I've been told by my Nephews on what action is happening in their areas of operation over there, there are many of the let's just say non participants in the radical aspects that would Welcome more relief and more food and more support...and LAW...Real Law.

And that's the problem isn't it, there's no law there's no peace...and I don't look at them like animals, alot are stuck doing what who's in charge says...with the most guns...Take that guy out...No...we don't do that...do we...?

I don't miss the point brother, I'm passed Cheney's ideals of Limited skirmishes to settle local issues...If yer gona Invade then Invade and bring Law to the land.

Disarm and Rebuild completely. Feed the people quit playing the protective Hamlet routine...Besides if we would shift into Real Rebuilding Real school making Real Help think of the jobs that could be created around the world...and the Feed that you described would actually make it where it's supposed to go, there's black market in action doing real business in some of these areas in trouble.

I'm Done.

73
Jack.


 




 

Over the last 40 years we've transferred > $5T of wealth into US inner cities and what do we have to show for it? Just more of the same. If it doesn't work here why would you assume it will work there? Good intentions seldom guarantee desired results.

A thought on protecting US ships...

Since we apparently can't arm our mariners why not have a large pack of hungry German Shepherds on board? Pirates for lunch...git 'em!     

 

Now that's the most practical approach I've heard yet!

Your talking about one thing..money ..our trouble was swept overseas Brother....we need good working jobs here now alot of folks are giving up we need Confidence...it's a simple cycle begin a large mass movement of care to these people all infrastructure get the farmers geared up the productions factories geared up Food Textiles Millwork....there is good buisness in this idea of it would create so much more work that we so desperately need...it's so simple nobody understands it...

But I just try and explain my opinion...

73
Jack.

Hey Jay, we have something to show for it. Rich bankers and their little pawns like mayor eddy in hartford.
Just move to an international scale to increase profit margins.

We send a boat load of free food to starving people and they want to rip off the boat and sell it back to us. I think that is called biting the hand that feeds you.

Frank, You know you can turn shit into ice cream.
1. bury shit
2. makes green grass
3. feed green grass to cows
4. Cows produce milk
etc
I see it every year around here. Shit is spread and farmers are in the process of turning it under this week.
So maybe shit is a "kind" term. How about toxic waste

Naaaaa............... alligators would be more practical. Much less maintenance and less "residue" to clean up afterwards!!  ;D ;D

Slab

Figured the German Shepherds would at least develop a working relationship with the crew. Not so sure about gators. Agree on the less mess to clean up, though.

Thought it would have been a nice touch to let the three partially headless pirates rot on deck for a week and for the Navy to steam into port and deposit the stinking garbage at the pier. Might have deterred a few would be replacements. On second thought, Somali's are probably used to being around stinking garbage.     

Pirates have Timesheets

The Planet Money podcast has an excellent analysis of the piracy business.  The interview with Per Gullestrup is terrific:

"Even pirates need a business plan. J. Peter Pham, an analyst of African affairs at the James Madison University, looks at the economics of guns, captains, and $2 million dropped into the sea in waterproof containers. Plus, Per Gullestrup, CEO of Danish shipping company Clipper Group, has dealt with pirates first-hand -- he says they're tough negotiators."

The podcast has coverage of a Geitner meeting first.  Skip past that to about 9:30 in.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/04/pirates_have_timesheets.html#more

Not just Somalia, the entire Horn of Africa is a mess, with a bunch of dumb-asses in charge.  After Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia are probably the next poorest countries on the continent, but they are both wasting their resources with a huge military build up, fighting each other over some worthless uninhabited desert territory at the border region.  And then there is Sudan, which is also considered part of the Horn region.

If you listen to 40m at night, starting about 0400Z, you will hear the mess they are making out of the part of the ham band that was supposedly vacated by broadcasters, with the Eritrea-Ethiopia cat-and-mouse broadcast jamming game, on 7165 and 7175,  rendering 7160 practically unusable from 0400Z until 0530 or thereabouts every night when the skip finally plays out.  Sudan still blasts away with its carrier frequency right on 7200 starting at 0400Z.  Isn't their LSB, wiping out 7195-7200, still in violation of the evacuation order?

sounds like a job for opra

Opera or Oprah? ;)

With Frank, you never know  ;D

Looks like the Italians have decided not to dilly-dally around playing silly games.

The captain of an Italian cruise ship foiled an attack by pirates off the coast of Somalia on Saturday by ordering his security crew to fire back, Italy's ANSA news agency reported.

Six armed pirates in a speedboat attacked the ship, which had about 1,500 people onboard, ANSA said. They fled after the security crew fired back.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/04/26/somalia.pirates/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

OK I mean Dopra, you know the one with the show.

Apparently this particular Italian cruise line has decided to defend its assets:

ROME (AP) — An Italian cruise ship with 1,500 people on board fended off a pirate attack far off the coast of Somalia when its Israeli private security forces exchanged fire with the bandits.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-04-26-italy-pirates_N.htm

Some people shouldn't be carrying Uzis...

                                                        .

Tough being a pirate these days

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/world/africa/09pirate.html?

For Somali Pirates, Worst Enemy May Be on Shore

GAROOWE, Somalia — Abshir Boyah, a towering, notorious Somali pirate boss who admits to hijacking more than 25 ships and to being a member of a secretive pirate council called “The Corporation,” says he’s ready to cut a deal.  Facing intensifying naval pressure on the seas and now a rising backlash on land, Mr. Boyah has been shuttling between elders and religious sheiks fed up with pirates and their vices, promising to quit the buccaneering business if certain demands are met.

“Man, these Islamic guys want to cut my hands off,”  he grumbled over a plate of camel meat and spaghetti. The sheiks seemed to have rattled him more than the armada of foreign warships patrolling offshore. “Maybe it’s time for a change.”

It will be exceedingly difficult for these men — or the local businesses that they support — to make that kind of money doing anything else in this beleaguered nation.

Still, the Puntland pirate bosses insist they are ready to call it quits, if the sheiks find jobs for their young underlings and help the pirates form a coast guard to protect Somalia’s 1,880-mile coastline from illegal fishing and dumping. These are longstanding complaints made by many Somalis, including those who don’t scamper up the sides of cargo ships, AK-47 in hand.

When Mr. Boyah walked into a restaurant recently, he had to shake half a dozen hands before sitting at a plastic, fly-covered table with two foreign journalists.  “Ha!” he said, through a mouthful of spaghetti. “Me eating with white men. This is like the cat eating with the mice!”

...it is hard to see exactly where all those millions went, at least here in Garoowe. There are some nice new houses and a few new hotels where pirates hang out, including one encased in barbed wire called “The Ladies’ Breasts.” Dozens of dusty Surfs prowl the streets. But not much else.

Mr. Boyah, who lives in a simple little house, explains: “Don’t be surprised when I tell you all the money has disappeared. When someone who never had money suddenly gets money, it just goes.”  He claims that his estimated take of several hundred thousand dollars disappeared down a vortex of parties, weddings, jewelry, cars and qat, the stimulating leaf that Somalis chew like bubble gum.  Also, because of the extended network of relatives and clansmen, “it’s not like three people split a million bucks,” he said. “It’s more like 300.”  Oh, Mr. Boyah added, he also gives 15 percent to charity, especially to the elderly and infirm. “I’d love to give them more,” he said.

Over all, he seemed like a man on a genuine quest for redemption — or a very good liar.  “We know what we’re doing is wrong,” he said gravely. “I’m asking forgiveness from God, the whole world, anybody.”  And then his silver Nokia phone chirped yet again. He would not say what he needed to do, but it was time to go.