Poll - What Does the US do to rescue the Maersk-Alabama Captain

[Peejay]

Strong or not, the Ethiopian army is not in our league. This is making a mountain out of a molehill.

It's a lifeboat with pirates and a hostage. Pay them, get thet hostage back, then kill them REGARDLESS where they make landfall.

And let someone's rooty-poot Navy come out and challenge the U S Navy. I'd love to have all 30 seconds of THAT on video.

wait.....let me get the jiffy pop......

Reminds me of a really cool song about the General Belgrano. As the British fleet approached the Faukland Islands, the pride of the Argentine Navy was dispatched to intercept. It was definitely a Jiffy Pop moment.

Comin' round old Cape Horn
the General Belgrano
rolling up to do some damage
sailing through the mist of early winter
out of the water came a round house punch
a British submarine torpedo
in the cold South Atlantic
gonna make the sharks happy !.........

 

[dilloduck]

Another possibility would be 4 synchronized sharpshooters.

Is that an Olympic sport ? Bathing beauties doing synchronized acrobatics while picking off targets.

Can't get a good shot into the lifeboat. It is enclosed, covered, no clear line of sight.

Do you feel like a complete dumb ass now ?

 

[dilloduck]

Paying the ransom is out of the question. That will only encourage this type of behavior. The last thing we should be doing is giving these pirates what they want.

And why is this still an issue anyway? Why isnt there a snipper on the deck of one of the Navy ships out there picking these bastards off?

Snippers are only good for small gauge metal cutting. Assuming you mean sniper.
1)The lifeboat is a covered craft. Designed to protect people who have abandoned ship from heavy seas and sun. Here's a little look see.
More pirates searching for lifeboat, official says - CNN.com
Can't get a clear shot/
2) Firing with any accuracy from the deck of a narrow beam ship, like a navy frigate /destroyer, that is on the open ocean is extremely difficult. Even expert "snippers" would miss with most shots, and the hostage would likely die.
There are other possible ways to overwhelm the pirates.
Like, wait a little longer until they are so sick of bobbing on the ocean in that very very uncomfortable, extremely overheated enclosed craft, eating lifeboat rations which are about the worst food imaginable, and tasting those metallicy blicky stagnant freshwater rations, smelling their own vomit and feces as they slosh around in that airtight violently bouncing litel vessel,
sweaty, hungry, sore all over, thirsty, seasick, very hot and stuffy, stressed out, and exhausted.

Being in custody aboard that US Navy destroyer will seem like a pretty darn good alternative, soon.
Time and deteriorating conditions inside the fortress are a besieger's (and hostage negotitator's) best weapons.

This current event has one very interesting outcome: It has allowed people to display their ability to form and share opinions that are based upon a serious lack of facts and thoughtful comprehension.

This ignorant blabbing is even more remarkable given that an enormous amount of information has been provided by many media sources on this event and on the topic of Somali pirates in general.
Information and facts are everywhere.
Yet ---- people choose to talk on and on, without putting even a minimal effort into gatherring factual information, that is easily and readily available.

I'm not picking on you; yours was a simple question. I am talking about the rampant ignorant opinionating and the unworkable, valueless unfounded suggestions, and the anxious spear rattling by belligerent armchair experts that have been posting about this particular event and situation.

Some people have revealed their total lack of ability to use facts to form opinions or to create suggestions. Their postings have revealed the extent of their mental capabilities, very very clearly.

It appears as though one of these so-called "unworkable" solutions worked.

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

Yes Indeedy... yet another mission impossible SOLVED through superior gun control.

And we should give the Lord of the Idiots credit for doing the only thing that anything approaching a responsible human being COULD DO.

Well done King Hussein... Now what's your policy on BREATHING?

 

[Old Rocks]

Yes Indeedy... yet another mission impossible SOLVED through superior gun control.

And we should give the Lord of the Idiots credit for doing the only thing that anything approaching a responsible human being COULD DO.

Well done King Hussein... Now what's your policy on BREATHING?

President Barak Hussein Obama did exactly what a President should do. Put his best people on the spot, and then stayed out of the way. He chose the right people for the job. And had the good luck for it to end with the best of possible outcomes.

The fact that you have to use this incident to spew your displeasure concerning the fact that our nation has finally had real success implementing a sane policy simpy demonstrates that you would rather have our nation fail than see President Barak Hussein Obama succeed.

You are pathetic.

 

[krotchdog]

Is it a US flagged ship?

NO?

Then it's not up to us to solve the problem, is it?

Nope, you are right, such great insight, not what the founding fathers said but with such an in depth analysis and such a great presentation of all pertinet details how can one argue with such clear logic.

I will attempt on your level just to keep the thread going.

Uh, yes it is.

 

[Sinatra]

I agree with most posts above, this posting says it pretty concisely, the Pirates show what's sick with the West:

Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » A Vacuum of Will

A Vacuum of Will
Posted By Shannon Love On April 10, 2009 @ 2:25 pm In Civil Society, Crime and Punishment, Law, Leftism, Terrorism |

Significant piracy has been so long gone from the world that the very word “pirate” evokes only images of 17th-century sailing ships armed with blackpowder weapons. Now pirates have returned to the choke points of the world’s oceans. What has changed? Why could we deal with pirates 150, 100 or 50 years ago but we can’t deal with them today?

I think that, as with terrorism, the return of piracy indicates the collapse of international law and the liberal order it establishes. It tells us how dysfunctional international law has become. ...

...

Half of the polity now argues that unlawful and inhumane tactics merely represent the desperation of the justified underdog instead of the callousness of the cruel and greedy. In such a moral environment, those who must fight and apprehend pirates understand that they will face far harsher judgment, with far less presumption of innocence, than will the pirates. Why should they risk their reputations, careers, freedoms and lives just to uphold the law when they know their most likely reward will be a knife in the back?

In a world in which a country is sanctioned and ostracized for responding to overt large-scale attacks on its civilian population, what kind of support can a naval officer fighting pirates expect? If responding to attacks on civilians gets one branded a war criminal what will happen to those who respond to attacks on economic interests? What kind of justice can they expect in a world [5] in which in any court in any country has the presumed legal right to pass judgment on the actions of any individual anywhere in the world?

In a vacuum of will, the brutal and the criminal prosper. Lawlessness spreads until it becomes the accepted norm. People no longer put any trust in laws and lawful institutions. Lawless and despotic authoritarianism seems the only alternative to a chaotic and violent anarchy. This is the future we face.

Forty years ago it would seem pathetically funny that a group of people in a fishing boat armed with nothing more than assault rifles and RPGs could capture ships out from under the nose of the U.S. Navy, but today we regard it as a “very serious and complicated problem.” It isn’t. Modern piracy is a trivial problem with simple, proven and well understood solutions. The fact that we cannot deal with it tells us how sick we’ve become.

Spot on.

Very well thought out opinion.

 

[del]

Yes Indeedy... yet another mission impossible SOLVED through superior gun control.

And we should give the Lord of the Idiots credit for doing the only thing that anything approaching a responsible human being COULD DO.

Well done King Hussein... Now what's your policy on BREATHING?

President Barak Hussein Obama did exactly what a President should do. Put his best people on the spot, and then stayed out of the way. He chose the right people for the job. And had the good luck for it to end with the best of possible outcomes.

The fact that you have to use this incident to spew your displeasure concerning the fact that our nation has finally had real success implementing a sane policy simpy demonstrates that you would rather have our nation fail than see President Barak Hussein Obama succeed.

You are pathetic.

if you think the president had anything to do with choosing the military personnel on the spot, you're delusional.

that aside, if it had gone wrong, he'd be undeservedly taking the blame, so giving him undeserved credit seems fair to me.

 

[krotchdog]

The Somali coast might be a good place to have an LCAC race.

Yea, and what would happened if the poor old flambouantly dressed swashbucklers got caught up in those propellers and turned into a million pieces of malnourished, locust tasting, shark bait, how would that make you feel.