A damn shame. There’s a pit thread about this going on, by the way. Too bad it ended like this. They think that one of the captives tried to escape and the assholes killed them all. Have fun in American courts, boys.
2 pirates dead and over a dozen captured. Probably not a good idea to fire a RPG at a Navy guided missile destroyer.
We need to come up with a plan to better deal with these nautical terrorist.
Didn’t see it. (I used the board search on ‘pirates’, but I’m having trouble waking up today.)
Yachting in those waters… why?
Many of these hijackings have taken place getting on for a thousand miles away from the Somali shoreline, and when you think about it, 300 miles away is still a fair old distance, takes quite a while to sail that distance.
They should board every vessel they can, search it and arrest anyone carrying weapons, and see what the judiciary makes of their justifications.
Next time I yatch, I’m taking a Ghurka.
Yes, there is. But you sure couldn’t tell it from the thread title, ***Why the hell do we have navies?
They were missionaries, distributing bibles according to the report I read.
Missionaries.
They were headed for a refueling stop in Djibouti.
They say US forces boarded w/o any gunfire, tried to render aid to the four hostages but it was too late and then were forced to kill two of the pirates, one by gunshot and the other by knife. Dayum.
I don’t understand why the pirates would kill all the hostages, for that matter fire an RPG at an out of reach ship, while negotiating with an overwhelming force. That’s part of what worries me about these incidents, those idiots are so illogical and unpredictable.
Too bad for those four civilians. They were pretty much toast anyway after being captured. The upside I see is that we followed them and prevented them from making landfall. Four of them were killed and the rest taken as our hostages. A better upside would have been to shoot them all, in self defense of course. Not letting them get away is a good message. Pirating and taking hostages should be a death sentence summarily dealt.
The article said they took care to sail in a flotilla near Thailand as protection against pirates which begs the question of why they didn’t plan accordingly around Somalia. Christian missionaries are considered the lowest life form in that area so it made about as much sense as snorkeling for piranha with an open wound.
That’s always the issue with situations like this. On one hand the government should protect it’s own but the cost is huge and one has to consider the cost verus people who go out of their way to place themselve in areas where they can be potentially harmed.
It’s simlar to people who go hiking and get lost and then a massive manhunt goes on to find them. A lot of hiking areas now charge fees for hiking to offset the cost of the manhunts.
The pirates know the cost of dealing with them is greater than letting them run amok. The capture of a few pirates only makes it more profitable for the other pirates as their is now less competition.
Remember a lot of corporations pay up for their seized ships and people.
Or sink their boat some 300 miles from shore and let them have a chance to save themselves by swimming to shore.
Maybe the various navy’s of the world should take up the sport of yachting (with special forces). Pirate guns and RPG’s can be met with better weapons and much higher trained personnel. When pirate ships stop returning maybe they’ll get the message.
I am surprised how hard this news hit me today, and I don’t know why. I guess I just didn’t expect the pirates to kill them. :mad: Still doesn’t explain why I felt like I had gotten socked in the stomach. Strange reaction for me.
About a year ago I spotted the original Pacific Princess for sale dirt cheap [essentially a yard lien]
Small cruise ship, 2 aft balconies, 8 or 10 upper deck balconies [like i said, small cruise ship] so what you do is replace with balcony doors with armored glass, or an armored rolly door, and mount guns on her. Wander through the waters, when they start pursuit, out come the weapons and you blast them away. Threat of piracy means you can basically take self defensive action. Since it is a military ship, you get military grade weapons. Randomly salt small semiretired cargo and old cruise ships into the normal shipping, make life interesting for the pirates.
If you don’t bother negotiating or taking them prisoner, it solves a lot of problems. They threaten, you blow them out of the water. One less crew. Sucks to be them.