ANY QUESTIONS?
This particular problem will be solved soon, I trust and once we have the captain of the Maersk Alabama back, I think the larger issue should be resolved completely in this highly complex issue, by a nuanced application of milk bottle sized depleted uranium projectiles, four times a day.
Take before meals.
Take before meals.
10 comments:
Phillips' poor wife is such a nervous wreck she's had to ask the media to back off from her home and leave her in peace. And that was yesterday before the escape attempt. If it was me I'd call a press conference and let President Ali-Hussien-a-Bullshit-Obamir know that if I didn't get my husband back in one piece and I mean yesterday I would dog his sorry ass from now until the next election and never let anyone forget what he did. Or, rather, didn't do.
Obviously the answer is one of two things .. either the US NAVY was not closely observing these events as they would have us believe, or they had orders NOT to fire unless fired upon. Maybe both, but it is hard not to conclude we let a hero down. Badly.
Why was Captain Phillips abandoning his ship and crew? Doesn't that violate the ethics of seafarers?
PS don't take on a full stomach - it could be messy.
Good point Pastorius - Captains should always be the last off in an emergency and I believe are expected to go down with the ship if that hasn't happened. It might say different in the handbook (if there is one) right enough.
In defense of the captain. He did not abandon ship nor crew. Remember he was taken hostage by the pirates when the ship was retaken by it's crew and the pirates fled. He was abandoning the pirates.
As for firing on the lifeboat we don't know how far the captain managed to get from that lifeboat before being retaken nor how close any American ship was at the time. The Maersk would not likely have had sharpshooters on board good enough to take out the pirates on a pitching or rolling sea without seriously risking hitting the captain first. The destroyer would not have dared opening with big guns from any distance for the same reason. Without knowing how close our folks were or how far the captain got before recapture (10 ft? 20 yds? 100?) I don't think we can blame Obama or anyone else for not trying to take out an "enclosed lifeboat" without serious risk to the captain himself. Kinda defeats the whole purpose "Captain killed by errant American rifleshot trying to protect him while fleeing his captors."
Now I may be missing some information here so all this is stated with theinfo I have.
That said, once we have the captain back, we resort to Epa's solution as stated in his post.
In spades.
I know they may not have had a clean shot at the lifeboat. What bothers me is that I fear they would not have blown it out of the water even if they had saved Phillips first. Not responding to armed pirates with force as a policy is simply incomprehensible.
I second Epam's solution. Hell, my 89-year-old mother called up outraged this morning and proposed exactly the same solution. When the little-old-white-haired-ladies are talking tougher than the president it makes you wonder.
Revere -- we are in agreement. I commend the Navy's & merchant ship's crews forebearance in not firing IF THEY DID NOT HAVE A GOOD CLEAN SHOT.
So then here is the question, WHAT is a good clean shot from a helo, with infra-red aiming and a 20mm minigun which in less than 5 seconds could kill everyone on the lifeboat, sink it, and turn what was left into a pink mist?
Was a helo up there ready?
Did we have the CAPABILITY to have a helo ready, and IF NOT MR. SECDEF GATES, WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?
All this shit leads inexorably to another DESERT ONE just a few years off (If that long). Underfunded, undermanned, under trained, under equipped, over-committed
Epa -- I'm working only with the boats bobbing in the water, don't know about the helo. But, if they grabbed the captain back as soon as he was in the water there might not have been time to shoot anyway.
HOWEVER
Pirates should have never been allowed to feel brazen enough to grab an American Flagged ship to begin with.
And that is the fault of this administration and the one that preceded it.
Why doesn't Obama order the use of the Seal's with night equipment (night vision and flashbang's) take anyone out with a gun and recuse the Capt.
This is Clinton mess that we are now having to deal with, Remember Black Hawk down.
What we have here is another Jimmy Carter twice as worse and naive has hell!
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