Posted on 04/13/2009 12:36:32 PM PDT by Free America52
The crew of the Maersk Alabama spoke with the media after news broke that Captain Richard Phillips had been rescued from the Somali pirates that attempted to overtake the cargo ship. From aboard the Maersk Alabama, the crew answered questions and issued details on what went down between the crew and the pirates.
"We want to clarify something right now," Second-In-Command Shane Murphy said. "We never lose control of this ship. We never took it back from them. They never had this ship. They had Captain Phillips, but they never had this ship. This is our ship."
"We've been under attack for a week before they got on this ship," Murphy said. "Tell the president to get these guys. Tell him to get the Navy down there. It shouldn't get to that."
(Excerpt) Read more at necn.com ...
DUDE...
The Somali Pirates are going about this ALL WRONG.
Instead of blustering in the media, they should follow the PROVEN path to Democratic Party enlightenment.
Why, they could even get STIMULATED to the tune of millions and millions of dollars, a whole bunch of new Zodiacs, and probably even a couple of surplus warships of thiert own if they just followed the path!!
All they have to do is pool a few million dollars, hire a couple of $500-$1,000 per hour K-Street Democrat Lobbyists.
The lobbyists can spread around some scratch to the right Democrats, and even write a bill praising, and ALLOWING American Ships to be attacked by Somali Pirates!!
History does show us that when Democrat lobbyists write bills, congressmen don’t even bother to READ THEM! Just ask the New York Democrat bankers how that works. First they got EVERY RULLE they wanted struck down, or passed, and now they are getting BILLIONS of dollars of your money, by doing the same things now, that they did under CLINTON!!!
I’ll tell you right now — there’s something *seriously wrong* with this story and how things developed!!
And here’s where the problem is...
“We’ve been under attack for a week before they got on this ship,” Murphy said.
That tells me that something is really wrong in the “shipping world”. I mean, it takes a week before they decide to “do something” about these pirates who are trying to take over the ship?
No..., this should have resulted in the shipping company doing something immediately about it. Since this is our ship, it should have resulted in a US Navy ship (about one week *prior* to this hostage situation — sending some helicopter/plane/jet and bombing that pirate crew to the bottom of the sea.
If that had been done *right* by this crew and the shipping company, it would have never progressed to the point that it did.
These shipping companies better get their act together...
Here here! I saw a maritime security expert on TV today saying contrary to popular belief the shipping companies can arm their crew and hire private armed security forces. The companies would rather pay ransom than arm their crews. The US Navy shouldn't be used as the world's naval police when the private shipping companies refuse to pay for armed security.
I figured as much — and *they* (those other crazy shipping companies and the other countries that have those other shipping companies) want the U.S. to “bail them out” when they cry and go “waaaah”....
It’s *not our problem* and we should not be stampeded into doing the bidding of these shipping companies who want the *American taxpayer* to “bail them out* — just another “bailout scenario” is all this is....
These thugs were screwing with an American ship for a week?? Is that what we’re being told? Why didn’t the navy send an F-16 to the scene? Ten seconds and the pirate vessel would have been no more! Am I missing something?
You picked up the problem — exactly!!
That’s why I said that this looks like a “set-up” by the Obama Administration to “stampede” the American public into “cleaning up” the foreign interests’ messes...
So, it’s an American Taxpayer *bailout* for all those other countries in the world, who have been paying the ransoms for years now...
They want the American Taxpayer to “bail them out”... LOL...
I listened to this twice, it's hard to hear, but I though the captain said they had Navy personnel on the boat while it was being followed by the pirates and the news media compromised the mission, allowing the pirate network to locate the boat. So, while there were Navy personnel on board, they didn't have weapons, then they had to call in the destroyer and SEALS. It's not clear to me...
This “story” is getting “fishier” by the day...
I don’t like the way it’s turning out..., with all this background info starting to come out now...
It sounds like a “set-up” by the Obama Administration to “railroad” the American Public into *paying for* another “bailout”....
The navy has no F-16s; that’s an Air Force bird. They could and should have sent an F-18, however.
Strafing fishing boats with an F-16 or F-18 or just about any other fighter is a little costly. In fact, we don’t have a lot of land based real estate around the Gulf of Aden. That we can use anyway. Our carriers were probably in the Persian Gulf and Saudia Arabia would be hesitant to let us fly combat missions.
The most obvious solution is for merchant marines to include weapon caches for defense of the vessel. But the same crowd of idiots (albeit international) who want to revoke your 2nd Amdendment rights that have pushed for and gotten idiotic maritime laws restricting the crew from defending itself.
I don’t think there is anything necessarily fishy about this whole thing. There really weren’t a lot of good options militarily once the captain was taken hostage. If this did go down the way they say it did, it was a phenomenal task and operation.
The ability to pull of a simultaneous hat-trick head shot on the ocean is amazing. Reports say it was from only 30 meters, but still. What amazing shooting. Looks like our SEALs have been getting some good experience under their belts. I pray to God i never end up on the magnified end of a SEAL sniper’s rifle.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.