Posted on 04/12/2009 11:00:01 AM PDT by bimboeruption
MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) - An American ship captain was freed unharmed Sunday in a U.S. Navy operation that killed three of the four Somali pirates who had been holding him for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. One of the pirates was wounded and in custody after a swift firefight, the official said.
Capt. Richard Phillips, 53, of Underhill, Vermont, was safely transported to a Navy warship nearby.
The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
A government official and others in Somali with knowledge of the situation had reported hours earlier that negotiations for Phillips' release had broken down.
The district commissioner of the central Mudug region said talks went on all day Saturday, with clan elders from his area talking by satellite telephone and through a translator with Americans, but collapsed late Saturday night.
"The negotiations between the elders and American officials have broken down. The reason is American officials wanted to arrest the pirates in Puntland and elders refused the arrest of the pirates," said the commissioner, Abdi Aziz Aw Yusuf. He said he organized initial contacts between the elders and the Americans.
Two other Somalis, one involved in the negotiations and another in contact with the pirates, also said the talks collapsed because of the U.S. insistence that the pirates be arrested and brought to justice.
Phillips' crew of 19 American sailors reached safe harbor in Kenya's northeast port of Mombasa on Saturday night under guard of U.S. Navy Seals, exhilarated by their freedom but mourning the absence of Phillips.
Crew members said their ordeal had begun with the Somali pirates hauling themselves up from a small boat bobbing on the surface of the Indian Ocean far below.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Please post an example.
Big difference, but this is an AP story.
Despite scant details, it's kind of ironic that we already know what was the last thing to go through the minds of those pirates!
Your kidding me right?
1. The left has criticized Bush saying that his prosecution of the GWOT made America less safe because he was using a unilateral go it alone cowboy diplomacy approach
Does any of that ring a bell? or did you just crawl out from under a rock?
2. Bush was criticized for detaining enemy combatants and for interrogation against them...
I guess you just have to stop watching MSNBC as your news source listening to your buddy KO and Rachel Maddow to actually find out what the left persecuted Bush over.
3. The Democrats constantly rambled on about Habeus Corpus and the detainees at GITMO....
There are about a dozen other areas where the Left raped Bush politically and now when OBAMA does what Bush did there is nothing but silence ...
The fact that I even have to explain any of this to you on this forum is very bothersome. Someone that has been on here for as long as you...
Strange indeed.
How about the Massachusetts Maritime Academy "Buccaneers" (the Academy where Captain Phillips graduated from). Does that count?
Look for signs of ostentatious stuff like a satellite dish, a fancy car, etc, and bomb the hell out of it...
Look for signs of ostentatious stuff like a satellite dish, a fancy car, etc, and bomb the hell out of it... But of course we will have to get the Democratic Congress to declare war on the pirates first...and that ain't gonna happen.
Try selling your BS to the Seals you criticized for taking out your Somali pirate friends.
Now that would be ironic......I think when the story comes out we’ll see the “young” man is either related to a high level “pirate” or told to participate or die....We may have freed him from slavery as some young men in the area are forced into slave work conditions as protection for the rest of their families....
I’d like to know more of the story, did the Captain realizing the situation get him out of the site of the guns....If it became evident that we had killed a teenager, we would certainly be pictured as the evil Americans....The Captain may be even more of a hero....A man who does the right thing in ALL circumstances.
LOL... funny I serverd 23 years in the Navy, Navy Special Forces are my brothers.... I don’t remember seeing you standing watches with me either... hmmmm
But I digress I never once criticized the military and never would. You either fail to recognize sarcasm and cynasism or you actually proud of Obama and care little of the HYPOCRISY that he just threw in your face.
Either way I think you are an idiot Obamabot that will cheer along with the others as he rapes the same military that he would pretend to support.
Good Luck with that.
I will give the Marxist credit for staying out of the way and not getting involved in things he couldn't possibly understand. However, that's little credit.
During the scampaign, he also made it clear he does NOT understand economics and for that too he would have people handle it for him.
He can cause havoc even when he “doesn’t get involved”.
He was not vetted. He’s a stooge. And we are not privy to who makes up his brain-trust.
You could be right, but I doubt it. The entire World saw what happened, and as the facts come out, we will see who the professionals were/are.
It will be difficult for even Hollywood spin it in favor of obami, as he sat on the sidelines. Hollywood did a great job with "Black Hawk Down" when the Ranger Commander in charge even stated that, "Washington in all its wisdom, refused our request [for light armor]". It was a damning moment in the movie for Clinton and SecDef Aspin. Maybe too little in the script, but there it was.
Since that Mogadishu cluster-xxxx, history has been true to what happened. The Clinton administration ignored it every time it came up in press conferences, because they knew the incident couldn't be parsed or spun - too many witnesses. We'll see about the Alabama story...I could be wrong.
Doubt it...too many witnesses. To me, they handled it by the book when it came to an American hostage. Unlike others, I understand the Navy asking the FBI come in and work on negotiations. While the Navy has its NCIS (internal crime investigation), which I once did some undercover narcotics work for, Navy warships are not prepared to deal with hostage negotiations. There mission is kill people and break things.
I believe we will see it was handled well by the US Navy and FBI. We'll also see that obami sat on his hands, but give him (small) credit for not interfering with the professionals. He has no experience nor understanding when it comes to actual military ops, so he backed off. I'm okay with that.
Good to see you back around. It was a great Easter Sunday for our nation. However, the Somali "skinnies" have hijacked (4) more ships/boats since. What is your solution to this problem?
My thinking is that with the reported intel that most of these pirates are coming out of the small coastal town of Eyl, Somalia, the US coordinate a major clandestine SpecOps effort to kill and capture and many possible. There are also reports that this a organized effort with tribal elders directing it. This time we go in with enough fire-power and grab them like we attempted with Adide back in 1993.
I'm not privy to the Somalia intel, but various reports indicate these pirates are operating out of small coastal towns, such as Eyl.
So how does the US Navy and other Navys "blockade" such small village ports? Are there enough military ships to do this? I don't think so. Plus, the area is much too large to patrol and escort every merchant ship. The Alabama was hijacked some 300 miles off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean.
That's why I believe the only option is to infiltrate and send in SpecOps to kill/apprehend the elders that are organizing this piracy. This time, unlike "Black Hawk Down", we send in enough resources to back up the operation. This MUST end.
I saw a report today that if this continues to occur at this pace, this can eventually affect ours and other free nations' economies. It has accelerated and will continue until someone takes out the organization behind it.
For your input...
US shipping goes into coastal waters of any nation not policing their own waters is required to pick up PSD Team of 6 from contract security firms. Think Bluewater versus Blackwater per se.....
Armed Predators, flying out of our base at Djibouti would be a start.
>>WOW I waited 24 hours for the outcry and none came...
1. Obama acted unilaterally in making the decision to go to war with Somalia.<<
I missed this until I saw it on Viking Kitties -
Have you rethought this - you aren’t really opposed to using force to free Americans captured by pirates, are you?
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