Posted on 04/10/2009 4:45:16 PM PDT by BarnacleCenturion
Pirates on Friday sailed a hijacked German freighter and its crew toward a lifeboat off Somalia where an American hostage is being held.
They are reportedly doing so an attempt to help their comrades in a standoff with the US Navy.
Four pirates are holding the American captain of a cargo ship, Richard Phillips, in a drifting lifeboat and demanding $US2 million for his release and a guarantee of their own safety.
They have been holding him since a foiled attempt on Wednesday to hijack the 17,000-tonne, Danish-owned Maersk Alabama in the Indian Ocean.
A destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, is close by.
Another group that hijacked a 20,000-tonne German container vessel, the Hansa Stavanger, a week ago is reportedly heading to the scene of the standoff.
There are no snipers or sniper weapons on either a DDG or FFG.
When the LHD arrives, then arrives the capability to do whatever they want, inclusive of taking out the pirate bases ashore.
The more hostages they drag out to sea as human shields means the fewer reasons not to destroy their home ports, their homes, and any image of hestitance to defend our own people.
How painfully true.
Why, one would almost think that Mr. Community Organizer, Mr. Street Smart, was throwing the game.
The company that owns these ships could hire a security group like Blackwater or mercenaries.
They definitly need to post guards and floodlights all around.
“It rhymes!”
I look forward to when there is a permanent Frown on that Brown Clown.
“This could turn out to be the incident that defines the Obama presidency.”
That may very well be true. And who knows what future repercussions may stem from this incident on the high seas?
Did anyone think that the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand would lead to WWI, and change the course of history?
WWI, in turn, might possibly have had these other consequences:
“It could be argued that this assassination set in motion most of the major events of the 20th century, with its reverberations lingering into the 21st. The Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War is generally linked to the rise of Adolf Hitler and World War II. It also led to the Russian Revolution, which helped lead to the Cold War. This, in turn, led to many of the major political developments of the twentieth century, such as the fall of the colonial empires and the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union to super-power status.”
Obama is too unintelligent to understand this, but perhaps his Joint Chiefs of Staff can point out some of this history to him, and enlighten him as to what his action (or inaction) in this situation might precipitate.
She’s in the WH sandbox with her boss.
Right now on the History Channel is a program about George Patton.
when is the president going to send the 4 rescue hilicopters into the sand storm??
Thanks... I hope that I am not too late!
LLS
That whole WWI situation is fascinating. If Ferdinand hadn’t been such a gutsy guy and if his driver hadn’t gotten lost, the world would probably be a very different place.
Carter is roughly 100 feet (30 m) longer than the other two ships of her class. This is due to the insertion of a plug (additional section) known as the Multi-Mission Platform (MMP), which allows launch and recovery of ROVs and Navy SEAL forces. The plug features a fairing over a wasp-waist shaped passageway allowing crew to pass between the fore and aft sections of the hull while providing a space to store ROVs and special equipment that may need to launch and recover from the submarine.
The navy vessels are standing down so far away from the lifeboat that they’re using a drone to keep close watch.
Isn’t he eating pizza tonight?
Snipers, or frogmen then.
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.