Under rules issued by the WH, you can bet the pirates would still be alive.
My money is on the Captain of the Bainbridge and the SEAL team leader not wanting to spend the rest of their lives knowing their careers were defined by having been on scene hogtied when a lifeboat evaded a warship and made it to safety along with the hostage.
That is where my money is as well and why ZERO’s WH was caught off guard by the shooting. The Navy had an opportunity and took it.
Micromanaging is just like LBJ.
An interesting and likely position. Can you imagine the conversations these young men had while waiting on ZERO to abandon the BFI? I wondered why a hostage negotiator could get there (if one did) and not a proper weapons team.
More, you don’t need snipers to level the top of a fiberglass lifeboat if the hostage is in the water like Captain Phillips was. A 50 cal or two operated by seamen will do just fine without too much accuracy. Keeps the pirates heads down too. They not only weren’t authorized they were most likely UNAUTHORIZED to fire.
Good point.
If I were one of those commanders I believe I could have easily misunderstood “hold on” to “weapons free.” Radios garble a lot you know.....and the commander knows the situation better than any community organizer who is waiting for a teleprompter to tell him what to do.