A US sailor has been rescued. Simply beautiful. In a stunning turn of events, US acted. Decisively and emphatically.
I will give the Prez his props for giving the okay to even use decisive action, but my hat is off and I’m standing at attention, full salute to the commander on the scene for making the call. OK. I took my cover off after saluting.
Four days behind my and Jeff’s schedule, but mission accomplished. 
Only wee bit of negativism comes in this ignorant statement:
…a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the situation…said figuring out what to do with the [fourth, surrendered] pirate is a sensitive issue.
We still have yard masts and rope, don’t we?
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Related posts:
My favorite story was about the pirates saying they were going to retaliate against the U.S. for the deaths of their buddies who got taken out. Pirates. Retaliate. Really? After we’ve already got our guy. Who they going to retaliate against? The U.S. Navy? Good luck. I can see it now … guys with AKs in inflatable rafts going up against a destroyer.
One thing that sort of surprises me but sort of doesn’t is there’s been practically no mention of any links between the piracy off Somalia and terrorism. I’m not suggesting there’s a direct link. There probably isn’t. But from what I’ve read of our guys in Somalia during the Black Hawk Down incident, a number of them have outright said what was going on in the Mog in the early ’90s is related to today’s terrorism. Maybe they’re right. Maybe not. But it’s still worth persuing. The pirates are apparently raking in millions of dollars, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of that money is making its way north.
What’s frightening is that these guys were as young as 16. And I believe there is indeed a link, and it’s nothing new.
I thought this was an interesting read.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1891129,00.html?xid=rss-topstories-cnnpartner
Interesting article, Paul. I also viewed some of the pictures & one quoted a captive pirate giving the breakdown of where the “loot” goes…interesting that the government officials get a percent in addition to the shooters and the bosses, with only a small percent going for “necessities” like guns and food. Guns and food. And from the looks of them, very little is going for the latter. The faces and the eyes of these boys and men have more than just hatred & crime or even survival on them…there’s a distinct lack of hope or life…breeding grounds for terror.
Police procedural writer Evan Hunter (RIP) used to say there were only two reasons for murder: love and money. And he apparently learned this from cops he’d worked with. I tend to agree with him. One of his mantras was always “follow the money.” Even when it came to terrorism, which is generally supposed to have some political ends, Hunter said to follow the money. Someone somewhere is either making big money from it or is expecting to at some point. Drugs, piracy, terrorism … in my mind it’s all tied together to some extent.
Thanks for the read, Paul – here’s the root of it:
“…a toll road that shippers’ insurance firms have been willing to pay for (up to $3 million for a single vessel)…”
Never pay. It never ends if you do.
Never set down your gun. You never get it back if you do.
Never negotiate on those points; rarely on others. Time is usually on the other guy’s side.
Hell yeah follow the money, Ty! The vast majority of the time, too. Dealing death is either a calculated crime or a crime of passion. Crimes of passion far outweigh calculated crimes these days. And by passion I’m talking spur-of-the-moment-in-a-fit-of-something action. Something being ‘love’, lust, rage, despair, ‘need’ – as in, “I need a fix man, give me your money. No? Ok. Bang. Now I’ll just take your money.”
Thomas Jefferson and the USMC fought pirates long ago. Send the Marines back, reexamine Tom’s advice, and shut ‘em down. A steel-jacketed hollow-point round serves a whole lot more purposes and people then any talking ever does.