Al-Qaida Pirates. The war on Terra continues on the high seas, Matey.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Terror on the High Seas
Piracy off the coast of Somalia is a growing concern, but Al Qaeda could make a big problem much bigger.

By Dan Ephron
Newsweek
Updated: 10:56 a.m. ET April 10, 2006

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12213087/site/newsweek/

April 10, 2006 - American sailors patrolling off the coast of Somalia are accustomed to chasing down pirates but Cmdr. Robert Randall had never seen this before. While pursuing three dinghies last month about 25 nautical miles off the African shoreline, members of his crew noticed Somali suspects waving not just their signature AK-47 assault rifles but also loaded RPGs—shoulder-fired rockets that insurgents across the world have used to blow up tanks and helicopters (including two U.S. Black Hawks in Somalia in 1993).

Randall is the commanding officer of the USS Gonzalez, an 8,000-ton destroyer with a crew of about 240. The rifles threatened sailors he’d dispatched in inflatable speedboats to engage the suspects. But if the assailants moved closer, the RPGs could have posed a danger to his ship. “As soon as saw the RPGs, they radioed back, and I told them to scram to the east,” the 45-year-old officer tells NEWSWEEK by phone from his ship. Turning the vessel toward the suspects, he ordered the largest guns on his port side to open fire. In seconds, leaking gas from one of the Somali boats exploded, causing a fireball to rise up over the water and sending the suspects diving into the sea. One of them died in the exchange, which also involved a U.S. Navy cruiser. Twelve others were pulled from the water and are in U.S. custody at sea.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia, a country that for 15 years had no central government and no internal law enforcement, is soaring. In the past 12 months, Somali bandits have held up 36 merchant ships (compared to two in the previous year), forcing many of them to shore and holding crew and vessels ransom for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The hijackings have forced vessels to take wide detours at a cost of millions and have disrupted much of the humanitarian shipments to Somalia, which is suffering this year from the worst drought in a decade.

But Navy officials worry about an even more alarming scenario: that Al Qaeda cells operating in Somalia might get involved in the piracy, hijack a ship and use it to ram another vessel. “You don’t want to do anything out there that may support their efforts, whether it’s making money, holding hostages or taking another vessel and using it as a weapon,” says Cmdr. Jeff Breslau, a spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain.

[Richard Steele]

1. Another "what if" story. Al-Quaeda, booga booga! Be afraid!

There is NO "al-Quaeda" anywhere in that story!

They exist only in a hypothetical scenario that unnamed "Navy Officials"
are said to be "worried about".

More bullshit propaganda from our phoney WOT Presstitutes.

[hedgehog]

2. We should have treated Al Quaida as pirates from the word go

No war on terror, no war at all. Just treat them as bandits and pirates and haul them to jail. Guess where the people who planned the first bombing of the World Trade Center are sitting right now? The laws governing piracy are established and recognized and waiting to be used, we should have used them.

[Coastie for Truth]

6. When It Comes To Piracy On The High Seas

The International Convention for the Suppression of Piracy, the Coast Guard Manual, and the Coast Law Enforcement Manual says that the Captain can either

1. Take them to the nearest port for trial, or
2. Summarily do justice aboard ship. Heh heh heh.

We know what Admiral Michael Healy (the first African-American Admiral in the Coast Guard) would have done to these brigands--
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Captain Michael A. Healy was born near Macon, Georgia in 1839. He was the fifth of ten children born to Michael Morris Healy, an Irish plantation owner, and his wife Mary Elisa Smith, a former slave. This family produced a number of distinguished individuals. Three brothers entered the priesthood; James became the first black bishop in North America, Patrick was president of Georgetown University, and Sherwood became an expert in canon law. Three sisters became nuns, one reaching the level of mother superior.

When his siblings became bishops, priests and nuns, it may have been to compensate for the man who became known as "Hell Roaring Mike".

Michael Healy was uninterested in academic pursuits and so began a seagoing career as a cabin boy aboard the American East Indian Clipper JUMNA in 1854. He quickly became an expert seaman and rose to the rank of officer on merchant vessels.

In 1864 he applied for a commission in the U.S. Revenue Marine and was accepted as a Third Lieutenant. After serving successfully on several cutters in the East, Healy began his lengthy service in Alaskan waters in 1875 as the second officer on the cutter RUSH.

He was given command of the revenue cutter CHANDLER in 1877. Promoted to Captain in March 1883, he was given command of the cutter THOMAS CORWIN in 1884.

Finally in 1886, he became Commanding Officer of the cutter BEAR, taking her into Alaskan waters for the first time. Here he remained until 1895.

Although already held in high regard as a seaman and navigator in the waters of Alaska, it was as Commanding Officer of BEAR that Healy truly made his mark in history. During the last two decades of the 19th Century, Captain Healy was the United States Government in most of Alaska. In his twenty years of service between San Francisco and Point Barrow, he acted as: judge, doctor, and policemen to Alaskan natives, merchant seamen and whaling crews.

He operated in an eerie echo of what would become the mission of his Coast Guard successors a century later: protecting the natural resources of the region, suppressing illegal trade, resupply of remote outposts, enforcement of the law, and search and rescue. Even in the early days of Arctic operations, science was an important part of the mission. Renowned naturalist John Muir made a number of voyages with Healy during the 1880's as part of an ambitious scientific program. With the reduction in the seal and whale populations, he introduced reindeer from Siberia to Alaska to provide food, clothing and other necessities for the native peoples.

The primary instrument in Healy's capable hands, to accomplish all of this, was the cutter BEAR, probably the most famous ship in the history of the Coast Guard. Under "Hell Roaring Mike", BEAR became legendary as "Healy's Fire Canoe". Healy and BEAR proved to be a perfect match, a marriage of vessel capability and unrivaled ice seamanship that became legend.

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[madrchsod]

3. another well thought plan by the bad guys

while we are pinned down in iraq chasing the one legged ghost the really bad guys are doing business as usual.

[Coastie for Truth]

4. Yoo Hoo Hoo and A Bottle of Rum - 15 Men On a Dead Man's Chest

Check these out-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2198527&mesg_id=2198677

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2198527&mesg_id=2199766

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4471536.stm

http://www.topcatmarinesecurity.com/

IT'S SING ALONG TIME KIDDIES


"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
The mate was fixed by the bosun's pike
The bosun brained with a marlinspike
And cookey's throat was marked belike
It had been gripped by fingers ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o'day in a boozing ken
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."

[MadHound]

5. So they're basing all of this speculation on the simple fact

That Somalian pirates now have RPGs?:wtf: That's a pretty big leap there. RPGs are almost as common on the arms markets as dandelions are on my lawn. And guess what, the US Navy can thank Americans, both inside the government and inside the weapons corporations for making them so common.

Well, apparently the solution is pretty simple, back off out of RPG range and open up with the long range guns:shrug: I really don't see the problem here. If indeed Al Qaeda pirates(:eyes:) are going to hijack a ship, they're certainly not going to do it with RPGs, that would sink the ship before they have a chance to use it as a ramming vessel. So, I guess that leaves these mythical Al Qaeda pirates with just their AK-47s to hijack such a mythical ship.

Bush's numbers are in the tank, support for the war is gone, investigations are starting to get a little to close for Bushco comfort, so guess what, booga booga, be afraid, Al Qaeda pirates on the high seas. Arrgh matey, give me a fucking break. I'm thinking that people are getting tired of being afraid over nothing all the time.

[benEzra]

7. ?? RPG's are Russian manufactured...

RPGs are almost as common on the arms markets as dandelions are on my lawn. And guess what, the US Navy can thank Americans, both inside the government and inside the weapons corporations for making them so common.

RPG's are all of Russian manufacture, and mostly get to people like this from the militaries of third world nations, probably via under-the-table illegal diversion by said militaries. AFAIK, the U.S. has never produced any RPG's; we went straight from the "bazooka" and derivatives to the M203-type grenade launcher.