Pirates Attacking American Ships Now

Send in the Navy:

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - The luxury American cruise ship teeming with hundreds of tourists just might have been too much for the Somali pirates to resist.

But the bandits, riding in two skiffs and firing rifle shots at the gleaming ship, were outrun in minutes when the captain of M/S Nautica gunned the engine and sped away in the Gulf of Aden, a spokesman for the company said Tuesday.

Still, the implications had the pirates hijacked the ship add a new dimension to the piracy scourge as NATO foreign ministers groped for solutions at a meeting in Brussels and the United Nations extended an international piracy-fighting mandate for another year.

The potential for massive ransom payments from the families of hundreds of rich tourists on a pleasure cruise may encourage similar attempts, especially following the successful capture in recent weeks of a Ukrainian cargo ship laden with tanks and a Saudi oil tanker.

Lovely, crazy-ass Somali's hopped up on khat are now attacking US-flagged ships. Perhaps it's time to detail a couple of cruisers and frigates to the area from the Gulf. If they see a pirate ship or are alerted to a potential high jacking, give them orders to shoot to sink and leave the survivors to the sharks. That'll do it. I'm sure the 72-virgins will be thrilled to see the dead pirates less an arm and a leg if they get into Paradise. Suicide bombers supposedly go to heaven so I would imagine piracy would not preclude someone from that honor. They'll call them "martyrs" and be done with it.

Of course it doesn't help that some nations (possibly even Saudi Arabia) are paying ransom to get their ships back and it seems no one else has the balls to confront them so we should.

For the record, these particular pirates should lose their piracy union membership for getting outrun by a cruise ship.