Maersk Ship Crew Speaks

Worth watching some true American heroes. Embed code not working.

Captain Rescued, Pirates Liquidated

Thanks to the Navy SEALs and the guts of the captain who succeeded on his second escape attempt:

The American captain of a cargo ship held hostage by pirates jumped overboard from the lifeboat where he was being held, and U.S. Navy SEALs shot and killed three of his four captors, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the situation.

Capt. Richard Phillips was helped out of the water off the Somali coast and is uninjured and in good condition, the official said. He was taken aboard the USS Bainbridge, a nearby naval warship.

At the time of the shootings, the fourth pirate was aboard the Bainbridge negotiating with officials, the source said. That pirate was taken into custody.

Negotiations would not have worked with these people, the only thing they understand is power and force and the SEAL's showed them that there are consequences to their actions. Don't mess with the US and the US Navy.

Obama would have let this play out for days in hopes of negotiating a settlement. That would have been disastrous for us in the region. Instead, we made our point with some bullets entering some pirate skulls. The only way they would understand.

Good.

Continuing to Vote "Present"

You may recall that during the period between the election and the inauguration in January that Joe Biden said:

"It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

Turns out that for the first time in his career, Biden was right. We are being tested and it's from Iran, North Korea and Somalia.

So how's Obama reacting? Not so well. He has not said a peep about any of those being held and the media has effectively buried the stories. The American people are ready to stand with him but Obama has chosen to sit on his hands.

Here we have Americans being held--two by nations that President Bush named as part of the Axis of Evil--and he has opted to do nothing. In other words, he's doing what he always has done when a difficult issue faces him, he is voting "present".

We are seeing our enemies try to get a measure of the man and he's not measuring up at all. First it was arresting reporters under dubious charges and now it's escalated to attempted high jacking and kidnapping--a tactic that never would have been used when Bush was in office as those who perpetrated the act knew we would respond forcefully.

Now we respond by not responding, by ignoring what is happening and hoping things will get better. So I say to Biden that we are ready to stand with Obama if he would actually say something--anything--about the fate of our fellow citizens.

Maersk-Alabama Captain Tries to Escape

Captain Richard Phillips made an attempt to escape by diving into the water but the pirates recaptured him before the Navy could assist. A ballsy move considering the waters in that area are teeming with sharks.

General Petraeus has ordered more forces into the area and the pirates are supposedly calling in reinforcements as well. They've also demanded $2-million for his release, a price that we can't pay because we don't negotiate with terrorists or haven't until this point.

I say it's time to show them that we aren't the Saudi's or any of the other nations who paid ransoms. We are the US and we'll liquidate every man responsible while destroying every single point of operation they have. I'm guessing these guys are Muslim's so I say we send them to meet Allah as fast as possible.

The World Disrepects Obama

The liberals told that Obama would change the way the world thinks of us. It appears they were more right than even they could have envisioned, the world now not only hates us but has no respect for us either.

It started over the weekend when Obama was talking about disarmament and Kim Jung Il launched a nuke-capable missile. It may or may not have been successful but our lack of response (read: shooting it down) speaks volumes. It continues today with two incidents. First, the Iranians have charged Iranian-American Roxana Saberi with espionage:

The lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, says Roxana Saberi has been informed of the charges against her.

"Her case has been sent to the revolutionary court. She, without press credentials, was carrying out spying activities under the guise of being a reporter," AFP quoted deputy prosecutor Hassan Haddad.

The real "crime" is that Saberi wrote about th repressive regime in Tehran. Don't expect Obama to act to quickly as--judging by the way he treats free speech in America (attacking Rush, etc), it doesn't seem to be a priority.

Even more telling is the fact that Somali pirates tried to take over an American ship, the Maersk-Alabama. Fortunately for us (and Obama), the crew is also American and managed to fight the pirates off and retake the vessel. I guess they figured it was a better risk to fight the pirates than surrender and await a feckless Obama response while they languish for months while he dithered, negotiated and generally embarrassed himself and us. Note that a Saudi ship was also high jacked and the crew of that vessel succumbed without a fight and it took a ransom to get them freed. God Bless America and God bless the crew of that ship.

So what have we learned about Obama? He's a great when he's touring the world or the country and speaking to adoring lefties, but is utterly clueless when he actually has to make hard decisions in the Oval Office. He has not only perpetuated the hatred our enemies feel for us but has also shown them that trifling with us will bring no return action or consequences. Kind of how Clinton was with al-Qaeda.

Saturday Morning News and Notes

Another cold Saturday but tomorrow--Super Bowl (TM) Sunday--looks like it will be nice.

Anyway, here's what happening in the world:

'Zo has a new one out. That dude makes me look slow and my wife calls me "A.D.D. Boy":



Treacher has some comments that are well-worth your time.

Great, the new head of Somalia appeared in al-Qaeda tapes and will probably make things worse.

After spending trillions, we'll probably look back on the Global Warming Swindle like we do the rainforests today.

Where do laid-off journalist's go? They wouldn't stoop so low as to write blogs, would they? This blog has been around for six years and will outlive some of the papers out today.

Daschle owed greater than $128,000 in back taxes at one point. Hope and change from the Obama administration.

Mmmmmm....Bacon.

Saturday Morning News and Notes

Happy weekend.

Here's what happening:

Breitbart unveils his new site Big Hollywood. It's meant to be a competitor to HuffPo with a conservative slant.

Breaking news! Obama sent out an e-mail with no plea for money for the first time in two years.

Irony alert: Somali pirates drown with ransom money paid via parachute by the Saudis for the oil tanker they hijacked (see picture at right). Enjoy hell boys.

Little girl found via Google. Is there anything Google can't do (besides stand up to the oppressive Chinese that is)?

Democrats finally realize their Senate leader is a (barely)functional idiot.

Finally; I like Carolina and Baltimore today in the NFL playoffs.

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.

Iranian Ship Suspected of Carrying WMD

This is disturbing but not unexpected:

A tense standoff is underway in northeastern Somalia between pirates, Somali authorities, and Iran over a suspicious merchant vessel and its mysterious cargo. Hijacked late last month in the Gulf of Aden, the MV Iran Deyanat remains moored offshore in Somali waters and inaccessible for inspection. Its declared cargo consists of minerals and industrial products, however, Somali and regional officials directly involved in the negotiations over the ship and who spoke to The Long War Journal are convinced that it was heading to Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia's Islamist insurgents.

...The MV Iran Deyanat was brought to Eyl, a sleepy fishing village in northeastern Somalia, and was secured by a larger gang of pirates - 50 onboard and 50 onshore. Within days, pirates who had boarded the ship developed strange health complications, skin burns and loss of hair. Independent sources tell The Long War Journal that a number of pirates have also died. "Yes, some of them have died. I do not know exactly how many but the information that I am getting is that some of them have died," Andrew Mwangura, Director of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Program, said Friday when reached by phone in Mombasa.

News about the illness and the toxic cargo quickly reached Garowe, seat of the government for the autonomous region of Puntland. Angered over the wave of piracy and suspicious about the Iranian ship, authorities dispatched a delegation led by Minister of Minerals and Oil Hassan Allore Osman to investigate the situation on September 4. Osman also confirmed to The Long War Journal that during the six days he negotiated with the pirates members of the syndicate had become sick and died. "That ship is unusual," he said. "It is not carrying a normal shipment."

This will not be covered by the MSM but it's clear that the Iranians have been caught shipping either biological, radiological or chemical weapons to Eritrea and that those weapons were to be used in Somalia. Iranian influence is ever-expanding in the region and this ups the ante considerably as the introduction of chemical weapons in that region of Africa, whether it be in the Sudan or Somalia could trigger a wider conflict involving Ethiopia and others. Perhaps that is the Iranian aim here.

While the feckless IAEA led by Mohammed el-Barradei continues to investigate Iran in a Clouseau-like manner, Ahmadinejad continues to spread his virulent strain of jihad to any nation he can. The time for military engagement with Iran by either the US or Israel is coming sooner rather than later (click the link for John Bolton's estimation of the timeframe), to continue to ignore the 800-pound elephant will be to the detriment of us and our allies.

The Long War Journal is a must-read for those following developments in the Mideast and eastern Africa as well as the overall War on Terror. They cover the nuts and bolts of what is really occurring in the region on a daily basis. Please consider dropping a little something in their tip jar.

Via LGF.