pirates

You’re not going to believe this, but Scott Carney’s got a post up at Danger Room interviewing Somali pirates on their strategies for hijacking cargo ships, complete with video a pirate crew provided him. I hesitate to even describe this because it’s such a great get and you should just click through the link, but [...]

Richard Philips, the Maersk Alabama captain who endured a week of captivity by Somali pirates before U.S. Navy SEALs freed him, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today about what measures ought to be taken by commercial shipping to deter or defeat pirate attacks. Here’s Philips’ statement, on the question of arming crew members:
At [...]

A mysterious, and mysteriously detailed, email criticizing President Obama’s feckless decision-making during the Somalian pirate standoff has been making the rounds in the usual circles. But according to Louis Hansen, the email is probably bunk. It’s credited to retired Rear Adm. Lou Sarosdy, who says he didn’t write it.
“I don’t know any SEALs,” said Sarosdy, [...]

Want some details about how the Navy SEALs took down the pirates holding Capt. Richard Phillips hostage? Christian Lowe has some good enlightened speculation over at DOD Buzz. And as long as today’s teabagging day, I feel behooved to note @mattyglesias’s observation:
My taxes pay for pirate-killing snipers. #teaparties

I’ve spent the last 24 hours desperately compiling a forward-looking piece on efforts within the naval community to make the Navy a more effective anti-pirate force. I filed about an hour ago and my diligent editor, Laura McGann, has been tweaking ever since. And suddenly I discover, thanks to Rob Farley, that I overlooked perhaps [...]

Here’s Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, making a clear distinction between Somali pirates and Somali terrorists, while indicating that both scourges are rooted in the dysfunctional state of Somalia itself — a condition he says the United States should work to correct. From an interview today with MSNBC:
Based [...]

Charles Johnson of the war-on-terror-watching blog Little Green Footballs tells critics of President Obama to cool it over the resolution of the pirate hostage crisis.
President Barack Obama is the Commander in Chief of the US armed forces. I certainly don’t agree with a lot of his policies, but I’ll be damned if I won’t — [...]

… or actually, the pirates’ reprisals might be direct, too:
Pirates attacked another cargo ship early Tuesday morning in the Gulf of Aden, continuing a spate of attacks despite recent U.S. and French military action against hijackers in the waters.
Pirates attacked the M/V Irene between 1 and 2 a.m. local time Tuesday, about 100 miles southwest [...]

After the rescue of Maersk Alabama captain Richard Phillips, some Somali pirates issued a predictable amount of bluster about reprisals. (”Every country will be treated the way it treats us,” said Abdullahi Lami, a pirate in the safe-haven Somali den of Gaan, according to The Associated Press.) Defense Secretary Bob Gates noted that the pirates [...]

I had wondered how former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had been blasting President Obama up to Sunday morning over his response to the Somali pirate crisis, would respond to the successful rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips. Gingrich tweets his answer:
The navy seals did exactly thr right thing in rescuing the american captain President [...]