Pirates seize U.S.-owned, Italy flagged tugboat
As the US Navy in on scene working to resolve one pirate/hostage standoff, another has apparently developed:
NAIROBI, April 11 (Reuters) – Pirates seized a U.S.-owned and Italian-flagged tugboat with 16 crew on Saturday in the latest hijacking in the busy Gulf of Aden waterway, a regional maritime group said.
Andrew Mwangura, of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, said the crew were believed to be unharmed on the tugboat, which he added was operated from the United Arab Emirates.
Click the link for updates as the story develops.
How long will it take Hillary to laugh at this one?
Update:
Drudge is running this picture that reportedly shows the “pirates” and their hostages on the tugboat:

Can we just start calling them “terrorists” now? I don’t recall anybody using the term “pirates” to describe the four animals who boarded the Achille Lauro in 1985 and tossed a disabled American named Leon Klinghoffer overboard.
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Trackbacks
- UPDATED: Obama’s Reaction To Pirate Crisis: Ummmm’s The Word From President Pantywaist - New Surrender Monkey On The Block ..UPDATE: Pirates seize U.S.-owned, Italy flagged tugboat | Right Voices
- Pirates seize another US-owned ship « The Daley Gator
- Pirates seize U.S.-owned, Italy flagged tugboat | The 2008 Elections
- History, precedent, diplomacy and war « Peace and Freedom Global Future
- President Obama: how has Islam shaped the United States? « Jim Blazsik
- Pirates Testing Obama With New Seizure? » Pirate’s Cove
- Yet Another 3am Pirates Call For Obama : Stop The ACLU
- The Irascible Chef » Memories… Day 4
- Apparently Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration find the Somalia Pirate/Hostage situation funny | Fire Andrea Mitchell!
- Obama Foreign Polity Starts To Show Results « Vets On The Watch
- Tel-Chai Nation
- Pirate Drama: U.S. Navy Fired Upon; Turns Back? « Peace and Freedom Global Future
- Obama's Pirate Program For Redistributing The Wealth | Political Vindication
- In The Gulf Of Aden: Here We Go Again « Jane Q. Republican
- Piracy crisis escalates as hopes for a speedy resolution dwindle « Wellsy’s World
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bow to a deathcult king and reep your rewards. great job obambi
Let Italy handle it…yeah right.
Hey! That’s the same kind of boat as Odopeys tub toy!
Arrgh!
Why the heck not take another ship/tug, regardless of who owns it or where it’s sailing or whose crew is aboard. With The One giving mock seder dinners and hamming it up for the news media from the White House, what have they to worry about? They’ve seen that 4 terrorists can hold a ship’s captain for ransom and a slew of U.S. Naval ships at bey.
Has USA emblazoned on the hull, red star on the funnel. Yep, it’s his.
OK, I know there is danger in arm-chair quarter-backing, but…just damn…
Admiral Rags would have a few SEALs in the water near the lifeboat in the “other” piracy incident. The lifeboat would develop…suddenly and violently…a hull integrity problem, on the end the pirates occupy (which would not be too hard to know, given IR imaging).
Put them in the water, and see how much starch they exhibit.
I think if I was in charge of the military operation, I would shoot to disable rudder and propellers so they couldn’t go anywhere. Then send Navy Seals to board them and throw them all overboard. But that’s just me.
That’s if Obama has time after his 800 mile pizzas.
I agree. If I were calling the shots (or some other posters here), this story would have gotten ugly real fast, then been over suddenly with a happy ending for the USA.
Pirates relegated to Disneyland and B movies.
This is a funny time…
Up until recently, pirates caught in piracy were summarily executed. No need for a trial or due process. Swing from the yards…or the radar mast…whatever.
It is the same way we should be treating terrorists.
There are not two…and only two…possible status for people who do bad things (soldier or criminal). That is a false choice, and I can’t figure out when it was imposed. It’s never been true before in history.
Yep … no Mayaguez reaction from this oval office will ever be forthcoming no matter the situation …
All Odopey has to do is tell the Sec. Nav. he wants this over in 5 hours. and Bam Wow! it’s done.
Bow to the king, meanwhile the pirates bow the king.
Piracy must be stopped that is to be sure-I would just as soon it be us WITHOUT NATO or UN help–maybe India-they show some stones. But Theodore Tugboat must be saved! That is my grandson’s favorite-right after SpongBobSquarePants.
Millions for Theodore Tugboat-not one penny for Odopeys tub toy!
Commodore Stephen Decatur: you are needed.
Looks like air strikes in Somalia are increasingly likely. Some of the Navy assets heading out there are medical facilities.
Defense Department officials are also reportedly dismayed by the delays and intransigence of the Obama administration.
Nothing is more provocative than weakness. Also known as ‘kumbaya”. I expect the pirates, sorry, the undocumented crew members, to keep upping the ante so long as we twiddle our thumbs.
For instance, why didn’t we blow up that boat together with the pirates when the captain jumped into the water? In a domestic hostage situation, a SWAT team would have ready to move in. As with the economy, is anyone in charge of this?
And here’s another thing…
Why is there a vessel afloat along the Somali coast?
I know it would be a (another) terrible hardship on those people if they could not fish, but they have been supporting this nonsense. You can’t do that for free.
No vessel capable of getting past five miles off-shore should be left intact after Spooky finished its job, under Adm. Rags…
Follow up comment: whatever happened to the Obama who claimed he could do more than one thing at a time? Learning tough lessons of multi-tasking on the job are we? (Cue weepy Hillary: “It’s hard!”
I say lets bring a submarine underneath the lifeboat, raise it all out of the water. Then we can strap the lifeboat to the submarine and then let submarines do what submarines do.
Drowning people have this funny little quirk that they tend to forget what they are doing in order to breathe air.
Let the SEALS, who could be just under the water, bring the captain back to the surface.
—-
Or a couple of well placed cutting charges could be placed under the boat. Once they are set off, everyone would drop into the ocean. Again…. only one person ever has to surface. And no one has to know.
Any way it goes, you want the pirates under water where their weapons are useless.
That was then, this is now–Arm OUR ships. When seconds count the Navy is only hours away–it IS a big ocean Mr. President.
Commodore Stephen Decatur: you are needed.
The Carter II administration is off to a predictable start.
Actually, Squirrel, firearms fire underwater, and an AK-47 would be pretty deadly underwater…maybe on both ends, but, hey…
Other than that, I like both your ideas.
It appears that somebody in the Navy is using some brains, and they are denying the “pirate aid society” access to the scene…
Correct. And it wouldn’t take much. There are some nifty grenade launchers on the market that fire proximity-fused rounds. Just what the doctor ordered.
Nice, high rate of fire, too…
There are few pirate problems that can’t be solved by Ma Deuce.
The object of getting an enemy underwater is that adrenaline takes over. When one goes underwater unexpectedly, the heart rate immediately skyrockets. The faster the heartrate, the sooner one has to breathe. So unless you are trained for it, you are going to release your weapon or at the minimum you will take you finger off the trigger.
Aiming is useless without a facemask and bullets dont travel very far. Any weight is a liability in the water.
Learning to drown takes a lot of time and practice, and few can do it, but it can be done.
Now if the pirates had grenades or concussions devices then all bets are off.
They are getting away with this because we’re allowing them to. Knowing we won’t really do anything (like shoot to kill), they’re getting more brazen. And Obama is a joke as he refuses to confront anything that may ruin his “popularity”.
But, if you put them in the water with a nice, carefully placed and calibrated charge…say in the area of the engine…
then they begin to have very few options…
you can just let them bob around in the nice, shark-infested ocean for an hour or so…
and then ask if anyone would like to come aboard the pretty un-manned inflatable…
naked, of course.
Or you just pot them in the water…
With the guns of the US Navy silenced by “The One”, and with their role simply to look on, and with more Somali ship-hijackers on their way to assist their thug buddies, perhaps it is time to admit that our military has been defanged and is now a toothless tiger whose most violent response will be to gum our enemies.
When “The One” completes ‘negotiations’ and hands these thugs millions of dollars, a new ship, an apology, and bows to them (will it be once or four times?) it will be time to dismantle our military. The toothless tiger is just wasting money that “The One” can put to faaaaaaaaaaaar better use. Just think of all the money this Idiot In Chief will have saved to spend on ACORN and his brownshirt civilian army.
So much deja vu! Didn’t Jimmy Carter have a hostage crisis he was too weak to resolve too?
Show of hands. Who here expected strength and valor from a Democrat White House?
Comments on the situation from the White House……….crickets chirping sound here…………..
Pirates are above his pay grade:
http://thelcabroadside.wordpress.com/
perhaps our merchant marine ships need both weapons and vigilance. beats me how a fishing ship full of pirates can board a freighter at sea. anyone heard of all hands on deck to repel boarders.
When all the pirates have fully automatic AK-47s and the merchant sailors are armed with pocket knives…
Now, that is an absolute recipe for getting lots of merchant-marine people killed…
Where is the outrage from Amnesty International against the pirates for violating the captive’s human rights?
Time for the military to ignore their Weenie in Chief and blow these mo-fo’s out of the water. With guns; not water pistols.
SEALS in the middle of the night when there is most likely only part of the pirates “on guard” … start by putting short fused concussion grenades into the enclosed lifeboat … this would enable a rapid post explosion boarding to take the pirates down and save the Captain with a high probability of success and no loss of life …
(other than what might happen from covering the pirates in blood and throwing them overboard about another 200 miles from shore … but no one will be there to know how that turns out so who cares … )
oops … wrong pirate thread …
…
Now we know exactly who was listening to Hillary cackling and how seriously her words were taken. Every day we have more evidence that Obama’s administration is in over its head and is either too dimwitted to recognize it or too arrogant to admit it..
This is so easy to prevent it’s absolutely ludicrous. Every sailor required to have a 9mm or better sidearm. Captain & 1st mate have access to a gun locker with AR-15s Flash Grenades & Smoke grenades.. Problem solved without any significant threat to safety or cumbersome equipment for the crew..
But of course, that’s not the politically correct Obamanboy way to handle Terro… I mean “man cause disasters”..
However we get out of this, it is very important that the next time pirates see the American flag, they remember how badly this ended for the pirates. There is a reason why there are more Philippinos held hostage than anyone else, they are easy targets with no consequences for seizing.
This is rapidly becoming an albatross for Obama. If is doesn’t end soon with American strength preserved, he will be crippled in the eyes of our allies and enemies alike.
Time is running out. Do something already.
The biggie is the Rocket Power Grenades
# Maximum Effective Range – 985 feet (300 meters)
# Penetration – 15.8 inches (400 mm) of rolled homogenous armor
There are no fire hoses that can be effective at that range-no ship can maneuver out of their line of fire.
M2 .50 Caliber [12.7mm] Machine Gun
“Ma Duce“
Bore diameter: .50 inches (12.7mm)
Maximum effective range: 2000 meters with tripod mount
Maximum range: 4.22 miles (6.8 kilometers)
Maximum effective range: is 1,830 meters
Cyclic rate of fire: 550 rounds per minute
I doubt the muslim pirates would do well against such armaments-providing we have the will.
Here’s an idea…Give them the $2 million ransom, all in pennies !
BTW that’s 551 tons worth. Should sink that lifeboat quick, eh ?
Correction:
This is rapidly becoming an albatross for Obama. If this doesn’t end soon with American strength preserved, he will be
crippledcastrated in the eyes of our allies and enemies alike.That’s better. He can then join that other eunuch ex-president now building houses that fall apart after ten years.
John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) IS doing something! He’s called for “pirate hearings”! That’ll teach ‘em. “Avast, ye scurvies! If you don’t stop taking our ships, we’re gonna
make you walk the plankhold hearings on your sorry a$$e$!”Well, yeah, but in Carter’s defense, he was dealing with a real country with an actual government and a reasonably credible military force, far from the nearest US military base – not a rowboat in the middle of the ocean surrounded by US military assets. This guy is actually making Carter look fairly competent.
Pssttt…Obummer…Maybe the French will bail your sorry hind-quarters out of this.
Each day this goes unresolved without a USA win the loss of world respect BO likes to blast Bush about diminishes at an exponential rate …
lol @ jeff. I like it!
Oh, and…Why aren’t we jamming their satellite phone ? I’m assuming the Navy does have the technology for that.
And there is the concommitant danger that the only way he’ll be able to regain any credibility is to massively over-react the next time something happens. He’s put himself in a no-win situation already by appearing weak and indecisive, no matter how he reacts from now on out. Not that conservatives weren’t warning everybody about this for the last couple of years.
That way they can fill their pockets and swim to shore…heh…heh…
All true. Any merchantman takes miles to maneuver. They can’t run from high-powered inflatables or other small craft.
I still prefer the modern grenade launcher, but any .50 (or 12mm) MG is a good way to go, too…
Nice stand-off distance. You can add to that with a moderately priced set of optics…
This entire Pirate business is ridicules, geez, we could give Chap and his buds a case of Beer and some AK’s and they could get the dang job done.
oh wait, nevermind, they would prolly try and attack our Navy.
I’m quite sure, he would appreciate a good Burgundy instead…
He has always been crippled in their eyes, that’s why they all (”allies” and enemies) have been so enthusiastic about him since last year. He will not defend and protect Americans and American interests, as the world can now observe, and since he’s only three months in, there’s a lot of time yet for them to act to cripple the U.S.
Okay I hate the take on this story:
This is an ITALIAN tugboat and it does not matter who owns it, what matters is what country it is flagged with. Because they are flagged with Italy I don’t consider them a US ship, but more importantly neither does the law.
And that matters how…???
Jam their satellite phone? Wouldn’t that be provocative? Where would you jam it
Let us not offend the Religion of Pirates.
Hopefully with the rag head support coming out we can get all of them and jam their satellite phones where ever.
(With Michelle off can I say rag head?)
AZ N …
I agree … let every pirate in Somalia come to their aid … then out flank them and block them from returning to land … tkae them all out now …
I guess I was hoping the FBI doesn’t let hostage-takers call their friends to drop by while “negotiating”
Pirates are just the community organizers of the high seas. They shake down big corporations for money that they distribute among their networks of thugs and drug abusers. No wonder Chairman Zero is sympathetic.
tkae = take …. GRRRR …
Arizona, I believe the PC police prefer “Bathroom accessory drying apparatus heads”
Fixed it…
If we can get any more satellite phones the PC Police need some jamming
It’s all about sovereignty. An attack on a ship is an act of war on the country whose flag the ship is flying. This is primarily an Italian problem.
George Bush is out of office, and still is causing all of this trouble!
Well,…a nicely nuanced legal argument, but…
any act of piracy…
anywhere…
is something that the U.S. should never tolerate.
We don’t need a “legal” mandate. Our interests…and those of every seafaring nation…are to sweep the seas of these vermin.
If they try to use the tugboat to retrieve the lifeboat, it becomes our problem in a hurry.
“I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word…
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemies’ eyes
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered my castle stand
was built on pillars of sand…
People couldn’t believe what I’d become
But that was when I ruled the world.”
Cold Play
This may be Obama’s Iranian hostage crisis.
Addendum to my comment #69 to raggy:
Who owns the ship is a business consideration. That they decided to fly under a particular country’s flag signifies that they are sailing under that country’s protection. Good thing they didn’t decide to fly under the ACORN flag.
That is why all of those “rescue” missions have to be kept separate and why Obama’s equivocation is merely escalating the crisis. He is allowing the pirates to turn the entire Indian Ocean into an exclusively American problem.
Prior to taking the Maersk, piracy had been a business problem for various other countries’ shippers. Now it is an American international political crisis that is rapidly wrapping every imaginable issue into the negotiations.
Apocaplypse now already (so to speak)!
This is what pacifism gets you. Jimmy Carter’s pathetic world-view made the world a more dangerous place.
Now, his replacement x2, The OneIdiot, is making the world a more dangerous place again.
Thanks a lot, you worthless Community-Agitator Marxist Kenyan….
Odopeys battle position
What’s the difference between a pool table and Obama?
oh come on… you know the answer.
One has “felt needs”?
As soon as Eric Holder finds someone who can transalate Miranda Rights into Somali, we will get tough with the pirates.
One has a Cue the other is Cueless. lol…
Obie can’t be bothered… he and ‘chelle are busy shopping for a mosque to attend this Easter Sunday.
Give Hillary a call (Bill is off with the ladies this weekend)…
Gnat-straining over the registry and ownership of pirated vessels has all the virtue of having Texas DPS troopers worry about what license plate a stolen car bears.
Any seafaring nation has all the mandate it needs to deal with piracy. So far, the French (!!!) and Chicoms have shown greater resolve than have we.
That says a passel…
Err… one uses “spin” to achieve objectives… and the other uses “spin” to deceive objectives…
A pool table has balls.
Primarily- ok but piracy is an attack on international shipping and must be stopped. There was a time the great maritime nations COULD AND WOULD act collectively or as opportunity would allow. But alas there are no great nations-maritime or other. We have the ships, we have the people but the spirit is weak.
But I am sure we can get the UN to send a Letter of Concern and a recording of Miss Hillary’s cackle. Or she and Little Miss Muffet and sit on their Tuffet, what ever a tuffet is. As weak as Bush ll was American ships did not seem to be targeted when he was bombing Afghanistan.
As with most feral creatures these pirates smell weakness.
Ragspierre-papers please.
Arizona: true but it is important in this situation to not allow the rest of the world to once again hide behind our skirts. The French stepped up and took ownership of their problem and now, the French flag means something and is to be feared by pirates. It’s now up to the Italians to prove that their flag is to be feared too.
Doesn’t ANY of these ships carry firearms? Sheesh.
President Obama is closely monitoring his teleprompters, but so far nothing. Be patient, after all the hijacking is done then he will deal with them collectively once and for all. As our esteem Hillary chucked, didn’t Morocco and the US finished dealing with pirates many years ago. haha, it’s done, now let move on and don’t distract from dealing with the global economy.
OK … we are all officially toast …
It just came across Fox News that the FBI office in NYC is getting ready to press charges against the pirates …
NOT KIDDING FOLKS …
Bend Over and KYAGB …
Gotta make sure I go buy more ammo today … can’t wait for the major gun show here in 2 weeks … need more firepower …
Pap-ers…?
PAP-ers…????
We dun ned no stinkin’ pap-ers…!!!
No need for flash bangs… no need to Hull the lifeboat…
Rebreathers… swim up to both hatches… they’ll probably be open for ventilation at night…
Pop in about 4 Tear Gas canisters… I checked, no reports at all of the Pirates carrying Gas Masks… and the space in enclosed…
Pirates WILL abandon… then ya grab em…
Romer13 …
I considered the tear gas approach but decided against it because it will not necessarily immobilize the pirates to the point that they won’t react by killing the hostage before they could be boarded and captured … maybe it needs to be both at once …
make that Romeo13
Geez, guys…
We have strobe lights that would immobilize the people in the life boat.
We don’t lack options or hardware or operators…
We lack leadership.
After 15 centuries I guess you are right.
Would strobe lights work on the White House, Senate and House of Cartoon Characters?