I think this is a good example of American efficiency: an aircraft carrier, two destroyers and a guided missile cruiser was required to follow 15 guys on a low speed yacht. No wonder Osama bin Laden can't be found.The pirate infested waters off of Somalia are now patrolled by 34 warships from 15 nations, a coalition determined to stop the brigands. But the grisly murders of four Americans aboard a captured yacht shows that the anti-pirate coalition can’t protect every seafarer, even when it takes early action to free hostages.
Those, at least, are the early conclusions that the U.S. Navy is drawing. The pirates that captured the S/V Quest on Friday were about 100 miles from the Somali northern coast, midway to an Indian Ocean island called Socotra that Yemen controls. But that’s practically their backyard. Despite the efforts of the anti-piracy coalition, the pirates’ reach has actually expanded — “all the way up into the North Arabian Sea, off of the coast of India, down to Madagascar,” Vice Adm. Mark Fox, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, told reporters yesterday.
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Early on Tuesday, a rocket propelled grenade hurtled from the Quest to the Sterett, followed by the sounds of gunfire — what Fox believes was the execution of the hostages. A raiding team of Special Operations Forces had yet to fire its guns or come aboard the Quest, leading Fox to tell reporters that the U.S. couldn’t have killed the hostages by mistake during the ensuing battle. That raiding team shot one pirate dead, killed another with a knife, and took the remaining 13 prisoner. Even before it boarded, Fox said, “several pirates appeared on deck and moved up to the bow with their hands in the air in surrender.”
So at least some of the pirates were negotiating — and even surrendering. The Navy brought overwhelming force: an aircraft carrier, two destroyers and a guided missile cruiser. But despite the seemingly-rational hijackers and the U.S. Navy’s big-time advantage, the pirates still killed their hostages.......
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02 ... m-pirates/