Posted on 04/13/2009 6:07:49 PM PDT by tobyhill
Reporting from Washington -- Before ending a pirate standoff with three fatally precise shots, U.S. Navy SEAL snipers had passed on multiple opportunities to fire.
They had moved into position after the White House expanded the authority it had given the world's most powerful navy against a rag-tag foe holding an American hostage.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I think the military does things in a calculated manner and with good training. And from the results of their operation, it appears that they did it just right...
By killing those pirates we are going to have a harder time getting the release of the other 200+ hostages without them being harmed. Of course not much is being done to get their release anyway.
Don't get me wrong I would have taken care of this pirate problem years ago before there where hostages if I was in power to do so but sometimes you have to look at the long range picture.
Most Kenyans know? Most Africans know about the Islamic Luo tribe.
This whole thing was planned. Probably means billions in aid and millions of green cards.
What part of "The military official said the SEAL snipers had multiple opportunities to shoot the pirates" do you not understand? Instead, the SEALs ended up having to shoot night vision at a boat pitching in six-foot swells. I am very grateful they were up to the task, but I would have rather they have been given carte blanche to shoot at the first opportunity.
The pirates now know we will kill them if they attack American-flagged vessels. The hostages IMO are the problem of other countries who fail to protect their own flagged ships.
The lifeboat was originally 200-300+ yards away. Sounds pretty difficult to hit them. The Seals and the Navy did right. They waited until they had a better shot.
The Seals are elite and the best in the world but they are still human and can make mistakes. They are trained to wait until the best oppurtunity presents itself. That is exactly what happened here.
What part of “The military official said the SEAL snipers had multiple opportunities to shoot the pirates” do you not understand?
Well, you might have multiple chances, but if you are further away, you’re possible success is reduced, even when you do have that chance.
So, if you manage to get the lifeboat tethered to the ship and at a close distance, you’ve just increased your chances. That’s one item.
And then, if you have four pirates that you have to take out all at once, but you manage to get one onboard with you, you’ve increased your chances by eliminating one from the equation, being that you don’t have to be sure to take out four at one time, but only three at one time.
You’ve increased your chances, once again...
And that’s how you get a successful operation with the highest chance of success, and not simply the *first time* you get a shot off... (with a lower chance for success...).
You see..., you don’t just “jump” at any chance you get, you go for the odds and the *best chance* you get and you “work the situation” in your favor and you do so with “calculation” and with “patience”... :-)
Somehow, waiting until dark with increasing seas, and having to take a shot at targets on a lifeboat pitching up and down two or three feet is not optimal when you had daylight shots earlier with calmer seas. Your opinions are not based on what is being reported from the scene.
The Pirates obviously had no real intention of killing the captain. Up until this week no known hostage has ever been killed by the Somali Pirates.
They had a U.S. Navy Destroyer breathing down their back and did not act suicidal.
It seems an unnecessary escalation of an already volatile area that will now be beckoning the U.S. Navy to confront more than a few teenagers, Type 56s, and a dingy.
All for an Obama tough guy headline. He looks tough now.
With all due respect, you're blowing stuff out of your arse here.
By the statements in this article, the SEALs had multiple viable shots before they took the ones at the end. Byt the statements in other articles, the shots taken were at night at a pitching boat. I'm not a sniper or anything resembling a marksman, but if a SEAL team says they had shots and did not take them, it means they had confidence they could have hit the targets much earlier, and that should have been the priority, and NOT to wait for a gun to be pointed at the captain with intent to kill him.
Yea, we know. The question is when will our liberal brothers wake up? And yes, we're brothers, take that back to DU or wherever......
That's right. None of us where there and we don't know the reasons behind every move or what was discussed behind the scenes...or what the long term goal was. We will probabaly never know the true discussions because that will hurt future efforts in the same sitaution.
Besides, this is still a fresh story. Multiple "truth's" will probabaly be written obout this over the next few months.
Good point.
If I were one of those commanders I believe I could have easily misunderstood “hold on” to “weapons free.” Radios garble a lot you know.....and the commander knows the situation better than any community organizer who is waiting for a teleprompter to tell him what to do.
Yeah we know that everything printed is true. Have you ever thought the Navy is sounding out fake stories about this to confuse the pirates?
The long-term goal as stated in the article was a peaceful resolution. And that is why the SEALs held off when they had shots earlier in the day when conditions were better. And that is my entire point. The SEALs should have had the order to shoot at first viable opportunity to end it.
Well, like I said, that’s the way I see it. It looks like a perfectly calculated situation and the military played it just right...
I can’t say too much more than that... it was a great success...
Have you ever thought that there is no tactical reason to tell pirates that SEALs will pass on kill shots when they have the opportunity?
I've been through this nonsense before on FR and have read the report in question, which is here:
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=890
It's not exactly a secret, not exactly new, not really a "report" but a theoretical paper, not "stated flatly", and not something that these charlatans and many others of their ilk will openly disclose you to, so that you can read the paper yourself.
This is really a crock, from a crock of a gloomer and doomer "publisher". He really knows how to scare the wits out of his target audience, and then milk them for his kooky "insider intelligence reports."
What a crock.
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