I’ve always said that you can use the script of The Big Lebowski as a guidebook in life because no matter what happens to you there is something in Lebowski that is applicable. For example, if you’re getting nowhere negotiating with kidnappers…
DIETER: Okay. Vee take ze money you haf on you und vee call it eefen.
WALTER SOBCHAK: Fuck you.
Sobchak then disarms the kidnappers, solving the problem. This is essentially what President Obama did during the crisis in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia. He didn’t call a press conference. He didn’t make bellicose threats. He didn’t even have a high-level meeting of his national security team. He discharged FBI negotiators and a Navy SEAL team. Once the FBI’s negotiations appeared to break down, he authorized the SEALS to use deadly force if the hostage was at all threatened. And when it was over, he didn’t pound his chest or attempt to classify it as a giant win in the war on terror. It was nothing more than a hostage rescue mission that was successfully applied.
There’s a theme running through parts of Left Blogistan that these pirates are acting out of some kind of legitimate desperation or self-defense. That’s lunacy. The pirates boarded this ship 240 miles off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean. They made no political demands. They wanted two million dollars in ransom and nothing else. How does The Big Lebowski address the issue of fairness for kidnappers?
KIEFFER: His girlfriend gafe up her toe! She sought we’d be getting million dollars! Iss not fair!
WALTER SOBCHAK: Fair! WHO’S THE FUCKING NIHILIST HERE! WHAT ARE YOU, A BUNCH OF FUCKING CRYBABIES?!
In the infinite wisdom of the Coen Brothers, we learn the true lesson of kidnapping. However tempting it may be to capitulate to their demands, it only encourages them to kidnap again. You don’t sympathize with kidnappers or seek to understand why they might need a million dollars. You don’t treat them like a political terrorist organization. You negotiate as a stalling tactic until you hopefully manage a rescue. And if some lives are lost in the process, you don’t mourn for the criminals that inflicted so much unwarranted pain on their victims and the families of the victims. You hope that their deaths serve as a deterrent to others who might think they can get rich quick by violating the law.
Also, this is what happens when you FUCK A STRANGER IN THE ASS!
link
From common Dreams:
Home > Headlines
Published on Monday, April 13, 2009 by RebelReports
Will Obama Prosecute the Captured Somali ‘Pirate’ in a US Court?
Habeas rights have been trashed, prisoners have been tortured and held without trial for years at Gitmo and Bagram. Obama should finally show respect for the legal rights of prisoners held by the US.
by Jeremy Scahill
The airwaves, newspapers and websites have been saturated with coverage of the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, the US citizen who was being held by four Somali “pirates” on a small lifeboat in the Indian Ocean, following the unsuccessful attempt by the Somalis to take control of the US-flagged vessel, the Maersk Alabama, a ship owned by a Pentagon contractor.
While details are still emerging, there are definitely some serious questions looming about how the decision to use lethal military force was put into play–in particular three key questions: 1. The legality of the killing of the three Somali men; 2. The political decision to kill them in light of long term potential consequences; and, 3: The legal status of the fourth Somali “pirate” allegedly in US custody.
First the background: We are told that on Friday, President Obama gave the military the green light to use lethal force to rescue Phillips. We also know that a group of “Somali elders” believed they were negotiating with the US to try to bring about a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Reports indicate that the Somali elders asked that the four Somalis be allowed to return freely to Somalia without being prosecuted in exchange for releasing Phillips. That was reportedly rejected by the US. On Sunday, the Somalis were told the negotiations were over and that the Americans “had another action.” Shortly after that, lethal force was used–with Navy SEAL snipers on board the USS Bainbridge shooting dead three of the Somali men. The Navy says the snipers took the action because they believed Phillips’s life was in “imminent danger”–this allegedly came when a Somali was pointing an AK-47 at Phillips’s back. A fourth Somali citizen is in custody, though it is unclear when exactly he was taken by the US. Reports indicate that he had been stabbed in the hand in the initial “pirate” raid on the Maersk Alabama and, before the Sunday raid, had voluntarily left the lifeboat holding Phillips to seek medical attention from the US warships and/or to negotiate with the US side.
I have been in touch with two well-respected legal scholars, Francis Boyle from the University of Illinois College of Law and Scott Horton, a military and constitutional law expert. Both agree that the US had legal justification to use lethal force against the “pirates.” Boyle said, “Technically, piracy is a felony under US law. And deadly force can be used against someone involved in the commission of an ongoing felony.”
For his part, Horton said: “The legal rule historically is that pirates on the high seas are fair game for any country’s military. In this case they kidnapped a captain and threatened to kill him, so the use of lethal force against them was fine from a legal perspective. (The bigger question was whether it was a wise thing to do, of course, but that requires an assessment of the entire tactical situation, about which I don’t know enough).”
On that question, Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, head of the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, seemed to realize that there may be significant consequences for the decision to kill the Somali men. “This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it,” Gortney said. As Reuters reported, “Somali pirates have generally not harmed their hostages and officials fear they could now act more violently.”
As one “pirate” said, “The French and the Americans will regret starting this killing. We do not kill, but take only ransom. We shall do something to anyone we see as French or American from now.” Another added, “As long as there is no just government in Somalia, we will still be the coast guard… If we get an American, we will take revenge.”
On the issue of jurisdiction to prosecute the fourth Somali “pirate,” Horton said, “Pirates can be tried anywhere that exercises jurisdiction. Here they attacked a US-flag vessel, which means that the United States would have criminal law jurisdiction if it chose to exercise it.”
There are certain to be calls from blood-thirsty lunatics to send this Somali man to Guantanamo or Bagram with right-wingers like Newt Gingrich and Cal Thomas wrapping this into their tired “Obama is weak on terror” narrative. As Thomas wrote last week on the Fox News website:
What will the Obama administration do if the pirates are captured alive? He won’t sent them to Gitmo, which he is closing down. Will they get ACLU lawyers? Will there be testimony from a “pirates rights” group? Will they be released on a technicality after a trial in U.S. courts? If there is not as forceful a response as there was during the Jefferson administration, it will invite more of these incidents. The world’s tyrants are watching to see how President Obama reacts. The message they get will determine how they respond to America and whether we will be in greater peril.
Indeed, The Wall Street Journal on Sunday called for the Somali man in custody to be “transferred to Guantanamo and held as an `enemy combatant,’ or whatever the Obama Administration prefers to call terrorists.” On this point, Horton points out an interesting distinction between the Obama and Bush administration positions on “pirates,” particularly as it relates to the “terrorist” label.
The big legal issue is surrounding calling them “terrorists,” which the Bushies did with regularity and Obama resisted. I think that Obama and his people are correct. These people were motivated by the desire to make money, pure and simple, which makes them conventional pirates. If they were labeled “terrorists,” the insurance company and the ship charter company wouldn’t be able to negotiate with them or make a payment. Pirates they can still pay off, which will often be the most sensible and least costly solution.
If the US decides to pursue prosecution of the Somali “pirate” in custody in a US court, he would obviously hopefully have a right to a defense (which would clearly enrage the crazies) and the nature of that defense could well depend on what type of legal counsel he ends up with and how his lawyers present the motives of his actions, as described to them, in attempting to seize the Maersk Alabama. This could be a major test of Obama’s legal interpretation of the rights of prisoners taken by the US in unusual circumstances (to put it mildly). In an era when due process has been trashed in the US and prisoners have been tortured at CIA “black sites” and held without trial for years at Guantanamo and elsewhere, Obama should allow exactly what Thomas and his ilk fear so much–respect for the legal rights of prisoners held by the US.
So what would a “pirate” defense actually look like? Remember, some Somalis–and other international observers– do not exactly see the “pirates” as being 100% unjustified in their actions. This form of “piracy” really escalated after the 1991 collapse of the Somali government and Western ships allegedly dumping waste off the Somali coast and devastating the Somali fishing industry, a primary source of income in the Somali coastal areas where many of the “pirates” are based.
If Obama elects not to take the terrible option of sending the man to Guantanamo, it will be interesting to see if Obama elects to bring him to the US or, as has been suggested by some, prosecute him in Kenya.
As Professor Boyle pointed out, “certainly if he were tried in a United States federal district court, he could try to make the points [about dumping, etc], which is why they might send him to Kenya to avoid all of that… If i remember correctly, under the Geneva Convention definition of piracy (which is not precisely the same thing as the federal statute), the crime of piracy must be for a private purpose, not a public purpose. So he might be able to raise these issues on the question of intent–that he acted for a public purpose, not a private purpose.”
Boyle later emailed me the following quote from St. Augustine:
Kingdoms without justice are similar to robber barons. And so if justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands? For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? The band also is a group of men governed by the orders of a leader, bound by a social compact, and its booty is divided according to a law agreed upon. If by repeatedly adding desperate men this plague grows to the point where it holds territory and establishes a fixed seat, seizes cities and subdues peoples, then it more conspicuously assumes the name of kingdom, and this name is now openly granted to it, not for any subtraction of cupidity, but by addition of impunity. For it was an elegant and true reply that was made to Alexander the Great by a certain pirate whom he had captured. When the king asked him what he was thinking of, that he should molest the sea, he said with defiant independence: “The same as you when you molest the world! Since I do this with a little ship I am called a pirate. You do it with a great fleet and are called an emperor.”
Jeremy Scahill is author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and a correspondent for Democracy Now!, as well as a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute. His website is RebelReports.com
© 2009 Jeremy Scahill
does Common Dreams allow for full reprinting of their copyrighted material? If not, we’ll have to delete this comment. You have to abide by fair-usage.
No. Common Dreams does not care. In fact here’s something else:
Home > Further More…
04.13.09 – 10:59 AM
When Will the Media Interview Somalis About the ‘Somali’ Pirates?
by Jeremy Scahill
RebelReports reports:
I have still yet to see a Somali person interviewed by any major US media outlet regarding the “pirate” situation. The story is being told entirely through the lens of US military analysts and pundits. While there are certainly many Somalis who could explain the context for this activity by their countrymen, the networks can’t seem to locate any-even though there is a sizable Somali community in the US and Canada. One source I would recommend is the Somali-Canadian Hip Hop artist K’naan. Here is part of a recent essay, “Why We Don’t Condemn Our Pirates,” K’naan wrote not long before the current incident that is grabbing the headlines:
Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Outside of sea bandits, and young girls fantasizing of Johnny Depp, would anyone with an honest regard for good human conduct really say that they are in support of Sea Robbery?
Well, in Somalia, the answer is: it’s complicated.
K’naan details some of the toxic dumping by Western nations following the collapse of the Somali government:
A Swiss firm called Achair Parterns, and an Italian waste company called Achair Parterns, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they were to dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, whereas to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.
In 2004, after a tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including “Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, Cadmium, Mercury and chemical waste.” But this wasn’t just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters. The UN envoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia’s aquatic life. Now years later, the deterring has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to burry our nation’s death trap.
Now Somalia has upped the world’s pirate attacks by over 21 percent in one year, and while NATO and the EU are both sending forces to the Somali coast to try and slow down the attacks, Blackwater and all kinds of private security firms are intent on cashing in. But while Europeans are well in their right to protect their trade interest in the region, our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster.
No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters. The truth is, if you ask any Somali, if getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western Vessels, and the producing of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high.
It is time that the world gave the Somali people some assurance that these Western illegal activities will end, if our pirates are to seize their operations. We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums. It seems to me that this new modern crisis is truly a question of justice, but also a question of whose justice.
As is apparent these days, one man’s pirate is another man’s coast guard.
this is about the most tiresome, meritless crap imaginable.
Somali pirates are patrolling far outside of their coastal waters in the Indian Ocean and in the straits of the Gulf of Aden, which is a necessary transit point for all ships traveling north to the Suez Canal. They are kidnapping passengers on cruise lines and holding them for ransom. These pirates have not, as far as I know, ever made any political demands related to dumping or fishing, but have only demanded cold hard cash. They are currently holding almost 250 people hostage.
Any Somalians that want to interdict ships operating in their sovereign waters have every right to do that, provided they abide by the laws of the sea. Since they have no central government or funds for a coast guard, I understand their patrols will be ad hoc and militia-like in nature. But they have a right to demand vessels leave their waters for any reason. That has nothing to do with high seas piracy and you know it.
I wouldn’t want to come off as siding with pirates (I am thinking of circumnavigating the globe and the Somali situation is a very grave concern for me on my trip as an American) but when has the UN, US or any other government taken anything seriously unless the issues revolved around money?
Even in our country we are allowed to protest anything, EXCEPT money (WTO Seattle). When you mess with money, you are squashed like a grape by riot police, Blackwater, the Marines…you name it.
My only access to the Mediterranean, without going around Cape Horn, a very dangerous trip for a individual, is past the coast of Somalia and through the Suez Canal.
I don’t understand your comment at all.
This involved a US citizen who was being held at gunpoint in an out-of-gas-motorboat that was floating in the middle of the ocean. I assume, given your travel plans, that you can envision yourself in the same predicament as this sea captain. If that were to happen, I’m pretty sure you would not consider yourself to be ‘money’, not would you consider a team of SEALS sent to rescue you as primarily concerned with money.
I think I would consider myself dead.
I hope that you don’t seriously think that they send in the Marines for ‘just anyone’.
I am part of the masses, not special or privileged, and nobody is going to send Marines after someone like me, they are going to let me die.
You can’t seriously think that we are all equal still.
You are a US citizen? Yes?
Without question we would send rescue teams and negotiators. We never leave US citizens unprotected and we certainly would attempt to rescue you rather than paying ransom. But, if need be, we would pay ransom for your freedom.
I’ve never heard of a situation where an American citizen was knowingly abandoned by our government in a hostage situation.
Yes, I am a citizen.
I am glad that you have this much faith in our government.
I don’t agree with you, but I find it interesting that someone believes that as a nation, we still do the right thing for the citizens, whatever that might mean.
I guess my faith in the nation has been abused enough lately that I believe only in spin and convenience, and less in morals, values, or principles.
I know that you believe that we would never leave US citizen unprotected, but I find that unconvincing based on what is happening here at home.
How can we propose that we ‘stand up for our citizenry’ in one situation, while we are busy selling them down the river in another? And even if we did, stand up for US citizen in hostage situations, what does it mean for the rest of us, who are effectively being held hostage in our own homeland by the crushing weight of ever increasing national debt (a form of slavery) and joblessness?
(BTW I am going to spend some time researching all of the known incidents of our country abandoning its citizens to other nations and I will get back to you).
It is a wicked double standard to champion one point while making a mockery of it every day in another situation.
How can we advocate that we (the nation) care about citizens, enough to send in a hostage rescue team, when we are so busy f***ing over the majority? If this is not a ploy to make US citizen ‘feel’ more protected, I don’t know what it is.
That is the main reason I can’t find faith in my countries actions or believe that we might ‘do the right thing’.
I am following the money, the only thing our country worships or values anymore, and it has very little to do with the safety and welfare of her citizenry.
Me telling you that our government always actively tries to free hostages in no way implies that our government does ‘the right thing’ in any other area of endeavor. Nor does it imply the opposite. It’s just a fact.
I understand your point. Didn’t mean to twist. I actually believe that this blog and the views are important (they certainly provide me with a different perspective).
I guess what I am trying to say is that the government only serves the people when it benefits from serving them, in this case it benefited by making you feel more secure (making me feel less secure) even though you probably won’t be traveling to this region anytime soon, you can sleep tight in your bed knowing that the great U S of A is looking out for you off the coast of Somalia.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/missing_27_us_c.html
Here is a few…I have to walk my dogs, they are bugging me…but I think I could scrounge up several hundred more incidents and people in Hostage situations who have been abandoned by our country.
But you prove my point. The article link discusses the three Americans held hostage by FARC who were rescued late last year. We don’t always succeed in rescuing hostages, but we never give up.
From Vanity Fair
All of this is, of course, fully justifiable to protect Somali waters…
is to kill the pirates immediately.
It’s the patriotic thing. That’s what Thomas Jefferson would advise.
Just kill them.
For most of recorded history the agreed approach for pirates has been to kill them summarily. I think it might still be legally permitted. But I oppose the death penalty and I see no reason to carry out executions of pirates. If they are killed in the process of freeing hostages, I have no problem with that. But, if they surrender or are captured, they should be treated as criminals.
There is international law dealing with piracy on the high seas. Some of it is centuries old, some only decades. I’m not a lawyer but it seems that since the piracy occured in international waters and not national waters, existing law provides that the U.S. Navy try him by court-martial and the SPOA (Senior Officer Present Afloat) has full authority to convene it immediately and execute the existing prisoner immediately. He probably won’t, but military trial is definitely called for.
Is there an international lawyer in the house?
SOPA, my fingers slipped.
yeah, but who’s donny? did the seals take a casualty that we haven’t heard about?
Why they need the money is because their country is f’d up.
It’s understandable that they’d do what they had to do to survive.
My country is f’d up too and I need money. Maybe I should seize a ship 240 miles off shore. Are you from Left Blogistan?
Can I join your crew? I could use a few bucks too, and I’ve learned all there is to know about pirates on vacation in Ocracoke. 🙂
Sure, Cabingirl. The Voice always has room for you. Can you buckle a swash?
Ok go ahead. Or join a gang. Or deal drugs.
It’s only bad when Brown people do it. Otherwise it’s romanticized. So I hope you’re not Brown.
You don’t need two million dollars to survive.
Ha. Tell that to Wall Street.
The story of the “Navy Snipers” making three simultaneous head shots, from a moving platform (a ship) to another moving platform (the life boat), and hitting a target that could not present itself with much more than twelve inches in size, (the profile of a human head) is such a stretch of the imagination to be well over the border into the absurd—but now they report that the shots were made “in the dark”——– I find all this fascinating. I think of it as the “official” version. Makes me wonder what actually happened.
they might gussy the story up a bit to make it seem like there was an imminent threat when there was none. we’ll probably never know, either way.
But our SEALS are fully capable of sniping on moving platforms at a distance in the dark, and that’s exactly what they did.
Night vision scopes and gyro-stabilized weapons and great skill.
First, great post Boo.
Second, while it is lunacy that these folk are acting a defense force now, they apparently started out that way. And Europe and other nations are pretty clearly guilty of dumping and illegal fishing and have turned a blind eye to it for years.
So when the warlords say they are going to use the ransom money to clean up the dumping (laugh) and that the pirates are patriots, then politically within Somalia it might as well be true.
I admire that we never flinched on the requirement that these guys be arrested and tried. I have no problem shooting them. But if we are going to patrol for pirates we also need to patrol for dumpers and illegal trawlers. Those are crimes against the planet and Somalia and the nations involved have a responsibility to stop it. It also takes away any moral authority for Somalis to feel they need to continue highjacking ships.
I agree that dumping and illegal fishing are legitimate concerns and that addressing them could, over time, help lesson the threat of Somalian piracy. But if we’re talking responsibility here, there is no legitimate argument that provides even an ounce of justification to the pirates. None.
could probably do with some venture capital and particularly some coaching/mentoring by successful entrepreneurs.
They need a business model that takes their existing shipyards, skillsets, and remaining resources and churns out product that other countries will buy.
Can I buy some derivatives? Maybe some options on CDS’s. Bets on the Somali stock market are bound to make a fortune. Or lose one.
CNN said the best way to defeat Somali pirates is Barb wire and zig-zag course. I don’t doubt this, but whether the Somali pirates are peaceful or not doesn’t really matter when their holding AK-47’s. Its all about the pirates wanting money, nothing more.
Great post.
“…legitimate desperation or self-defense…”
The weirdos who are defending the actions of these pirates need to realize that they are also standing up for the cop killer who thought his gun ownership was being banned. Same shit, different angle.
Violence or the threat of violence against uninvolved parties is not an acceptable response to real or imagined grievances. Cops coming to settle a domestic dispute are not suitable substitutes for “the One World Order Comin’ for Your Guns.” The crews of merchant vessels are not appropriate substitutes for toxin dumpers or whatever. ALL criminals have justifications but that does not mitigate the definition of their crimes.
Kind of frightening how right-wing Booman has become. Sad. Like most right-wingers he doesn’t bother to investigate the situation or find out the facts, but just attacks those who are different from him, and always believes that might makes right. But at least he’s starting to come out of the closet, and openly attacking the lefties.
The negotiations never did break down. That’s a media lie. They were going well. It’s just that the right-wingers felt like engaging in some violence, killing a few more non-whites, and showing the world what tough guys Americans are. Pathetic people who embarrass us all. If Obama was anywhere near competent he could have defused this situation without causing violence. He should also be acting to remove US troops from Ethiopia and Somalia, which are there illegally, and who have killed a lot of innocent people. But that would be taking responsibility for their actions, which right-wingers never do.
Mike, your comment is a kind of case study is why a guy like Karl Rove can say things like this and be taken seriously:
When you try to define me as a right-winger, you effectively make Karl Rove’s case for him.
It’s not mikep’s fault that “you don’t sympathize with kidnappers” sounds a lot like “you don’t sympathize with terrorists.”
Yes it is. Because I also said that you don’t treat hostage-taking pirates like a political terrorist organization that has a list of grievances. If I distinguish between them is it too much to ask that I not be accused of conflating them?
You knowingly used language that is almost verbatim what the likes of Malkin, Rove, et al. used during the Bush years to stifle criticism. The “sympathizing” construct is/was a bullshit way of ridiculing people who don’t support hawkish actions–for any reason–as weak. People weren’t “sympathizing” with terrorists then just like people aren’t “sympathizing” with kidnappers now. It’s garbage on its face, and regardless of what verbal qualifications come next.
people aren’t sympathizing with pirates? are you serious?
There are three threads of comments here that are filled with links and expressions of sympathy.
link
link
link
link
link
link
I could go on.
And just so I am perfectly clear on this…
You can’t successfully stop a political organization from attempting acts of terrorism by totally ignoring their political agenda. Therefore, efforts to combat terrorism have to be multifaceted and include wherever possible some effort to address those grievances. This is obviously complicated by a legitimate desire not to reward and thereby encourage terrorism and by the limits of whatever concessions you are willing to make. But you can’t just declare war on a negotiating tactic and think you will succeed.
However, Somali pirates who make no political demands and have no political agenda are just criminals like bank robbers and need not be understood. The only concession is paying the ransom, and you want to avoid that as often as possible.
If there are long-range policies that can lesson the appeal of piracy, those should be pursued, but they have no tactical relevancy.
Yes, they are like criminals. And don’t we on the Left like to examine the causes and explanations for what drives crime? Don’t we talk about education and lack of job opportunities contributing to crime? When the Right makes a big stink out of an individual crime, don’t we respond by asking what they haven’t considered?
It is the Right that ignorantly scoffs at trying to understand a problem and labels it “sympathizing.” You’re doing the same thing, yet some blind spot is not letting you see the parallel.
sorry, but I don’t generally try to find excuses for violent criminal behavior. It probably has something to do with this.
I get irritated every time I hear someone explain that some murderer turned to crime because they didn’t have opportunities or whatever. As someone who has done community organizing in the inner city, I’m much more concerned with helping keep their neighborhoods policed, their snow removed, their garbage picked up, their schools open, and their transportation cheap. And their thugs locked up.
Thanks for clarifying. I find your response revealing.
I hope it reveals the values of people who live in crime-riddled neighborhoods who have no sympathy for the people in their midst who treat life cheaply.
The values are out of control here.
I don’t think two million dollars is much anymore and I would pay that for a human life. Keep in mind that Wagoner got $22 million in ‘firing money’ when he left GM, for running an American Corporation into the ground, so $2 million doesn’t seem like much to me. Bailout = million million…a million here or there NBD.
The only reason we would be involved in this situation is because there is money or other issues circulating here that we are not aware of.
I can’t even count the vast numbers of Americans who have been left to rot in captivity by our government. What is special about this Captain (is he Paris Hilton’s cousin or something)?
I KNOW that if I got captured by Somali pirates, the government would breath a sigh of relief that another trouble maker was gone, they certainly wouldn’t send the Marines in for me.
There is something more going on here, whether it is our ‘God given right’ to dump toxic waste of the Somali coast (the Native American’s don’t want it anymore and with Three new reactors alone planned for the South, where else are we going to put it) or some money issue we aren’t seeing yet.
Here’s a challenge. Using Google, find me one example of a US citizen being held hostage in our entire history where the government refused to get involved and left them to rot. Just one case. Any one. Ever. Even when legally prevented from launching a rescue mission in the Philippines for two Red Cross workers, we still helped:
We help rescue defense contractors, too.
Remember the Lebanon hostage crisis in the 1980’s?
Okay, Buckley was really our CIA station chief and he was brutally tortured to death and they sent the audio tape to Langley for the CIA’s enjoyment. The rest of them? Ordinary American citizens that we went so far to rescue as to sell weapons to the Iranians.
American POW’s from the Viet Nam War. Many were left behind. They were left there-period after we left Viet Nam. For years, Viet Nam would not recognize us diplomatically. So that was the end of that. Many of our soldiers-our fellow countrymen-died in capivity long after that war was over. Their families are still looking for closure.
Go to page 463 and start reading.
That is just a huge right-wing-nut wackadoodle lie.
Hey fuckin'” A” man ! The Big Lebowski. KIll ’em all and let God sort ’em out! Yeah Bro, now the progressives got blood…cool! Let’s kill all them fuckers messin’ with us,feels so gooooddd! Screw them leftist wimps all talkin’ about rights and repression and shit. Let’s get down with our Zionist brothers and just fuckin’ kill!
Here’s what I wrote:
How you go from that to ‘Kill them all and let God sort ’em out’ is hard to fathom. It’s called a hostage rescue mission. It often involves killing the kidnappers, but that is not the point of the mission. However, it is useful for kidnappers to know that their death is a likely outcome of their actions.
I’m gonna have to rent that flick.
heh. I put it in my netflix queue a little over a month ago so I could figure out what he was talking about…
Good idea.