A dozen suspected pirates in a small fishing boat opened fire on two U.S. Navy warships in the Indian Ocean. Not surprisingly they were all captured, wounded or killed.

No one on the Gonzalez, a guided missile destroyer, or the Cape St. George was hurt. The incident occurred in international waters, about 25 nautical miles off the central eastern coast of the troubled east African nation.

The decision to take on Navy ships in a 30-foot fishing boat was “not too smart at all,” said Cmdr. Jeff Breslau, a Fifth Fleet spokesman in Bahrain:

“If somebody shoots at us, they can pretty much expect to die because we will return fire.”

h/t: Wizbang and here is one comment left on the Wizbang posting (by a Lew Clark) that I feel compelled to reproduce here:

“Well they won’t be doing so much back slapping on those ships after the ACLU files it’s lawsuit. Those people were engaging in their culture! Who are we to impose our Judeo-Christian morality on a long and proud tradition?”

Another commenter noted that the Washington Post’s coverage of the story indicated that it was the U.S. Navy that fired first. I’m sure the spin will be that they were just fishermen who pack RPGs, machine guns, etc. to defend themselves from real pirates.

tags: u.s. navy pirates

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 19th, 2006 at 5:44 pm by Insider and is filed under War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.