U.S. Navy Seizes Pirate Ship Off SomaliaThe war of "Blackhawk Down", you may recall, incorrectly blamed on Bill Clinton (although that attack did occur on his watch), was a UN peacekeeping operation gone awry, first initiated and pretty much run by George H. W. Bush (Bush 41), for the first three months, at any rate.
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 32 minutes ago
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The U.S. Navy boarded an apparent pirate ship in the Indian Ocean and detained 26 men for questioning, the Navy said Sunday. The 16 Indians and 10 Somali men were aboard a traditional dhow that was chased and seized Saturday by the U.S. guided missile destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill, said Lt. Leslie Hull-Ryde of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain.
The dhow stopped fleeing after the Churchill twice fired warning shots during the chase, which ended 87 kilometers (54 miles) off the coast of Somalia, the Navy said. U.S. sailors boarded the dhow and seized a cache of small arms.
The dhow's crew and passengers were being questioned Sunday aboard the Churchill to determine which were pirates and which were legitimate crew members, Hull-Ryde said.
[...]
Somalia has had no effective government since 1991, when warlords ousted a dictatorship and then turned on each other, carving the nation of 8.2 million into a patchwork of fiefdoms.
Meanwhile, darker forces were at work, plotting an attack on American soil in Feb. 1993, the first month of the Clinton administration. Again. a Bush had warnings. Again, a Bush failed to pay heed to those warnings, fixated instead on a meaningless exercise in flexing American military power in a veiled imperialistic ploy. (sounds a little like Iraq in 2002, huh?)
Why Somalia?
Access to the Gulf of Arabia and the Red Sea. Oil. Shipping. Or didn't you notice that this story was reported out of the United Arab Emirates by way of Bahrain?
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