Cindy Claveau

US Navy Fires on Ship in Persian Gulf, One Dead - Yahoo! News

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Ajax.Renfort

Let's see...

1) 20% of the worlds oil supply moves through there
2) The US controls most of the worlds oil fields
3) American's want to continue to drive their SUV's (to hell with climate change.. it's just a hoax anyway O.o)

It was a fishing boat and one Indian national was killed.

Don't get in the way of gluttony and his oil!

Jahar Aabye

My guess is that they were afraid of what happened to the USS Cole in Yemen a decade ago. That doesn't mean that they responded appropriately or that their fears were well-founded, I'm just saying that the motivations of the crewman behind the gun might not have been as simplistic or as recklessnas you imply. I would hope that they had a better excuse than "they were too close for comfort" though.

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eighthdwarf Checchinato

Yay for paranoia-induced and paranoia-inducing FUD!

Gosh they're on board of a giant (677ft long) ship that belongs to the most intimidating and threatening fleet of the world, and don't even have any business down there except for playing the bully in service of some companies that are rich enough to buy politicians - and they saw a tiny 27ft long civilian boat as an immediate danger that has to be shot at? What a bunch of self-righteous cowards!

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Lloyd Newman

From USS Cole bombing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yeah, and look how well THAT turned out...



List of Sailors killed in the attack:


The boat approaching the Rappahanock was warned off repeatedly. It's highly likely that the warnings included "shooting across the bow" which is a universal signal to slow/stop/do not continue on your current course.

Given what a small boat armed with explosives did to the USS Cole, can you imagine what a similar bomb in a small boat could to a fuel ship? I can.

I've only got one thing to say about this.

"Nice shooting, sailors!"

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Aliselia Aeon

Pentagon Sends Carrier to the Middle East Early - Yahoo! News

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Gabriell Anatra

Were they warned off by shots across the bow or by verbal warning? If it's the former then it's very likely something was up, if the latter then it gets a lot hairier.

eighthdwarf Checchinato

So you blame them for having done the right thing, by not having shot first? WTF is wrong with you?!


Sailors on a ship that had absolutely no business to be there to begin with.
While I can't condone nor excuse the violence (not even due to the fact that Al Qaeda actually IS a product of US-American involvement and destabilization strategy which means that they're biting the hand that fed - and then abandoned them), I can see an analogy to the following situation in daily real life:

A bunch of bullied kids have enough of the constant harassment by the worst bully in high school and his constant intimidating attitude when not attacking them, so they band together and do risky pranks, and use toys and all kind of stuff in an attempt to sabotage and ridicule this bully, even when it means that he has to be sent to hospital for a while when getting him suspended doesn't work.
Again, while the violence is inexcusable, the intent behind can be understood logically and psychologically.

So the Navy say. And that military organizations use to come up with cover stories to make themselves look good and their victims look bad, is nothing new.
Did eyewitnesses report something on the Net yet?

There we have the paranoia again. What does that ship have to do there to begin with? They don't belong there, period.

Wow. You really congratulate them for murdering civilians? Just wow.

eighthdwarf Checchinato

Wow, sending more carriers to intimidate and threaten others - as if the region there isn't destabilized enough yet.

Why am I not surprised of this reaction of the Pentagon Nutjobs?

Cindy Claveau

The craft that blew itself up next to the Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39, was smaller than that. Questions of why the US Navy is there in the first place aside, this was a case of the fleet defending itself under the rules of engagement revised after the 2000 Cole bombing.

And anyone who approaches an armed warship, ignoring repeated warnings, is asking for trouble. It's a bit like trying to run a police barricade - expect to be fired upon.

US fears repeat of USS Cole suicide attack | News24

Lloyd Newman

The normal sequence is verbal/radio/loudhailer warnings, then shots across the bow, then fire for effect. Of course, time is a factor in this as well, and with a small high-speed boat it might not be possible to follow that sequence and still keep the small boat out of the "danger zone". Note that the "danger zone" is PROBABLY at least the range of a rocket propelled grenade, which since it's designed to work against tanks, is MORE than sufficient to penetrate the hull of an unarmored ship. The range of the common RPG-7 is 1000 yards (around 920 meters), and hitting something the size of the Rappahanock even at that range is not much of a challenge.

It will be interesting to follow this story as it develops.

Han Held

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Void

I don't care who's ship it is, if you approach an obviously military vessel and ignore repeated warnings, you should expect to be fired upon... forget policy, that's just common fucking sense.

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Jahar Aabye

David Drake, in one of his essays about his time serving in Vietnam, pointed out that he never actually got to know the locals, only a small and specific subset of the population who went near the bases. And he explained this as "ordinary people need a very strong incentive to go anywhere near a group of heavily armed foreigners".

There may be some other explanation for this incident. The people on the small boat may have been fleeing from someone else and were not aware of where they were going, for example. Regardless, it's hard to believe that this is the sort of thing that is everyday business.

Jahar Aabye

Presuming that you're talking about the gunners on the Cole who failed to fire at the craft that attacked them, the result of their decision not to shoot first was that 17 people they knew, who they shared a relatively small amount of space for months at a time, died. If you thinknthat those gunners do not still to this day likely wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares, seeing their dead friends telling them that they got them killed, then you are possibly an even bigger fool than I had thought.

Maybe it's the language barrier, but it kinda sounds like you are. The sailors are on the ship. The ship was given permission to dock by the civil authorities of the nation where they are visiting. So anyone attacking the ship is not only attacking the US Navy, but violating the laws of their own country as well.

And you may wish to consider that your own nation carries a large portion of the world's ocean cargo on its ships. Your own countrymen are dependent upon the navies of the world to defend them from pirates (even you couldn't possibly be so detached from reality to recognize the piracy problems around the Horn of Africa and Straits of Malacca), as well as relying upon the safety of foreign ports.

eighthdwarf Checchinato

Common sense is that there is no need for defense when there is no attack.
Common sense is that you just don't fire when you are not shot at.
Common sense is that when you are a member of military, you just don't shoot at civilians, especially when your country is not at war with the country they or their vehicle/vessel/craft is from.
Common sense is that WHEN a civilian person breaks rules or laws, they deserve a trial, not to be shot at. Military orders don't apply to civilians, that's also common sense.

But military and common sense seem to contradict each other -- especially when this military is commanded by those Nutjobs in the Pentagon who are nothing but warmongers, and have always been.

Jahar Aabye

I don't think that it's an issue of common sense. From what I've been told by people who've been in combat, and fromnwhat I've read from veterans who've written about their experiences, soldiers with your views of common sense rarely survive their first hostile encounter.

Or they watch their friends die because they failed to act quickly enough, as happened to the Cole.

But you know, the US military did try to do as you suggest, and have greater civilian oversight of military operations, limited their actions to bombing only politically-approved targets, etc. And the people we couldn't evacuate from Saigon afterwards paid the price for that. As did millions of people in Cambodia over the next few years once the Khmer Rouge rose to power.

detrius

Didn't they have time to fire a warning shot across the bow?

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eighthdwarf Checchinato

You think? This "evacuation" would never have been necessary if the USA had stayed out of Vietnam to begin with.
And wow:
80% of the South Vietnamese people would have voted for the Communists? Sure, of course that is a reason for the USA to help the "emperor" with military power, to hold these pesky communists at bay!
Without American involvement in Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge never would have risen either - since king Sihanouk back then chose to be neutral during the Vietnam War, even allowed the Northern Vietnamese to have sanctuaries in his country and use kampuchean roads for transport. Though his reasonable decision led to the coup in which he was ousted, and a new government, slavishly begging the USA for support, came to power.
The same rebels who were led by some intellectuals who had the privilege to have studied in Paris, and used their own interpretation of Maoism which they heard of there.So... without American involvement in Indochina, there would have been no Vietnam War, no Kampuchean War, no Khmer Rouge genocide.

But no matter the consequences, the communists had to be kept back at any costs, right?
Korea, Vietnam, Kampuchea and all the other countries the USA led wars against - Millions of lifes sacrificed for the insane anti-communism and warmongering, while the latter sure helped the profits of the arms industry, right?.

Surreal

*Remembers her trips into East Germany*
*Rubs her thumb across her chunk of the Berlin Wall*

Anya Ristow

It's naive to think Germany (and all of Europe) hasn't benefited from the US being the bully with the guns.

It's naive to think Germany (and all of Europe) wouldn't suffer with an interruption in middle eastern oil.

It's naive to think the US would maintain pre-Cole rules of engagement.

Jura Shepherd

My cousin related a similar story to me. He got called out of bed to interpret/interview the lone survivor of a group in a car that got shot up approaching a checkpoint. They had warning signs in every local language, flashing lights, loudspeaker warnings, warning shot, etc etc.

Anyway, the car just kept coming and they eventually blew it to bits. As it turns out, one of the men in the car was badly sick or injured, and the others were trying to get him to the US compound for medical care.

Void

last week you were mugged, this week someone is running toward you with a shiny object in their hand, you yell at them to stop and they don't... what do you do?

the mugger from last week was wearing a business suit...

no, that's rule of law. Common sense overrides that.... you do not approach anyone or anything in a threatening manner, that is capable of seriously fucking you up; especially not after being warned off. That applies to the military, police officers, and wild animals. All will lash out at perceived threats that do not head warning... it's called self defense.

Anya Ristow

And there may have instead been a war between the USSR and China. While internet quarterbacking geopolitics, consider how things might have turned out had the US not both engaged and contained China, and had the presence of both not kept the soviets from supporting Vietnam against China.

It's naive to think the world would have been better off had something not happened. You simply don't know.

Memir Quinn

My understanding is the Vietnam conflict had its origins in French colonial issues (spanning six decades of a local brutal puppet government) that came to a head and then the US stepping in (and subsequently stepping on the democratic process for fear of the communist winning a general election) and inheriting/creating more of them. So blame France? <.<



On topic: I'd want more information before I waved a completely impotent finger at either party in this case. For example, if this was a fueling ship might it not have a similar silhouette to that of a kajillion other tanker ships that routinely cruise off the shores of that area? If that in turn is the case then it come down to the nature of the warning actually given before they opened fire. That to my mind is just one of several areas that would need clarification.


My thoughts though is that if explosives had been found in the vessel then it'd have come to light by now and since it hasn't my thoughts go to the familia of the individual whom died, and those wounded as it seems on the face of it they were innocent of everything implied save approaching a navy vessel before being shot (the nature of the warnings not entirely clear atm).