The US Navy and the Somali Pirates. Noah Shachtman:

So if the Pentagon decides to take out the Faina pirates, how's it going to go down? Four words: Djibouti (where U.S. Special Operations Command has a base north of Somalia), helicopters, Navy SEALs.

Indeed, one of Faina's captured crewmen, in an interview with a Russian news Website, practically pleaded for the Navy commandos to come to his aid, the AP reports: "At the end, when the reporter asks whether he sees a way out, [the crewman] replies: 'You are so clever that you are understanding everything' and switches to Russian, saying 'kotiki, kotiki, kotiki' — part of the word for 'seals' — an apparent reference to the possibility of an operation by special amphibious forces to rescue the hostages."

Posted by Laura at September 30, 2008 01:06 PM