US Flagged Cruise Ship Attacked Off Yemen

Pirates are evolving. Ransoms are higher depending upon the number of people are taken hostages, which explains why they would go after a cruise ship.

Pirates chased and shot at a U.S. cruise liner with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel as it sailed along a corridor patrolled by international warships, a maritime official said Tuesday.

The liner, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden on Sunday when it encountered six bandits in two speedboats, said Noel Choong who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Malaysia.

The pirates fired at the passenger liner but the larger boat was faster than the pirates' vessels, Choong said.

"It is very fortunate that the liner managed to escape," he said, urging all ships to remain vigilant in the area.

While people are sure to jump and start crying where the US Navy is, the place to start hammering questions is not the Pentagon, it is on Capitol Hill and the White House. The Navy cannot take unilateral action without a political policy regarding Somali piracy , and that policy does not exist.

Is it too late in the Bush administration to ask what him about this incident? Is it too early in the Obama administration to begin the conversation of piracy? Unlike almost every other attack we have seen for the last several years, this ship is flagged US, we can't ignore this one because the protection of US flagged ships is our national interest.

More details are available via the press release of the incident on the Oceania Cruises website.

Cruise ships are unlikely and probably the most difficult target for piracy though, representing one of the hardest types of ships to take at sea. Cruise ships can do 25 knots, or more, so unless total surprise is achieved it is hard to believe a cruise ship could be taken by Somali pirates.