Obama granted the authority to use appropriate force with the focus on saving and protecting Phillips’ life. The requests were made by the Pentagon Friday and Saturday. For technical reasons, authority was granted two different times, according to the official, because different U.S. forces moved in the region near the coast of Somalia.

And no he would not have made that publicly known-but neither would C5F simply wait and make it up as they went along. They’ve been thinking this through for while now.

But thanks for the indignant sneer anyway. .

I support an end to the Bush tax cuts, favor increased domestic spending, and don’t see Gates FY-10 DOD budget as gutting defense. I believe that most of the blame for our defense deficiencies can be laid directly at the feet of the wars and stupid decisions by civilian and uniformed DOD leadership .

I also find its pretty amazing that all the blame for everything related to anything falls on the current administration when most of the root causes started back in the late nineties and were accelerated by the actions of the Bush administration.

Has Obama made some mistakes? Yes. he’s got to face down his own party in the form of Nancy Pelosi and he’s not found a good vehicle to do so-even though he had a great opportunity by vetoing the omnibus bill.

But I also won’t be throwing away perfectly good tea bags worrying about things that have not yet come to pass-or complaining about higher taxes that I have not yet-nor will have to in the future-pay.

I would think that if BHO had issued a “guns free” type of ROE to our troops, that President Erkle would have made this ROE publicly known.

Skippy, surely you did not mean to use the WSJ article comments you quoted to determine what the ROE is? The link is http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123940302250809641.html.

I read the article a few times, closed my eyes tightly, clicked my heels twice; still could not discern what the ROE is from the article. BTW, “The Barbarian Coast” was a well chosen title for the article.

As you well know, there is almost ALWAYS more that cannot, or at least should not, be talked about on any sensitive topic or situation.

Nothing I have read states that our troops have been given a free hand (ROE) to do as they see fit to deal with the pirates.

Team BHO/Biden would be proud of you.

Obama is not to blame for the piracy.

Obama IS to blame for lack of action for his part in the rescue of an American citizen after an attack on United States property, aka, a flagged American ship.

No matter what party, no matter what person, no matter his history with your issues, the President is that man with the big fuzzy ones responsible for the safety of American citizens. Since you were one of the instruments providing protection of those citizens, you should understand this.