WRONG,.. they were in fact armed with pistols (and in all possibility other weapons as were seen in the TV clip shown here in Australia) Pistols are, contrary to what you may think, lethal weepons and are only carried if you intend to use them.
No, pistols are normally carried as sidearms only to be used as a last resort in operations like this.
How can you tell that the items being used were metal tubes?
It's easy to see that on the video clips, and especially if you compare them with the confiscated weapons in the other video.
The passengers were entirely within their rights under International Maritime law to resist the illegal occupation of their vessel by armed intruders.
Maybe, maybe not. But that's still not the discussion here.
They would and did use whatever came to hand, and were obviously not well prepared as just a few men with short pieces of 25mm water pipe could have easily broken the legs (first) and then arms, of the attackers as they rappelled on board and then killed them almost at leisure.
They probably did break the arms and legs of the first soldiers who landed on the boat, and I would guess that the only thing that saved their lives there where stab/bullet proof jackets and their helmets.
That is akin to saying that a bank robber who is refused money, finds it necessary to resort to force.
A very bad comparison if you ask me..
But if that bank robber gets attacked with knives and clubs by well prepared civilians the second he enters the bank and they try to kill him before he was able to speak or do anything at all in the bank, would you say that he should just lay down and get what he "deserves", or is he also allowed to try to defend his life even if he maybe did try to rob the bank??
At least here in Norway those armed civilians would have been charged with murder if they killed him...
What you very conveniently forget here, as does everyone else, is that the attackers were committing an act of piracy on the high seas, and are thereby criminals. Whereas the passengers, were entirely within their International rights.
That is still completelly irrelevant for this thread, as I've tried to say many times already..
We're discussing what the commandos did and how they where attacked and started to defend themselves from the second they startet to fastrope down to the boat, and nothing else at all!
It does NOT matter if it was wrong or not to send them down there in the first place, that is irrelevant for this thread since they where sent down and that situation did happen!
No one here has argued at all that this was a f***ed up situation, but do you try to say that a soldier that has been sent out on a mission that goes terribly wrong and
may have been based on bad decisions does not have the right to defend his and his team-mates lives if it comes to that???
Your views are typical of those who bought this ill planned and poorly orchestrated mess about, I only hope that you find yourself in this position one day.
Have you considered the thought that several members in here may have been in similar situations before??
You're really mixing politics into this discussion, and most others, me included, are not discussion the political aspects of this situation at all, there are other threads for that already!
If they are willing to break International law, as they are in this case, and having the record that they do for murdering innocent women and children, it would only be common sense to try and kill them as quickly as possible.
Dead commandos tell no lies.
So lets asume that you where one of the commandos sent down on that boat (or any other similar situation for that matter), what would you have done different then what they did there to save innocent lives and the lives of your team-mates?? (and don't say that you would never would have been one of those commandos in the first place....)
And this is (probably) the end of this discussion from me.
If you really can't see what I and the others in here are trying to say by now then I unfortunately don't think that anything else I post here from now on will change that.