Whose oil is it, anyway? It’s our oil!

(Reuters) – “U.S. to hand over tanker with contraband oil back to Libya.” [Yeah, right.]

“The U.S. Navy will meet Libyan authorities in international waters in the next day or two to hand over a tanker carrying contraband Libyan oil seized this week by U.S. commandos in the Mediterranean, the Pentagon said on Friday.

“A Navy SEAL commando team boarded the Morning Glory from an inflatable boat early on Monday as it lay off Cyprus, taking control of the vessel in less than two hours with no one hurt and no shots fired.

“‘We are going to hand over the Morning Glory to Libyan naval authorities within the next day or two in international waters, just outside of the territorial water line of Libya,’ Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said.

“Warren said the United States was also handing over the three Libyan hijackers and the ship’s original 21-member crew, which the Pentagon has said included six Pakistanis, six Indians, three Sri Lankans, two Syrians, two Sudanese and two Eritreans.

“‘To my knowledge, none of the crew asked for U.S. asylum,’ Warren said.

“The Morning Glory had been escorted by the USS Stout, a guided-missile destroyer. But Warren said that the Stout had been relieved on Wednesday, and that the tanker was now being escorted by the USS Elrod, a guide-missile frigate.

“Some 34 sailors from the Elrod were aboard the Morning Glory, he said.

“The North Korean-flagged Morning Glory, which was disavowed by Pyongyang over the incident, had been loaded with oil at Es Sider, a Libyan port controlled by anti-government rebels who intended to sell the crude on the global market.

“Gunmen demanding regional autonomy and a share of the oil wealth had loaded the ship and eluded the Libyan navy to get to international waters, triggerin g a political crisis in Tripoli that toppled the Prime Minister.

“The United States intervened militarily after being asked to do so by the governments of Libya and Cyprus, U.S. officials said.” –

Some Navy SEALS in an inflatable boat managed to subdue the “pirates” on a “hijacked” tanker, but our 313-ship Navy – in consort with other NATO navies – can’t manage to put a stop to the piracy being carried out by desperados from oil-rich African countries? C’mon! On April 8th, 2011, in our Vol. XXVII, Art. 4 commentary, we gave a reason for such incompetence.

It’s simple. We’re setting up Africa for U.S. “boots-on-the-ground.” Here’s what we wrote:

The media has been bombarding us with stories about pirates lately. Yes. pirates. Not the ones in Pittsburgh, mind you, but some real live ones operating with some kind of a license off the coast of Africa and in the Gulf of Aden. Yes. They’ve been operating with some kind of a license – or permission, if you will – for more than four years.

Since 2008 there have been more than 1,200 attacks recorded against merchant vessels by those tin-horn operators in tiny skiffs, and about 160 of those vessels were taken and held for ransom. What’s even worse, more than 3,200 crew members have been held captive by those pirates, and some 700 have yet to be ransomed. At least thirty innocent seafarers have been killed by those pirates.

Here’s the real problem. NATO’s powerful warships could put an end to this fiasco in a matter of seconds, if we wanted to put a stop to those maritime transgressions. We’d need only helicopter carriers to get the job done. So why hasn’t such a simple step been taken?

The U.S. Navy has eight super-powerful helicopter carriers in service. England has one, France has three, Korea has one, Japan has two, and even Thailand has one. So where are they stationed and what are they doing? Well you can be sure they’re nowhere near the coast of Africa and the Gulf of Aden yet. Yet.

More than 1,000 helicopters from those NATO vessels should be patrolling the danger zones and escorting merchant vessels in those zones, but they’re not doing it. And no one is asking why not.
There is a reason for this gross oversight, of course, but the media isn’t about to tip us off. That would upset the applecart.

Here’s a paragraph that came to our attention over the weekend. It’s all about the applecart.

“Piracy on the east coast of Africa has increased substantially over recent years, and although there has been a concerted effort (sic) from multi-national naval coalitions to stem the incident, Somali-based pirate activity shows no sign of abating. Piracy within the Indian Ocean is largely a reflection of the onshore political instability within Somalia, and therefore the naval forces that are operating in the region can only treat the manifestation of the political activity and not tackle the root cause. Before there is a notable reduction in incidents of piracy throughout the Indian Ocean, an onshore solution needs to be sought.” –

Read between the lines. It’s a call for “boots on the ground”. And there’s a lot of oil under the ground in Somalia, by the way. We need those pirates to get our show on the road.

We’re ready to sacrifice another 70,000 to 100,000 American lives so that oil barons can be enriched. That’s criminal. If we had embarked upon a legitimate shipbuilding program in this country, millions of our young citizens would now be happy, thriving, productive – and alive. But it’s more important to have an unemployment crisis, so that a ready source of cannon fodder can be assured.