Return to Article: Agencies urge Congress to act on threat posed by stateless sublike watercraft
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59464
Passing a law has little effect on drug dealers or terrorists. What if a series of these underwater vehicles are sent our way with heavy explosives, and driven by those with suicide inclinations? The issue is not what laws do we need but what interdiction methods will work. I can imagine a few of these sent into major harbors on US coastline. Forget about drugs and deal with real enemies.
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59443
Ya know what? This would be excellent for a gearing up of the antisubmarine corps. P-3s can start flying their original missions again, shore-based SH-60F/R Seahawks can get in some honing of the trade. If you're inside international waters and you're submerged, there's not a lot we can do. But if you're inside U.S. territorial waters and you're submerged...well, sorry pal, but that gives the aircraft commander every right to declare a hostile and I don't think it'd hurt anyone's feelings one little bit if a Mk 50 ASW torpedo found its mark, taking a few million bucks worth of drugs out with it.
"Stateless", by the way, would mean "Terrorist". I'm sure Davey Jones would welcome some fresh terrorist meat down in his Locker.
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59396
By intent submarines are not designed to be identified/detected. They are in fact built to have stealth characteristics and remain submerged for extended periods to reduce detectability from even space assets. If the article is technically correct we could in fact be justifying an attack on a nuclear armed submarine of a neutral nation or an attack by another country on one of our submarines. The concept of legalizing an attack on an unidentified submarine in international waters is extremely destabilizing and dangerous.
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59370
I would recommend just blowing them up--that might discourage more criminals than any fear of prosecution.
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59342
If you outlaw SPSS's, only outlaws will have SPSS's
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59336
Do these senior officials live in a dreamland? What impact will a law passed by the US Congress have "several thousand miles" away. If they wanted something with a bit of tooth, they'd go to the UN for an international treaty/rule for registration. That won't stop it totally either, but at least would make it uncomfortable in the country of origin and give the Coast Guard the excuse to sink every unidentified vessel. But this is absurd..
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59318
Why does the the Coast Guard or the Navy think that they have the right to board or to sink these submersible vessels if they are operating in international waters or within the coastal waters of another country? Were they requested to sink these vessels by the closest country? If they do not pose an imminent danger to the United States, we should not intercede.
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59288
"Blowing up a vessel with unidentified people onboard" worked just fine in World War 2, when the vessels in question were German, Japanese and Italian submarines. Why make an exception for these modern submarine threats? Do you think that they're just tourists coming to the U.S. to marvel at the scenery off our coasts? They serve no purpose other than to smuggle contraband or WMDs into our country, and therefore should be considered as enemies, and treated accordingly!
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59084
HaHaah!! You've got to be kidding ... write a law to stop criminals! Come on, they sell and use drugs in prisons ... can't stop 'em there, where can you? Write the law and I'm sure the mini-subs will not longer be a problem ... NOT!
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59042
Depth charges would work quite handsomely in these situations...
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58984
Isn't this a job of the Navy or Cost Guard, sink them after a while they'll get the picture. Time to quit being soft on this .
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58978
Blowing up a vessel with unidentified people onboard who have not, at least yet, been identified as convicted of any crimes and aren't engaged in shooting at the coast guard? I'm pretty sure this is murder no matter how certain you are that they are conducting illegal activity and against basic American values as stated in the US Consitution? My thanks to the coast guard for the difficult and dangerous job of protecing our safety without resorting to becoming a criminal enterprise themselves.
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58962
Hey, here's something that's interesting. Bush just met with Columbia's President and expressed his displeasure at Congress for not acting on a Free trade Agreement with them. Now I would think that building 60 foot submarines is not something you put together in a garage somewhere. These things are pretty complicated and therefore it should be fairly easy find where they are being built. Probably in some rebel controlled area the Columbia Government is afraid to go into. I'd tell columbia that they need to go into these areas, root out these ship building locations and destroy them, as well as the cocaine they come across. How can we spend I think it's a total of around 7 or 8 Billion dollars in this country and we haven't been able to get the Columbian Government to make a dent in the drug interdiction programs. We need to stop giving (throwing away) money to countries that can't eliminate their drug production problems. And that includes Afganistan too.
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58958
New paper laws are useless against already criminal activity. They are just "feel good" actions. Hey, politicians! Get serious about these attacs on US soil. Tell the Coast Guard to sink 'em. They can use the anti-submarine practice.
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58946
The War on Drugs is a miserable and costly failure. You have to legalize 'em, tax 'em and regulate 'em if you want to control the problem. Prohibition didn't work in the 1920's and it won't work now.
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58934
Do not board them, blow them up and it will stop. I am still waiting for you to report how illegal Hispanic immigration is connected to Middle Eastern terrorism.
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58930
These things have been around for how many years, and they haven't figured out how to reliably tether a locater to them as the first step, so they could bring in a deep diving mini-sub to bring up some evidence?
Or, since they very well could be bringing in WMD, simply destroying them on sight would simplify things, and eventually have a bit of a deterrent effect. Time to develop and ultra-lightweight torpedo!
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