Word: star
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...Bush's first foreign policy team, which had its share of big personalities too. So fraught with palace intrigue was that arrangement that then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to attend key meetings called by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Secretary of State Colin Powell, for all his star power, was all but frozen out of the real decision-making?and the foreign leaders he visited knew it. And Vice President Dick Cheney was a power center unto himself. "You look at the team that George W. Bush brought in, and they also were very talented and experienced people," says...
...Dashishle, the pirate aboard the Sirius Star, concurred: "They just want the Saudi Arabians who own the ship to hear that the Shabab militia wanted to release the ship, because they receive money from some rich Saudis," he said. "But the Shabab doesn't have the strength to attack us and release the ship. It's just simple propaganda...
...Somalia's pirates demonstrated the growth in their sophistication and capability last month when they seized the giant Saudi oil tanker Sirius Star some 450 nautical miles out at sea - well beyond the pirates' previous range. One of the men involved in that raid, 24-year-old Mohamed Dashishle described a distinctly low-tech operation, though organized by men he said had once trained in the Somali coast guard. One of the pirates' "mother ships" spotted the tanker and deployed three small skiffs to surround it. Dashishle told TIME that the pirates simply had to brandish their rocket-propelled grenade...
...Shortly after the Sirius Star was hijacked, the Shabab and other Islamist groups in Somalia denounced its capture on the grounds that it was impermissible to seize a Muslim-owned vessel. They even threatened to attack the pirates and free the ship...
...Still, the capture of the Sirius Star - and the apparent decision to pay ransom to free the MV Faina - makes clear that the efforts of Western and other nation-states to deploy warships to protect commercial shipping from piracy have not been particularly effective against a handful of men equipped with a few rocket-propelled grenades, a fleet of rusty boats and a great deal of pluck. Restrictive rules of engagement and the hazy legality of arresting pirates whose home nation has no functioning legal system have left even the U.S. Navy unable to take the fight to the pirates...