John Patch is an associate professor for strategic intelligence at the US Army War College and a retired Navy surface warfare officer and career intelligence officer. He's written an article – appearing on the US Naval Institute website – on Somali piracy. His comments are not to be taken as official US government policy.
In an interview with VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua, he says the Somali piracy problem may be overstated.
"Even with the incident of a US-flagged vessel taken, there's quite a lot of hype involved. World opinion and sometimes US opinion as well is often driven by passion, incidents of the moment and US pride. And we've got to be careful about formulating policy on those kinds of things," he says.
The US has had over a year to formulate policy, one would think. Complete
piece at VOA.
