First off, we have a couple people who are missing the point entirely:

"We have decided to kill U.S. and French sailors if they happen to be among our future hostages," said Abdullahi Ahmed, a member of a pirate group based at Harardhere, a coastal town in central Somalia.

Second, we have an interesting article that brings up pretty much every issue that has been discussed in the fifty or so forums I've been talking about this on. And it looks like what is going to happen is pretty much exactly what I predicted.

There's a lot of legal precedent for attacking land-based pirate bases - not just American law, but internationally - as well as existing anti-pirate UN resolution (passed in August). But we can go back as far as 1801 for a US precedent for invading pirate bases.

It also turns out that the USA has been there for a while, with Task Force 151, whose job is pretty much anti-piracy and had thwarted two previous piracy attempts (as well as responding to the Maersk).