Responding to various recent threats directed at the western maritime industry the Pentagon in a press conference today vowed to hunt down and eliminate all of the 28 ships suspected of being commanded by Al Qaeda.

To handle the job, the US Navy has put eight of its best nuclear submarines on the task. The subs have already left their current position monitoring suspicious penguin activity somewhere deep under the south pole and headed towards a rendezvous point in the Atlantic.

In a first encounter the Navy reported it has already sunk a covert shrimp trawler outside of Portugal. "We picked him up on sonar," commented Captain Haywood Jones. "He aggressively tried to flee and even accidentally tossed his net at us. We had no choice but to torpedo him. Twice."

Portuguese official said that they really, really, REALLY supported the sinking and also kinda wondered how long the two American battleships casually parked in the Lisbon Yacht Marina were gonna stay.

Other ships on the US hit list include a camouflaged three man canoe sighted in the Bering straight, a five foot bamboo raft armed with a battering ram last spotted by spy satellites in the Sudanese harbor of Dar Es Salaam and the destroyers Hms Hairy Girls, Hms Garlic Breath and Hms Traitorous-Sonsofbitches all of the soon-to-be diveable French navy.

The US Navy's biggest fear however stems from Turkish undercover intelligence suggesting that the terrorists may have

De-classified photos Theo Tugboat, post Islamic conversion

won the loyalty of the much beloved children's TV star Theodore Tugboat. Armed with sweet talk analysts fear he might be heading towards the Atlantic in an attempt to convince several oil tankers to join the cause.

Tankers that could be used as floating bombs with the potential of taking out thousands of civilians. Or even worse, the Bush administration fears, Theodore might blatantly sink the tankers. A move that would increase the price of oil by 0.00003 cents per barrel and force the President to invade the deamon land of Norway too.