whole thing seems to be jogging along in predictable fashion; Girls dorm fight about GPS, standard media exchanges, condemnation from the expected suspects, draft UN Resolution - always a winner, that one.
The girl is an unexpected twist, and prob means the Iraq’s have recalibrated the timescale of this little beano. Instead of them all being home by the weekend, it now seems she will while the boys probably get to be offended by those dreadful curtains a while longer.
[QUOTE=Elsie]
while the boys probably get to be offended by those dreadful curtains a while longer.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, cruel and unusual punishment!
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
You’re the one making an extraordinary claim here. It stands to logic that if you are leveling an accusation against someone, you have to prove that accusation.
Is it your genuine assertion that anyone in U.S. custody is going to be tortured?
[/QUOTE]
If they don’t sing the song the US wants to hear - of course. And no - I have to prove nothing. We know the US holds 5 Iranian officials. The three missing generals have either been kidnapped by aliens or are in somebodies hands. The reasonable assumption is the US. We know the US approves of torture as part of interrogation therefore you are making the extraordinary claim that in these cases they are not torturing. There is no presumption of innocence for the US any more. It has proudly proclaimed itself guilty of heinous acts.
And yes - waterboarding etc is torture regardless of what Bush and Gonzales think.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Whether or not Iran will/will not give these sailors back unharmed is really not the issue. I have no naval experience but I cannot imagine a country’s navy would want a man commissioned as captain of a ship who would simply smile and nod as another country’s Navy took his sailors prisoner. Note the word prisoner, it isn’t an arrest if they were truly not within Iranian waters, it was rather the taking of prisoners which is most definitely an act of war and one that the militaries of any country are supposed to respond to forcefully and without compromise at the moment it happens, without worrying about the higher chain of command (aka, if you’re stationed at a guard post and the enemy attacks, you don’t wait for an order to defend yourself, that’s common sense and the way things are done the world over. Likewise, a ship of war does not wait for the order to defend itself if it is being attacked.)
[/QUOTE]
Apparently British rules of engagement prevented the crews and their mother ship from defending themselves.
[QUOTE=Struan]
Yeah, cruel and unusual punishment!
[/QUOTE]
I suspect they’ve imported their torture techniques from the Spanish Inquisition. Why ?
Because no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
[QUOTE=Gary Kumquat]
In all, I don’t think you should be commenting on either the ignorance of others, or their lack of understanding of consequences.
[/QUOTE]
Use the singular, I was talking to you.
Personally I don’t much mind being called a racist by RedFury, but I do object to a bunch of ‘me toos’ jumping in. Actually I would define myself as a ‘culturist’.
@Yojimbo - good point it was probably ‘local initiative’, but quite neatly planned. Those six patrol boats had to be hidden from radar - yet they appeared after the dhow had been searched.
Has anyone noticed that the female was wearing a Hijab that did not cover her hair. Odd that as they are supposed to hide it, yet they made a rather tough looking lass look like a madonna.
@Elsie Yes, it is a dorm fight, but it could get rather nasty, I don’t think that I’m the first person to figure out that those centrifuges require electricity, a lot of it, and that power plants are very simple targets. Taking out Iran’s electrical generation ability would solve a number of problems - and destroying their oil wells would knacker them economically. This is a bit like the Falklands.
I’ve been thinking about this, and I reckon that our (the UK) best reaction would be to recall embassy staff and expell the Iranian dips. A quiet last word to the Iranian Ambassador would be roughly along the lines of ‘we don’t mind if you kill our troops, but if you make us look impotent we have to swat you - nothing personal, but we cannot lose face’
I seriously think that from a UK perspective, this might be an excuse to indulge in a short example of how to do things properly. Normally I am against war, but after the Iraq (and Afghanistan) debacle, I reckon it is time someone demonstrated how to do it - after that, they’ll be signing up to mutual defence pacts in droves.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Considering that the Mexican-American War was completely unjustified on the American side, what is your point?
[/QUOTE]
Unjustified? The Mexicans refused to sell the land in the first place, they easily could have avoided that war.
In any case, they knew that we affixed the border with Mexico as the Rio Grande river, and they chose to have troops north of it (at least that was the casus belli, that was their recklessness. Ultimately they knew how to avoid war, and they didn’t take steps towards doing such.
But in any case, I just thought it was an interesting comparison because at the time and since then historians have argued about where exactly the incident took place. Some Whigs at the time weren’t convinced that the United States was actually attacked north of the Rio Grande, but south of it. It’s not a dissimilar situation to the one in Iran. If a war were to break out over this, anyone who opposed the war in general would of course argue the sailors were taken in Iranian waters and vice verse.
It basically just shows the inherent possibility of escalating a situation by having military forces close to one another in an area with disputed territorial claims.
[QUOTE=tagos]
If they don’t sing the song the US wants to hear - of course. And no - I have to prove nothing. We know the US holds 5 Iranian officials. The three missing generals have either been kidnapped by aliens or are in somebodies hands. The reasonable assumption is the US. We know the US approves of torture as part of interrogation therefore you are making the extraordinary claim that in these cases they are not torturing. There is no presumption of innocence for the US any more. It has proudly proclaimed itself guilty of heinous acts.
And yes - waterboarding etc is torture regardless of what Bush and Gonzales think.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry, you’ve just admitted that you have no evidence and feel no need to provide any, so I’m not sure you have any credibility left on this debate. If you wish to reverse that situation by providing evidence, feel free to do so. But until such a time I will operate under the assumption you are making assertions without any factual support whatsoever in this thread.
FRDE - it won’t get out of hand, because it’s in no one’s interests for it to get out of hand.
Second, I don’t think you grasp two things; this is a ‘game’ that’s being played out, and the UK is not in control of the play. TYhe options you speak laregly don’t exist.
Second, Iraq detains two rubber boat loads of Brits and the current traded price of oil spikes (before settling down again). To say the market is senstive is like saying Freddy Mercury may have been gay. We need that oil to keep flowing, not only from Iraq, but Iran even more so.
The UK can squirm in its seat but it has to still sit on its hands. That’s the real world, not yer BBC world.
[QUOTE=lokij]
Apparently British rules of engagement prevented the crews and their mother ship from defending themselves.
US vs. British rules of engagement
[/QUOTE]
It makes me wonder about the wisdom of such rules. The article leaves it unclear, but suggests that if the UK had raised threat levels in the region perhaps it would have affected the rules of engagement, but I’m not sure:
If that’s the case it would seem the British chose poorly in this situation. But if that wouldn’t have changed things, I have trouble seeing the wisdom in those rules of engagement. I mean, it speaks for itself. The Iranians wanted revenge against the United States and took it out on the Royal Navy, I don’t think it is an accident at all, the Iranians didn’t try this with the U.S. Navy because they knew it would have meant a fight.
Countries that the rest of the world thinks can defend itself tend to be messed with a lot less. I think it’s telling for example that throughout the 1990s the United States has had major problems with both North Korea and Iraq. Clinton bombed Iraq several times, but never bombed North Korea, in fact, he made concessions to them. You don’t get rewarded in geopolitics by appearing meek, as Saddam learned (and Kim, for that matter.)
[QUOTE=Elsie]
FRDE - it won’t get out of hand, because it’s in no one’s interests for it to get out of hand.
Second, I don’t think you grasp two things; this is a ‘game’ that’s being played out, and the UK is not in control of the play. TYhe options you speak laregly don’t exist.
Second, Iraq detains two rubber boat loads of Brits and the current traded price of oil spikes (before settling down again). To say the market is senstive is like saying Freddy Mercury may have been gay. We need that oil to keep flowing, not only from Iraq, but Iran even more so.
The UK can squirm in its seat but it has to still sit on its hands. That’s the real world, not yer BBC world.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t agree with you, and would be bored if I did.
It is a game, but the players have different rules. The UK plays by the rules of the media, and it would be advantageous to have a spectacular ‘success’.
We don’t need Iranian oil, the astronomical price has found reserves just about everywhere - but we could surgically put Iran back into the dark ages, and we could politely ask Russia to help us.
If I were close to Tony Blair, he would be heading for a crematorium, but others must be able to see the opportunities, we can kick jack sh/t out of them and show the USA up as a bunch of idiots.
I think that this is just what we need, a chance to demonstrate that behaving like a jerk lands up with a good smacking.
I really would like to know what kind of boarding craft the UK uses in this sort of situation.
Zodiacs? Miles away from the support boat in open water? Why would they do that?
Sure the smaller boats are going to be faster than the HMS Cornwall, but the Cornwall has a speed of 18 knots on it cruising engines, and 32 knots on all its engines (they might take some time to get everything online).
Why would you have your zodiacs so far away from the support vessel?
[QUOTE=FRDE]
We don’t need Iranian oil, the astronomical price has found reserves just about everywhere - but we could surgically put Iran back into the dark ages, and we could politely ask Russia to help us.
.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, that’s me done.
You’re not even at base camp with this issue. Beyond clueless would be more apt.
Thang yew and goodbye.
[QUOTE=Elsie]
Okay, that’s me done.
You’re not even at base camp with this issue. Beyond clueless would be more apt.
Thang yew and goodbye.
[/QUOTE]
I thought that I was pretty sophisticated
I predict that the UK will attack Iran - if we don’t the Israelis have to
[QUOTE=enipla]
I really would like to know what kind of boarding craft the UK uses in this sort of situation.
Zodiacs? Miles away from the support boat in open water? Why would they do that?
[/quote]
Probably, the depth of the waterway was too shallow for HMS Cornwall to navigate. They have a UN mandate to board and inspect all merchant traffic, so they had to get to the dhow somehow.
[QUOTE=FRDE]
Use the singular, I was talking to you.
Personally I don’t much mind being called a racist by RedFury, but I do object to a bunch of ‘me toos’ jumping in. Actually I would define myself as a ‘culturist’.
[/quote]
Huh? A “culturist” you say? Is that because of your lack thereof? Because I don’t know of any “cultured” person that would speak of other races the way you did.
Predictable really. In fact I said as much to Gary in my prior post.
As for the rest of your wet-dreams vis-a-vis an all out attack on Iraq (and joined by the Russians no less!) I’ll just say that it’s simply not worth any further comment.
[QUOTE=Szlater]
Probably, the depth of the waterway was too shallow for HMS Cornwall to navigate. They have a UN mandate to board and inspect all merchant traffic, so they had to get to the dhow somehow.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe that was a WHOOSHHH. But from this The men were seized at 1030 local time when they boarded a boat in the Gulf, off the coast of Iraq, which they suspected was smuggling cars.
Smuggling cars? Smuggling automobiles?
I don’t think a dhow is going to be smuggling cars. And I really don’t think it would be a very good idea to try to stop a vessel big enough to carry cars with rubber boats. WTF? Is the British navy being trained by PETA?
And if the vessel that was inspected was big enough to carry cars, I suspect the waters would be deep enough for the HMS Cornwall.
The whole thing must have both sides doing this :dubious: :smack: :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=RedFury]
A “culturist” you say? Is that because of your lack thereof?
. . .
As for the rest of your wet-dreams . . .
[/QUOTE]
Direct personal insults, even as questions, are out of line.
In addition, from the rule thread stickied at the top of this Forum:
[QUOTE=Gaudere]
Do not say or imply that your fellow posters achieve sexual gratification or soil themselves in glee/distress due to recent news reports, politcal icongraphy, contemplation of ideological positions, etc. In fact, if you’re going to discuss someone’s bowels or genitalia at all, it better be DIRECTLY relevant to the debate at hand.
I mean, GEEZ. It’s disgusting and adds nothing to the debate, and I am somewhat dismayed I even have to explicitly make a rule against this practice, but what was once a vanishingly rare occurance is now getting ickily prevalent.
[/QUOTE]
Back off and tone it down. Personal attacks do not make your point.
[ /Moderating ]
[QUOTE=enipla]
I don’t think a dhow is going to be smuggling cars. And I really don’t think it would be a very good idea to try to stop a vessel big enough to carry cars with rubber boats. WTF? Is the British navy being trained by PETA?
And if the vessel that was inspected was big enough to carry cars, I suspect the waters would be deep enough for the HMS Cornwall.
[/QUOTE]
Here’s a picture of the vessel in question, at anchor on the spot where it was stopped and boarded by the rubber boats.
Just as a tiny wee nitpick it’s HMS Cornwall, not “the HMS Cornwall”.
[QUOTE=FRDE]
If I were close to Tony Blair, he would be heading for a crematorium, but others must be able to see the opportunities, we can kick jack sh/t out of them and show the USA up as a bunch of idiots.
[/QUOTE]
I hope you’re not close to him then. Why would we want to start another war or show up our allies? I’m guessing that was a joke.
The worst I can see this escalating is if the prisoners were executed on TV, there might be further UN sanctions and air/missile strikes against specific targets (like naval bases). I still think anything like that is very, very unlikely.
