Brit-bashing is only for Americans with very short memories. You wouldn’t have wanted to be at the bar at my dad’s American Legion post in April 2001 when that navy survelliance plane was rammed by a Chinese fighter and the pilot landed on Hainan, instead of ditching in the sea.
I have no opinion - “the never was a good war nor a bad peace,” as Benjamin Franklin said; but then “never encourage an asshole.” (probably Nelson Algren)
I don’t think you can intimidate people into looking cheerful and relaxed. There have been a few mutterings about that in Britain from ex-military types.
Not necessarily. If a prisoner was under duress when they made whatever statements, chances are they won’t get punished for it. If, on the other hand, it’s found out that bad things were just threatened, or nothing bad happened to them at all, then they’d be held accountable. The military realizes everyone has a breaking point, you’re just supposed to make the enemy work for getting every ounce of information that they get for you. Make their lives as difficult as possible.
How much did John McCain go through for them just to find out he was in the Navy?
They looked at his uniform? I’m confused.
It has now emerged that they were ill-treated, as detailed in this news conference
What I don’t understand is why Iranians, Iraqis or anyone in the Middle East still thinks that videotaping “confessions” and airing them does anything but anger the people it’s aimed at. Seriously, in this media-soaked age, do they not realize that not one person who saw those “confessions” believes a word of them? Of course they were coerced! the only thing missing was the actual muzzle of the gun pointed at their heads. Why do the Iranians think for a moment that these “confessions” have any credibility whatsoever?
Iranian TV is now saying that the British service personnel the British Government “forced” them to say they were mistreated by Iranians. Their supposed “evidence” for this is that the men were reading from a prepared statement, and they they were immediately transferred from Heathrow to their base without talking to the press.
This disregards the fact they two of the men did answer questions from reporters during the press conference.
Other countries in the ME will believe them, just as we would believe the British, Canadians or other of our allies. The Iranians will most surely believe it, and make the government look better to the citizens.
I won’t speculate on the reasons but there is a big difference in how the media is perceived in the west and the mideast. Just look at what happened during the invasion of Iraq. The person jokingly refered to as Baghdad Bob was saying that the Americans were dying by the thousands and would never make it to the capitol, while at the same time the American forces had occupied the airport and were driving through the capitol with large forces of tanks and Bradleys. The mideast media gave the Iraqi press conferences the same weight as the American breifings. Even though they had there own reporters in the area who knew what was actually going on. Mideast countries were shocked and stunned by the fall of Baghdad because they believed the Iraqis and the “reporters” never tried to give the correct information.
I see nothing wrong with what they did either, but times change. POWs in the Second World War who made statements helpful to the Nazis were given a much rougher ride back home. You could say, I guess, that the Germans never coerced the prisoners to make such statements (although I remember my father saying they were offered extra rations, etc if they complied) and nothing happened to those that refused. But I’m pretty sure that the Iranians wouldn’t have done anything to the prisoners even if they had refused to co-operate. Too much bad publicity in it for them.
As I said, times (and expectations) change.
From Iran’s point of view, the purpose of the videotaped confessions was not to convince the world that the boat was in Iranian waters. It was to show that the British are weak - that their sailors couldn’t stand up to interrogation. I’m sure Ahmadinejad’s popularity increased in Iran and much of the rest of the Middle East as a result of the humiliation of the British sailors.
Just to be clear, I am not claiming myself that the Brits are weak. I’m just saying that this is how it will be interpreted in much of the Middle East.
There was an interesting point made by an expert on Iran on the BBC news just now. As you are probably aware, there are many factions in Iran. These range from the extreme President (in cahoots with the Revolutionary Guard), right through to pragmatic moderates. The commentator made the point that in fact the moderates have made the President back down and release the captives, and have humiliated him by letting him to make the actual announcement. This comes just days after he was announcing that the captives would be put on trial .
The commentator also said that the President’s clique are now in the minority and are very unpopular with the majority of people. In recent local elections they lost many seats. So in the long term this incident could do long term damage to the extremists.
For all I know the Brits may not be under the same sort of (both official,as in by Code of Discipline, and social-cultural, as in by worship of hardassness) expectation of defiance under these circumstances as Americans are. Watching BBC World it does seem that a lot of the questions being asked now are how come they were placed in a vulnerable position with no good backup – it may be the commanders and the senior officers who have more to account for here.
And yes, I agree with Jeff Lichtman, the point of broadcasting “confessions” is to show that though you may not defeat the outsiders in battle, at least you can embarass them. As Loach points out, the rest of the regional media are NOT going to “call them” on the facts, because that is just not done when the cultural perception is that ALL media information IS propaganda and that it is fair and right for each side to put out theirs. In this case, that the Ahmadinejab faction was trying to manipulate the incident to whip up support and look strong would be considered something they would be expected to do.
Weak as in toothless? or weak as in we just want our people back in one piece?
Humiliation? what fucking humilation? our personnel were forced into saying what they did, with a gun at your head so would you.
If the iranians believe everything they see on their state controlled TV then the whole fucking country is as it always was, sand and camel shit
Fuck the iranians, they aint worth a wank
As the captives themselves have pointed out, Iran is not ‘the enemy’, they were not ‘POWs’ (there would have to be a war with Iran for them to be prisoners of it), and they knew any sort of violent resistance would have led to a much more serious international incident.
Which only goes to show that people who think ill of them for not behaving like proper POWs are utterly lacking in the ability to understand the scope of this incident.
Again, nobody is ‘at war’ with IraN, formally or otherwise.
Bear in mind it is the same mind set that thought Hussein was cool to defy his captors despite being a mass murderer.
Coercion or no coercion, I can’t see how reading some obviously scripted statements harmed anyone. If they had freely provided British military secrets (i.e., without having it tortured out of them) that would be another matter.
I think youi’ll find Saddam was a little upset at the show trial, the one where no evidence of the USA supplying him with WMD was evidenced despite that the most serious of his crimes were the result of use of same.
He was, of course, charged with crimes where USA supplied WMD were not used, and fewer people died.
As per the earlier poster, I’m lost for words at this almost desperation to treat Iran as an enemy.
I don’t know … I’m sure they knew those recordings would be seen by their worried families back home. Maybe they just wanted to present a relaxed face so as not to make it any harder on them. If I were in their shoes, I know I wouldn’t want my wife to see me looking like I’d just been tortured.
I’ve thought of Iran as an enemy since the embassy kidnappings. 
That is no reason to go to war, but I wouldn’t let them carry my lunch money, or believe them if they said it was safe to cross the street.