Posted on 03/31/2007 2:49:00 PM PDT by UKrepublican
Sailor Seizure 'Inexcusable' Updated: 22:33, Saturday March 31, 2007
Iran's seizure of 15 Royal Navy personnel has been described as "inexcusable behaviour" by US President George Bush.
In his first comments on the crisis, Mr Bush said he supported Britain's diplomatic efforts to get the captives back.
He said: "Iran must give back the hostages. They're innocent, they did nothing wrong, and they were summarily plucked out of water."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
The Mother ship was well armed, but it was not aware until the hostages were taken back into iranian water.
In that case, the troops would have faced certain death.
Same with the helicopter.
Very sad outcome.
My media? you mean our media, don't you. It was from our UK media I saw that they were armed with SA-80 rifles and not just pistols as you repeatedly claimed. The ship they boarded was not an inflatable they could have made a stand there, refusing to leave, while the Cornwall came to their aid. Instead they went meek as little lambs the moment they were threatened by the Iranians and are now repeatedly declaring their "guilt" on TV.
The comment about the media, was not aimed at the weapons they were armed with.
"The ship they boarded was not an inflatable they could have made a stand there, refusing to leave, while the Cornwall came to their aid. Instead they went meek as little lambs the moment they were threatened by the Iranians and are now repeatedly declaring their "guilt" on TV."
What nonsense, only a few of them were even trained for live fire, the others were merely sailors.
They were outnumbered and outgunned. They had no chance.
How dare you portray them as cowards. You are a disgrace, and thankfully an extreme minority.
As I said before the court marshal the Captain. He should have been aware what was going on and taken action accordingly. Why did the helo not even have enough fuel to stay and provide cover, why were 6 ships allowed to come on them apparently unawares!? Do they not have surface search radar? Does no one in the Royal Navy even bother with keeping a look out!! This is grossly incompetent.
And likely the fault of poor military planning (are you telling me you guyd don't have that problem?) not the fault of an innocent captain.
Which resulted in 15 hostages being taken, court marshal the Captain.
You go and tell our guys that if you believe it. Thjey'll laugh you out of the room and rightfully so.
They were outnumbered and outgunned. They had no chance.
That is just supposition. The Iranians never even fired as much as a warning shot at them.
One possible scenario would be to stay on board the freighter and refuse to go with the Iranians, The ball is back in their court. They might scream and shout, but not open fire. A tense stand off ensures which is ended with the arrival of HMS Cornwall. Result no hostages, please stop asserting that the ONLY results were 15 hostages or 15 killed after a futile fight.
Huh...? so 15 hostages were not taken? and the poor military planning you mentioned had nothing to do with the hostages not being taken??
"That is just supposition. The Iranians never even fired as much as a warning shot at them. "
No ti si not, there were several iranian vessels, to out few armed folks. Anyone who has done military service will tell you, you don't f*** about and play waiting games with a hostile foreign force.
You have to be realistic and consider your options.
And btw, which credible source is backing you up?
Our military asserts they did the right thing, and I trust them over any arm chair generals any day of the week.
15 were taken in extremely difficult circumstances.
Mistakes at some stage have likely been made, but as even the greatest military power in the world has learnt, providing 100% protection and cover is near impossible.
You can try and portray them as cowards, but most people over here would despise you for it and simply question yourn credentials over our own military experts.
Yes, you have convinced me I now see that nothing anyone did in the incident is worth calling anyone to account over, certainly not the captain of the the heavily armed HMS Cornwall which stood by and did nothing. Yup a great day for the British armed forces. Who were taken completely unawares surrendering in the face of overwhelming odds.
The heavily armed HMS Cornwall that wasn't even aware of what happened UNTIL they were back behind Iranian waters.
Yes, that is gross incompetence.
Perhaps, but there is no real way they could have known given the fact our guys were ambushed on a routine search mission.
Ya know, Wolfstar, I don't recall all that was going on at the time of the Lebanon bombing, and maybe Reagan should have brought in the troops and gone after the terrorists right then. I suspect he was more focused on the Cold War which was what our country was obsessed with at the time. And he had taken over from the feckless Carter whose policies had been atrocious -- and the country was still suffering from very expensive crude oil prices (they were starting to descend, thanks to Reagan strategery, from $40 a barrel to back under $10). So all these little details, which you seem to ignore in your flippant "turned tail and ran" comment, may have had an influence on his response. He also, at the time, had a terribly weakened military and it may have invited more Soviet adventurism if we had decided to start "Gulf War I" in 1982 instead of 1990.
I would have loved to see what Reagan could/would have done if his focus had been on the War on Terror. My suspicion is he would have been a much more effective CIC than, unfortunately, W has been.
But your disparaging opinion of the Gipper suggests to me that you have no appreciation for what he did accomplish: whipping the Soviets and winning the Cold War without having to fire a single shot. And what was the "return on investment" from having built up the military and persisted in that strategy? Hundreds of millions of people (billions when you count the future generations) living in freedom as opposed to under communist servitude; these billions of people hopefully contributing something positive to the world and its future generations. Pretty amazing when you think about it.
You know, when a country puts it's soldiers in harm's way, that country has an obligation to do more than buy bullets for handguns.
Don't you guys use radios?
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