..the 'top brass' say...'Hold your fire'...
..WHY?
WHY allow this to happen without a fight????????
I can't imagine American forces allowing this to happen before their eyes and not try to stop it.
And I mean that as no disservice to the Brits, I really don't.
I am quite surprised they allowed this?
We and GB are both playing a game with Iran that we can't win because they are following the rules of the low road and we are taking the high road. Sometimes you just have to drop some bombs to make a point like Ronnie did with Libya.
Maybe to avoid an escalation and war
They really stepped on it, did'nt they?
Guennie we are all wondering why.
"I can't imagine American forces allowing this to happen before their eyes and not try to stop it.
And I mean that as no disservice to the Brits, I really don't."
This is primarily a british incident so I'm am sure Bush has already told Blair that we stand by them 100%. They have stood with us in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They are just weighing all the possibilities and consequences. Blair is the one that has more to lose if he doesn't act.
The NATO community needs to close all borders and air space in and out of Tehran. The U.N. just needs to go away. All of their cocktail parties over the years have shown how feckless and ineffective that body truely is. I truly don't know why it needs to be in the U.S. Relocate it to Fiji or somewhere. I cannot believe we were actually going to allow the Great Mahdi a visa to come to the U.S. after he states he wants nuke weapons and wants to wipe israel off the map. Are we insane?
Given the "restraint" Washington puts on our troops in the field, not hard to imagine at all.
I can.
We should all just finally face up to the fact that we have a lot different brand of leadership now than we had with the likes of Churchill and Eisenhower.
My guess is that it would be impossible for a ship of war to open fire at that range with the enemy in such close proximity to friendlies without opening up the probability of suffering casualties from friendly fire. Even if the Royal Marines were on board, a sniper shot wouldn't be enough and raking them with automatic weapons fire would be too much.
WHY allow this to happen without a fight????????
Indeed. As an example, when I as an NRA Certified Firearms Instructor give a class to a woman for her FL CCW permit, I always tell her it's never necessary to move to be robbed. Such movement to a place of privacy for the attacker is ALWAYS bad for the prisoner. Never, ever get into a car with an attacker, just because he seems to have the advantage! You'll wind up raped or dead or both. I hope that's not the case, here. There is a female among the captured. Does this demonstrate why we don't like the idea of women in direct combat positions? Sure it's easy to be progressive and sophisticated and certainly women can do the job...but there is a downside as a society when we contemplate the fate of female combatants if captured. I think this was the result of poor planning for the security phase of the operation. They didn't provide a means of resistance to any sort of assault force. Nor was there anything done to insure they had access to indirect fire as a screen. If they had a helicopter gunship nearby there would have been some precision long range fire available. All that would have been needed is the will to employ it, which still doesn't seem to have been the case.
I can't imagine American forces allowing this to happen before their eyes and not try to stop it.
It has happened in history. Remember the U.S.S. Pueblo? Taken by the North Koreans during the height of the cold war? Then there was the attack by North Korean forces against a tree cutting expedition into the DMZ in 1978. The Koreans HACKED to death with machetes and axes a tree cutting party of Americans within full view of American forces all loaded up and ready to SLAY. We did nothing. Let 'em die. It's all about the ROE or Rules of Engagement. It has to do with the spine of the administration in charge at the time and that was IIRC, the Presidency of JIMMY "The Peanut" Carter.
Because if they acted like soldiers, somebody may have gotten hurt!
The commander who allows his troops to be seized without putting up a fight should be drummed out of the service. Would you want to serve under such a commander when he has to ask for permission to save you? Just what the he!! Rules of engagement are these fools operating under in this hostile region? Idiots
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!