Posted on 02/07/2013 11:13:49 AM PST by Pan_Yan
Almost half of Britain’s military equipment sent to Afghanistan will never return – and could end up in the hands of the Taliban.
About 40% of gear being used in Helmand Province will be scrapped or sold when UK forces finally leave by the end of next year.
The Government estimates about 11,000 containers of equipment are in Afghanistan, including 3,000 vehicles.
Of these, defence chiefs plan to bring back about 6,500 loads – costing tens of millions of pounds. That means leaving 4,500 containers.
These will not include weapons – but besides everyday items will be non-lethal military hardware that could be of use to insurgents.
(Excerpt) Read more at mirror.co.uk ...
I’d love to debate/answer you seriously point by point, but I fear you arent willing to have an actual serious debate.
Yeah, the British handling of Nassar’s nationalizing the Suez Canal was shameful. They should have followed The US advice. Oh, wait...
That's a lousy analogy. We'd fight any outside power that tried to invade the Americas. Poland and Belgium are less than a thousand miles from the UK. Doesn't take a genius to see the next course on the dinner menu.
We dont mind you entered both world wars later than us. What we DO object to is the ‘we saved your ass/you’d be speaking German if not for us’ crap. Knock that s*it off and we wont crack remarks about ‘turning up late’.
We weren't late - they weren't our wars. The aspect that bothers me is the extent to which our mass media parrot British propaganda when it's just clear that Brits have a problem with logic as regards the American participation in their wars. For some reason they take our participation in their wars, in which we lost 400K dead between WWI and WWII, for granted while their participation in our wars, in which they lost less than 2K dead, is obviously this great favor for which we must be eternally grateful.
Fear seems to be an attribute of the British character these days. It’s more than just a bit sad, really.
If you’d stopped Hitler at Sudetanland instead of spreading your legs for him history would have been very different.
1—The point is that Britain went without hesitation to defend two smaller threatened countries, to the permanent detrement of the UK. And the fact that we have fought and died at America’s side in six conflicts in one century I think shows that we will fight with our allies and our friends and our kith and kin.
2—Dont dare discuss dead soldiers with such sneering contempt.
3—’Our wars’?. Korea was a UN war and a war against Communism, the Persian Gulf was as important to the UK and France as it was to the US and in neither Iraq or Afghanistan did the US act on its own, but again with allies.
How are 1950-54, 1990-1, and Iraq/Afghanistan ‘American’ wars?. Only Afghanistan could be regarded as such, and even then I would question it. Islamic terrorism threatens the west, not just the US, and 300 British died on September 11th.
Precisely!
That is at odds with what I referred to as a cheap-shot in the earlier post. I have made my point. I certainly realize that a poster's brief, off the cuff, comments are not a summary of their character and desire to make no unneeded efforts to draw out a whole series of responses.
1-—What drivel. Do you actually believe this rubbish?.
You didnt save us, you helped us. And we thank you for it. Just as the Canadians did. Just as the Aussies, New Zealanders, Africans etc etc. But dont ever think you ‘saved us’.
Britain couldnt have won the war without you, the USSR and Canada and the Empire. BUT America could never have won the war without Britain, the USSR, Canada and the British Empire. And even the mighty USSR needed the US, UK and Canada to help it fight the Germans.
No one nation won it alone. No one nation ‘saved’ the rest.
We dont speak German because of OURSELVES. We dont speak German because of the bravery and sacrifice of our men and women in six years of war, a year and a half fighting alone. We dont speak German because of the men of the RAF in the Battle of Britain or Bomber Command, the men of the Royal Navy who defeated German attempts to control the Atlantic, the men of the British Army who fought from Burma and Hong Kong to France and Ethiopia, the Rhine and the plains of N Africa.....
2—If you think Britain relied on the US Merchant Marine, then your history is as bad as I fear. Britain relied first and foremost on its own huge Merchant Marine, and then on its Canadian ally, and then on the US.
It was Britain and Canada who bore the brunt of the Atlantic battle (1940-43), and most of Britain’s supplies from North America were carried by the Royal Navy, the Canadian Royal Navy and by the huge British Merchant Marine and Canadian Merchant Marine. I dont know where you get the idea the US Mer.Marine carried the heavy load.
That is NOT to devalue the American Merchant Marine, but you are wrong to say that Britain (not England please learn the difference) somehow relied on them.
Again, they helped Britain and we should never forget their incredible bravery. If you know any oldies that were AMM, please thank them for me. They were and are heroes.
You seem to know little about Britain and WW2. And the incredible and immense British contribution to the war. Or about the British armed forces and merchant marines.
3—Lend Lease?.
You ARE aware that LL only started in March 1941, withe the Lend Lease Act, and the first LL supplies started arriving here in late May/early June?.
You ARE aware that pre 1941, from Sept 1939, that Britain BOUGHT and paid for all its arms supplies from the US?. The ‘cash and carry’ method, where all the arms and supplies were carried by Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy ships as well as UK and Canadian merchant ships. No, Great Britain paid upfront for all supplies before Lend Lease.
And if we are talking lend lease, are you aware of REVERSE LEND LEASE?. No?.
That was the Lend Lease TO America from Britain, the USSR, Australia and New Zealand, from January 1942 to Sept 1945.
Britain GAVE America £1.2 BILLION in arms and supplies via RLL from Jan 42 to Sept 45.
Go find out about reverse lend lease, its been sadly forgotten in both the US and UK. As well as Russia and Australia and New Zealand.
4—Throwing rocks?. Are you serious?. Do you honestly think the British relied completely in WW2 on American arms?. Do you honestly think that the British didnt build (huge amounts) of their own weapons, tanks, planes, ships.....?
Are you telling me that you seriously think that the British didnt build anything in the UK in WW2?. God almighty.
Hey, that's a bridge too far.
Criticize the British all you want for bad decisions, but if you're going use sexual analogies to blame all the British for the actions of Neville Chamberlain, think what kind of president we have now and ask whether you want to be blamed, in graphic sexual terms, for what our president is doing.
Blame Chamberlain. Blame Obama. But be careful about blaming an entire nation until it is clear that the national culture, not a single leader, is at fault.
I think it is patently obvious by what happened after Churchill became prime minister that the British national culture was not at fault once World War II broke out. You'd have a lot better grounds using that language about Americans, since we not only elected but re-elected Obama.
After mid-1940, Britain controlled the sea and air and after the winter of 1941-42, the Soviets took the initiative on land.
While American involvement shortened the war, thereby saving the lives of thousands of Britons, it saved millions of Germans. Prime Minister Churchill would certainly have been willing to nuke German cities, if any could have been found after the Red Army had its way.
“After mid-1940, Britain controlled the sea and air...”
BS. It wasn’t until the summer of ‘42 that the allies even had a strategy to deal with German wolfpacks sinking huge tonnage of materiel. By 1940, the British were all but knocked out of the war.
By 1942 the British people were eating the soles of their shoes.
...and even so, their 8th Army crushed Rommel, their Royal Navy sank the Bismark and their RAF swept the Luftwaffe. Maybe I’ll include a diet of British shoe soles in my plans for when the SHTF.
So far is this from the truth, that between September 1939 and 1943 the British-controlled dry-cargo fleet actually increased, from 18.7 million deadweight tons to 20 million tons.
(Source: Britain's War Machine; Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War, by David Egerton (Allen Lane, 2011) - a mine of useful corrective data for some of the commonly-held myths about the British in WW2)
They had to increase shipments because most of it was sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
I just read a book about El Alamein.
Basically Montgomery had 2.5 times the resources and Rommel had no fuel.
All credit to the Allied bravery, but it was far more about logistics and resources than battle strategy and skill.
Utter rubbish.
In the Atlantic, the main time for Germany to win the sea war was late 1940, they failed because of British-Canadian skill and bravery, but also because the Anglo-Canadians came up with constant technology to stifle and defeat every German tactic and German U boat technology. The Canadian use of the Corvette for example was a godsend, little and frankly unsuitable craft on paper they may have been, but by god they worked.
From late 194o onwards, the balance shifted to the Allied forces. Still dangerous and still a war on the sea to lose, but the German chance to win the sea had gone.
In fact, it was the US entry in 1942 that almost lost the allies the battle for the Atlantic, as the arrogant and violently Anglophobic Admiral King refused to change his tactics to parallel the British-Canadian tactics, and the U boats sunk masses of US ships until King was forced to change.
Between June 15th 1940 and December 7th 1941, the British defeated the Germans in the battle of Britain, started slowly to turn the tide in the Atlantic, sunk the Bismarck, started bombing raids of Germany, destroyed the Italians in North Africa, fought the Germans in the same field of battle, defeated Rommel in Operation Crusader (relieving Tobruk), founded the SAS, SBS, the Paras, the Commandos and the SOE, started supplying and training the European resistance to the Nazis, defeated a pro-Nazi uprising in Iraq, invaded and quelled another pro-Nazi uprising in Iran, started and undertook commando and paratroop raids on mainland Europe from Norway to France, defeated the Italians in both Somaliland and Ethiopia, fought in Greece, fought in Crete and invaded and took control of (Vichy French) Syria
And Britain had its own nuclear programme up and running (Tube Alloys), with a site in Canada. Oh and in 1940 we gave you all our nuclear secrets.
British military chiefs even drew up plans for an Anglo-French war with the then pro-Nazi USSR over Middle Eastern oil fields!.
Some ‘defeated’ nation.
Good god, where did you learn your history?.
Firstly, by 1942, the worst of the Nazi attempt to blockade us was over. Secondly, and contrary to popular myth, in WW2, the British people grew most of the food they ate.
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