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Military Historian Ralph Peters delivers a hard hitting piece today in the New York Post. I have refrained from this kind of observation but as the issue drags out, honesty and candor become more and more difficult to repress:
Members of Britain's Royal Marines wimped out in a matter of days and acquiesced in propaganda broadcasts for their captors. Jingoism aside, I can't imagine any squad of U.S. Marines behaving in such a shabby, cowardly fashion. Our Marines would have fought to begin with. Taken captive by force, they would've resisted collaboration. To the last man and woman. You could put a U.S. Marine in a dungeon and knock out his teeth, but you wouldn't knock out his pride in his country and the Corps. "Semper fi" means something.
The Iranians judged their victims well: The British boat crews didn't make even a token effort at defending themselves. Now their boo-hoo-we-quit government isn't defending them, either. We allowed the Iranian hardliners to humiliate a once-great military and encourage hostage-takers everywhere. John Bull has been cowed by a pack of unshaven thugs. And the Britannia that ruled the waves is waving goodbye.
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OK, as promised, I found the full image of that "peace" creep defecating on a US flag at a "peace" demonstration in Portland. His mama must be proud. Of course we note that not "ALL" the "peace" demonstrators actually defecated on the flag. I have no idea how people feel comfortable associating themselves with these types of "demonstrations."
Well in that case,Mr Ralph Peters doesn't realizes what state our armed services are in. What America (and some citizens in my own country who were living in a dream past of the British Empire where we could go storming in with gunboats) need to understand about this whole affair,is that Britain simply wasn't in a strong enough military position to do anything "but" play the diplomatic chess game and propaganda battle of national egos between governemnts. Our armed services are extremely stretched as it is with this fiasco in Iraq, and taking on Iran out of the blue in any way other than diplomacy, would have been gung ho bullshit and suicide. Starting a fight you simply cannot win, might get you admired by people who can stand on the sidelines and watch. But in "reality", Britain had no other option but to seek a diplomatic solution. Our sailors 'could' have fought (with little armoury) despite being outnumbered by Iranian boats with a considerably larger armoury,but ended up as 15 heroic but very stupid and very dead sailors floating in the sea,having handed a perfect excuse to declare that Britain fired the first shot and is the aggressor. On the question of why they went along with the videos. As far as I'm aware, they are only obliged to say their name,rank,and number. Why they chose to go along with the whole parade is uncertain and no doubt we will hear about it soon as news has come in that are to be released. But it probably had to do with the fact that it "appears" they were treated humanely and there is a possibility that as far as they knew,they may have been in Iranian waters when presented with such details by the Iranians. We will all find out soon enough. If his attitude extends to the whole British armed services, then he can get someone else to join in on his nations wars of "liberation". Perhaps it is time that UK re-evaluated its "special relationship" with washington, if this is how some view its ally? I suspect he's just pissed off that because the sailors didn't open fire, they couldn't be used as pawns by Bush and Co as a perfect excuse to start a war with Iran.
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