Break-out!

[yrwyddfa]

Some people send ambassadors
Some people send diplomats
Some send no-one at all.

Britain sends a division of warrior tanks:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/4262336.stm

[Valleysboy1978]

Don't blame them. When they are arrested by the Iraqi police, then handed over to the rebels it suggests that the police ARE the rebels or at least some of the rebels are in the new police force.

Enough is enough now. When petrol bombs are being thrown at these men it is time to pull out. They don't want us there, fine we'll leave them to destroy themselves

[Wally Pipp]

you mean you didn't see this coming a year ago? Good grief...

[yrwyddfa]

you mean you didn't see this coming a year ago? Good grief...

I see everything in advance. Every possible event, and every convoluted effect.

But I missed the policeman who nicked me doing 89Mph this morning on the way into work.

[FunkyDexter]

They don't want us there, fine we'll leave them to destroy themselves

The trouble is they wouldn't be destroying themselves if not for us in the first place. We do now have a moral obligation clean up our mess (and it is ours, not theirs). Whether that is best achieved by staying or going I just don't know anymore.

Is it me or does anyone else think there are things we're not being about this incident? For one thing, I've heard that the two soldiers were arresting for killing an Iraqi policeman and wounding three more in a firefight but I can't seem to find a reliable source on it and have no idea what the firefight was about in the first place or even if it really happened.

[DeadEyes]

The information on all this is patchy at best and most likely spin. They said "they had information" that the soldiers were moved to a milita house, which is not the same as saying they had been moved. If they had been moved why did they attack the prison? The soldiers weren't wearing uniforms which makes them spies and as such means they could have be executed. Fighters not wearing uniforms; wasn't that Bushs definition of illegal combatants in Afghanistan?
In this case they got caught but how many other policemen and civilians have been shot and killed by British and American soldiers pretending to be arabs.

[demotivater]

The two Brits were in Arab gear working undercover. So, that brings about the whole "are we a police force, or an occupying army" debate. But, the local police in Basra have been infiltrated to the highest levels, which is common knowledge, and a big problem for the good guys. Two journalists were killed in Basra in the past couple months because (according to reliable info I've heard) they were getting to critical of the Basra police. One of them was actually taken from his house by guys "posing as Basra police".

A British contractor (PMC) who's worked in the area and knows a lot of your boys there, says that the two soldiers did in fact get in a short firefight with some police, and killed one of them. But, what we don't hear, is that the police they got into with were not in uniform, and were nothing more than armed men in civilian clothes. It's not like they opened up on a squad car or anything. Latest is that a judge in Basra has issued arrest warrants for the two Brits. Something tells me they won't be arrested anytime soon.

[Valleysboy1978]

They are not spies, they were special forces (SAS) and as such the information will always be conjecture. Do you really think that undercover special forces would open fire on police? Hardly. They would have only fired back in defence.

See this coming? I knew that there would be fights with various insurgents, but when the general populace sets alight soldiers, enough is enough. To shoot someone is bad, to burn them alive is unforgivable. My opinion changed after that footage. I believed the populace wanted us there and only a small insurgency force didn't. Now I would want them pulled out and leave the Iraqi people to rot.

[Wally Pipp]

well, welcome to reality.
There will be plenty of ordinary Iraqis who welcome the change in politics. There was always a risk that a lot of them would get desillusioned if the changes were too slow and too awkward. You see, not having an exit strategy is not really a good basis for cooperation. Eventually people will see through the promises if they're faced with daily power cuts, inadequate water supply etc...

It's a case of not being able to fulfill that was promised. Case in point is that Iraqis complain that life under Saddam was better organised as far as basic needs are concerned. (note 'organised', not 'better quality'). Says enough.

Plus, there was always a risk of internal strife. THE challenge was preventing that strife. Dissolving the Baath party was not a good move in that respect.
It's not yet inevitably moving to a civil war but it's getting damn near.

And yes, that could all be foreseen. It doesn't take a psychic to predict this happening if you start an operation without an exit strategy. Winning the war was going to be easy, what came afterwards wasn't.

[just_a_me]

I wonder if we should just get out or keep trying to clean up the mess. I think we should have never been there, but maybe we have to finish it since we're there. It was a pretty sweet breakout though. It was totally John Wayne.

[Valleysboy1978]

We can't keep trying to clean the mess when they won't help. The mess will just keep getting worse.
I agree that they didn't plan far enogh ahead, a good exit strategy would be "Pull-out".

[just_a_me]

What frustrates me is having to rely on other sources of information all the time because the average person doesn't ever know anything first hand. We have to sort through all the lies that are always told us by the politicians and news. I sure the politicians don't always know the truth either. I wonder who really does know the truth, the director of the CIA or NSA?

[Valleysboy1978]

I doubt they even know the whole truth.

[just_a_me]

That's true, I'm sure people lie to them too.

[Valleysboy1978]

I certainly lie to my boss enough

[Wally Pipp]

You wouldn't think that if you heard the media spin over the whole mess. According to them nobody lied, everything was planned meticulously and our brave lads are over there giving the Iraqis liberty. Those who are resisting are misguided terrorists. It's therefore not their fault that the Iraqis are an ungrateful bunch.

Or so the rationale goes...

Pity it didn't quite work out that way. People may yet think they're a bunch of opinionated spin doctors

[Valleysboy1978]

I never trust the media. They will always twist the facts until they have an exclusive. I just wish they would give us the facts and leave us to draw our own conclusions.

What always makes me laugh is how the reporter is always ACTUALLY THERE. For example, any story about Tony Blair has to from outside 10 Downing Street, even though he isn't actually there. Any politics story has to be in Westminster, anything about George Bush has to be done outside the White House!?!

[FunkyDexter]

I think our men are a long way from being either spies or terrorists but if they were in plain clothes then we fall foul of our own (well, GWB's) definition. It's pretty hard to justify using SAS members dressed as Arabs after all of Georges rhetoric (which we agreed with at the time) about how proper soldiers wore proper uniforms and anyone who didn't was an unlawful combatant (I'm para-phrasing of course). I'm still a million miles from accusing our men of being spies/terrorists but it does sound as though we should maybe start examining our operational procedures.

As for pulling out, I think no. I wasn't for the war but if you're going to make a mess of someones country you really do have a moral obligation to clean up that mess after you, even if the people whose country it is get a bit p***ed at you in the meantime. Whether or not staying will actually work I really don't know, but I do know that pulling out now will leave Iraq in a mess I doubt it'll recover from for well over a decade. The vast majority of Iraqi people who just want to get on with their lives deserve better than that from us.

As a parting thought: Without democracy you are disenfranchised. Without security you're quite likely dead.

[Valleysboy1978]

It's pretty hard to justify using SAS members dressed as Arabs after all of Georges rhetoric (which we agreed with at the time) about how proper soldiers wore proper uniforms and anyone who didn't was an unlawful combatant (I'm para-phrasing of course). I'm still a million miles from accusing our men of being spies/terrorists but it does sound as though we should maybe start examining our operational procedures

One word...undercover. That is what special forces have always done, and many of the soldiers also. So why is it hard to justify undercover work? That is often the only way to gather vital information. As for GWB's comments, well I wouldn't take much notice of him. He has about as much intelligence as his mutt

[Wally Pipp]

Dick Dastardly!

[Shaggy Hiker]

One word...undercover. That is what special forces have always done, and many of the soldiers also. So why is it hard to justify undercover work? That is often the only way to gather vital information. As for GWB's comments, well I wouldn't take much notice of him. He has about as much intelligence as his mutt

Ya, just cause GWB says something, that doesn't make it right.

I doubt anybody knows the truth. Everybody sees a set of events, but time and again we find that no two people who witness the same event experience it the same way. The truth is determined over time as some of the recollections are supported, and some are deprecated. Is it still truth? Well, it may be the best we can do.

[FunkyDexter]

One word...undercover.

Yeah, but isn't that another word for spy. And wouldn't it make half the people we're busy calling terrorists and unlawful combatants merely 'undercover' soldiers. Don't get me wrong, if our men need to put on civvies to get their job done then that's what they need to do. But it becomes alot less tenable after you've shouted from the rooftops that 'that's what the bad guys do and we're not like that'

I think one of the main problems with the war on terror in general is that we've tried to adopt the moral high ground and yet our actions are, at times, awfully reminiscent of the terrorists we claim to be fighting. I'm not saying our motives are the same or anything daft like that, but if you're going to try and take the moral high-ground you've got to live it. If you're not whiter than white the rest of the world, particularly those parts of it that identify with those your fighting, are just going to see you as a hypocrite and that's going to make things worse.

The problem isn't so much that our guys went under-cover. The problem is that we spent a long time telling the world very loudly that 'we don't do that 'cause that's what bad men do'

[Shaggy Hiker]

When it comes to undercover:

1) You can be shot as a spy.
2) Most everybody does it anyways.
3) The definition remains up to the survivors.