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British Sailors “SURRENDERED” To Iran

by | 14th, April 2007

FROM Duncan R in the Forums:

Rule Britannia.

Rule Britannia
Britannia rules the waves
Britons never never never
shall be slaves

Stirring sentiments – which seem, sadly, no longer appropriate in this day and age!

While the 15 british sailors/marines were being held by the Iranians, I had every sympathy for their plight and had no problems with them appearing on Iranian TV confessing to trespass in Iranian waters – in any case, the majority of viewers would see these statements as ’empty’ words with no real meaning, whilst it gave the Iranians the public apology they required to enable them to release the captives without loss of face amongst their own population.

I am glad to see, however, that I am not alone in finding distasteful the idea that the captives should profit from the experience. At the end of the day, these 15 service personnel SURRENDERED their weapons, and themselves to the Iranians. Faced with a standoff, rather than hold their ground until reinforcements arrived these 15 sailors and marines – apparently – meekly handed themselves over to a ‘bully’. Far from rewarding them, in an earlier age they would have been shot for cowardice! We are fortunate that the RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain did not refuse to take to the skies because they were outnumbered and some might suffer injury or death!

If I was in the military I would be asking searching questions of the 15 to ascertain how they landed themselves in this position in the first place. Were there failures of command, errors of judgement, poor decisions made?

Having been wrong-footed throughout by the Iranians, the MOD and the Government are now trying to regain some ground by dramatising the ‘cruel’ treatment of the captives. While the captives were no doubt frightened by their experience, I am not convinced that their treatment amounted to torture. True, Faye Turney was separated from her male colleagues – but, do we not also keep male and female prisoners separate in our own civilian prisons? True, her everyday clothing was removed and replaced with ‘prison wear’, but did our civilian prisons not follow the same practice until recent years? No doubt also that some of their guards tried to ‘wind’ them up’, but this hardly ranks up there with the barbarity of the treatment meted out to Iraqi prisoners by the Americans at Abu Grab prison.

Far from dramatising this incident, and rewarding ‘apparently’ incompetent, spineless sailors/marines, the MOD and the media would do better to pay these outrageous sums of money to soldiers fighting for their lives every day in Iraq and Afghanistan (for pitiful pay and conditions) who do not have the option of surrendering (and earning several years pay by so doing) when faced with a numerically superior enemy!



Posted: 14th, April 2007 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink