Iran playing games

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by germanos


I think the Brits need some serious retraining. What happened to the famous stiff upperlip?

"We had a blindfold and plastic cuffs, hands behind our backs, heads against the wall. Basically there were weapons cocking. Someone, I'm not sure who, someone said, I quote, 'lads, lads I think we're going to get executed'."

"After that comment someone was sick and as far as I was concerned he had just had his throat cut."

BBC link

(bolding mine) What a way to get your comrades in despair

I believe current training is for captured soldiers to say anything as long as it isn't going to put militray operations in danger.

In any event how does anyone here who hasn't been held prisoner by the Iranians know how they would react.

I doubt that anyone who wnated to keep their teeth intact with tell a mairine to their face that they should have done something different

[SlowwHand]

They talked too much. That's just the facts.

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
They talked too much. That's just the facts.

Ever been threatened with 15 years in an Iranian jail

[DinoDoc]

You know as well as I do that wasn't a realistic threat.

[TheStinger]

I'm not a 21 year old kid who has just been kidnapped and put in solitary confinement.

My only point on this is its very easy for people to criticise who haven't been in aposition remotley like theirs.

Andy Macnab ex SAS who was captured by Saddams boys in Gulf 1 said you say whatever they want to hear.

He's tougher than anyone on this particular forum

[DinoDoc]

Yes. We can trade people like that all day (like John McCain who refused to sign his propaganda statement) and it wouldn't really prove anything substantive.

[TheStinger]

What it proves is that people react in different ways what it doesn't prove is that we are in a position to judge those caught up in situations such as the one we are discussing

[Patroklos]

I fault the mothership of the sailors more than the sailors themselves for this. I still wanna know why they weren't in a position to defend their people.

Did I not already go over this? You can't have every single individual patrol/boarding team/base camp/whatever capable of reacting to every situation. It is just not practical/economic/smart. It is like the stupid idiots who still whine about body armor when most of the soldiers with it leave most of the pieces behind (full suit is 80lbs).

What should the little 8m outboard engine rhib have taken with them. Anti tank rockets? Torpedoes? Underwater mines? Stingers? The simple fact is the equipment package they took with them was based on the mission to accomplish and LIKELY threats.

I have been to the same waters doing the exact same work as a US boarding officer only at ABOT vice KAAOT, and there are obvious reasons why HMS Cornwall would not have been there.

1.) Too shallow, take a look at a chart of that area. There is very little water for a proper warship to use. The defense areas of the platforms are only a couple miles around the them, and half that is too shallow/covered it wrecks to use. That is why the deeper draft American Destoyers/Cruisers cover ABOT while the shallow draft European frigates and American OHPs/PCs/Coast Guard Cutters (with the help of a few Iraqi PCs) cover KAAOT. We are talking about even outside of that.

2.) The primary mission is to defend the platforms, for good reason. The intelligence gathering/monitoring missions are secondary. We send out small boats to do this, as they are the only ones why can get there. The alternative is to not monitor that corridor at all. Not really an alternative.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Yes. We can trade people like that all day (like John McCain who refused to sign his propaganda statement) and it wouldn't really prove anything substantive.

The Vietnamese should've just posed as Republicans and McCain would've gladly sold his own mother.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Patroklos
The simple fact is the equipment package they took with them was based on the mission to accomplish and LIKELY threats.

This isn't the first time this has happened and I don't think it will be the last.

[lord of the mark]

Kaus - Who was humiliated?

"Hawks for Humiliation: Am I missing something? Why exactly was the resolution of the latest Iran hostage crisis a "success" for Iran and a "humiliation" for Britain, as the hawkish Charles Krauthammer argues (and Geoffrey Wheatcroft insinuates but doesn't quite come out and say in his own voice, as opposed to John Bolton's)? The hostages were released in a one-day propaganda stunt, maybe in exchange for the release of an Iranian we were holding and Iranian visitation rights for some others. But the Iranians were also looking at an awful lot of aircraft carriers steaming around their neighborhood. Didn't they blink? If that's humiliation, it's not far from what a U.S.-U.K. victory in the crisis would look like. I counter the right hand with the far right hand--an analysis on David Horowitz's FrontPage site that departs significantly from the Bolton-Krauthammer party line:

As Britain refused to apologize for the behavior of its boarding party, continuing to insist that they were operating in dsfaIraqi waters – not inside Iran's territorial waters, as Tehran alleged – some of Khamenei's advisors began to have second thoughts.

Adding to those doubts were whispered reports that the USS Nimitz was steaming toward the Persian Gulf– making it the third Carrier Strike Group in the area. [snip]

So for now, Tehran's leaders have backed down.

Isn't that what Krauthammer and Bolton would be arguing in other circumstances--i.e, if they weren't favoring some sort of military confrontation with Iran? Would they have been happier if the Iranians hadn't caved so easily? Just asking! .. P.S.: See also Walid Phares' analysis, which focuses less on the Nimitz and more on the looming propaganda setback for Iran. ... 2:28 P.M. link"

[Patroklos]

This isn't the first time this has happened and I don't think it will be the last.

The USS McFaul did over 300 boardings from June-September last year, about 70 in the NAG. That is one ship out of probobly over a hundred coalition warships (not counting PCs and Cutters who do boardings too) that will operate in the Gulf this year.

So, two incidents over four plus years versus thousands of uneventful boardings, you do the cost benefit

[germanos]

Originally posted by TheStinger


I believe current training is for captured soldiers to say anything as long as it isn't going to put militray operations in danger.

Like I said, they need retraining.

I don´t blame them for being scared, but I find it increadibly stupid to start scaring your comrades with proposterous assumptions.

Today I read the story of the female marine. She took the fully consious decision to be a traitor (her words) over her being home at her daughters birthday.

In my view that´s totally incompetent behaviour of a soldier in a warzone

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by germanos


Like I said, they need retraining.

I don´t blame them for being scared, but I find it increadibly stupid to start scaring your comrades with proposterous assumptions.

Today I read the story of the female marine. She took the fully consious decision to be a traitor (her words) over her being home at her daughters birthday.

In my view that´s totally incompetent behaviour of a soldier in a warzone

She wasn't a marine

She wamted to see her kid she wasn't a traitor she hardly gave up the keys to the houses of parliament

[Ned]

Originally posted by TheStinger


She wasn't a marine

She wamted to see her kid she wasn't a traitor she hardly gave up the keys to the houses of parliament

I applaud her decision. It strikes me as incredibly wrong to ask a female soldier who is a mother as well to stand up to torture during captivity. Wrong on so many levels.