Blair's Half Barmy, His Army's Not Very Impressed

Yes, but sadly four soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter have been killed this morning in Iraq.  Yet another depressing indication of the failures of Blair and his colleagues. 

You can bet that if there's a photo opportunity for Blair with the 15 returned personnel he'll be there, grinning and glad-handing.  But he sure as hell won't be present at the funerals of the four dead.

Quite - I do get rather puzzled that 100+ soldiers coming home covered in Union Jacks gets less coverage than one servicewoman in a headscarf.  I must be missing something.

UK forces only released because two kidnapped (since January)  Iranian diplomats were released in Iraq (held by US/UK controlled forces no doubt) and Iranian consular access was granted to a further 5 detained senior Iranians - ironically the very things Blair/Becket were bleating for at the UN regarding UK detainees.

The big question is why has Blair struck a deal with Iran now (any suggestion to the contrary should be dismissed immediately)... may I suggest that the US attack will go ahead v. soon and UK would do anything to make sure no UK personnel were still detained. If I was Iranian I would be expecting the good news any day now.

http://www.rxpgnews.com/gulf-middle-east/Iranian-envoy-to-meet-detained-Iranians-in-Iraq_22386.shtml

The Yorkshire Ranter is still adamant that there's not enough US firepower (we can exclude the UK from any discussion here) to do anything significant to Iran and he has a habit of thinking clearly about these things.  The campaign against Iran is, of course, already military in nature, but using proxy armies (hang on, that's what we decry the Iranians for doing, surely?) rather than full frontal US operations.
It's likely the Iranians know full well what the US is doing inside their country and I strongly suspect they spent a while watching our boys and girls happily pretending to be Iraqi Customs and Excise and noted the weak spot - when they're close to where the border should be, when the helicopter returns to the ship, when they're disembarking from the vessel being searched, when the mothership is too far away and the water's too shallow.  Oddly enough, this kind of watch-and-wait-for-the-moment strategy is what Hizbollah did before the kidnap of the Israeli soldiers back last year, which of course prompted immediate and idiotic Israeli military action, which failed to get the soldiers back.  At least we didn't do anything stupid like that.

"cries of 'terrorism terrorism terrorism' every three seconds grate like fingernails on a blackboard. "

 Yep. Though of course the chances of any of the craven buttwipes in the media challenging Loony Tone on precisely which definition of "terrorism" pertains to an attack specifically targetted on an armored military vehicle containing on duty uniformed military personnel of an occupying foreign army are extremely slim.

 Two of the four are reportedly female squaddies adding unexpected resonance to Ahmadinejad's "West put women in peril" jibe.

But he's still happy to blame Iran for their deaths:  Two-Faced Tony Turns On Tehran

Well, this is just one big disgusting affair, all over the place I see comments from UK citizens whinging about how our boys were treated and how they were tortured and how Iran abducted them. Our own Government providing some petty useless pictures of meaningless GPS screenshots claiming they were in Iraqi waters. Yet nobody in the press seems to actually be doing what a press is for, investigating the truth. Fortunately we don't have to rely on these pathetic attempts of regurgitated propaganda, we can see for ourselves the truth, even in reports trying to be supportive of the situation    we can clearly see that the extent of any mistreatment extended to that scary scary torture technique of 'SOLITARY CONFINEMENT', the party-line reports even show the members of the team stating that they were actively observing Iran, I think that's called spying by another name.
Of course they were also subjected that really degrading procedure of having some parting gifts. I mean looking at the interview that the Iranians conducted it's fairly clear that there is absolutely no f@cking coersion there at all.

Compare and contrast the idea that these guys were under duress with their comments on return (video link on the page). Of course I don't for one second feel that the guys did anything outside of what they felt was the right thing to do at the time. In fact they probably made the correct assessment of the situation that any military response would have had escalation implications. However, the interview clearly shows that they were all in contact with each other at all time.

What truly is disgusting here is the contrived media circus here, just listening to the interviewer you can tell that she is looking for words that they can use, but the only fucking words they can find was 'psycological torture'

Followed by an American fool agreeing with the words torture, I think I lost count on how many times the inteviewer tries to get people to say this. Utterly completely reprehensible in every way. A complete failure, a complete vindication that UK media is nothing more than a propaganda machine now.

Did the US ever get the Marine kidnapped in Iraq back ?

The Guardian reports that:

The former captives are expected to make around £250,000 between them. Faye Turney, the 26-year-old seawoman, is likely to get the most profitable deal. She is said to have sold her story for £150,000 in a joint contract with a newspaper and ITV.

 
There were reports that the Royal Marines were planning to sell the vases given to them in their 'goody bags' by the Iranians on eBay. The father of one of the hostages said the MoD had suggested the servicemen 'Go out there, tell the truth and make the money.

Compensation next I expect. Anyway I thought a "seawoman" was a mermaid?

Sat Apr 7, 2007 7:17 AM IST

DIWANIYA, Iraq (Reuters)  (Original report which was the W/P 1st edition)

[Bleichwehl said troops, facing scattered resistance, discovered a factory that produced "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs), a particularly deadly type of explosive that can destroy a main battle tank and several weapons caches].

Saturday, April 7, 2007; 9:14 AM

DIWANIYA, Iraq (Reuters)  (W/P published edition)

[One of the bombs was an explosively formed projectile, a particularly deadly type of device which Washington accuses Iran of supplying Iraqi militants].

The W/P version was heavily edited anyway. But, the cached W/Post version contained the phraseology of the original report, which was later changed to include the Iranian complicity angle. 

See here for further explanation.

So really, despite his humiliation Tone is still pushing the same Neo-Con agenda.

He's very free in giving up other peoples lives though!!!