Saturday, April 07, 2007

Welcome home! The true story can now be told


“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.” Royal Marine Joe Tindell

Good to see the Royal Navy and Marines home at last, safe and well (in the circumstances). I think that they did a very good job under horrendous conditions. Faced with the prospect of summary execution or 7 years in an Iranian jail (pretty much the same thing) the "tongue in cheek" apologies by the Brits for the “apparent” intrusion into Iranian waters, fooled no-one except their less than bright kidnappers. Irony is apparently lost on Islamic fascists. Who it is clear simply had no idea how this television footage was being interpreted world wide. Nor the support they had created for a pre-emptive attack on their nuclear facilities (which I don't share - at the moment).

The Iranians behaved in the usual appalling brutal manner, pretty much as most right thinking people expected. It is such a same that such a country with such a rich culture and proud history is presently been run by an ignorant and uneducated leadership. The BBC are now reporting that their ambassador Rasoul Movahedian is saying “Iran seeks goodwill over captives”. This raises the question what qualities are needed to become an Iranian Ambassador? Is the lobotomy compulsory (or even necessary due to the obvious inbreeding by the Iranian diplomatic corp?)

While the “Far Left” and “Right” (increasingly two sides of the same coin on such issues) in this country haven’t exactly showed much judgement on how to respond. On the one hand we get the usual suspects such as John McNoHoper MP sticking up for Iran and we get twassocks such as the Daily Mail who attacked the hostages as “puppets” who should have fought to the last bullet.

There are elements in the Far Left who will automatically side with anyone who appears to be “anti-American”. See the tosh spoken also about Mugabe, while the Daily Mail is also so keen to attack Labour that they will stoop to any depths.

The person who seems to have come out of this the best is Tony Blair. “Tone” and I have had our differences over the years. However, he and Beckett seem to have handled this very well. By being firm but measured the Iranians were boxed into a corner and realised that Britain would not apologise to Iran and they had to back down.
I think that we ought to make sure that boarding parties are properly protected in the future and that Iran is aware of what will be the militery response if they try a similar trick in the future. If any Iranian warship comes any near any British craft then the Iranians face an early bath.

2 comments:

Chris Paul said...

Sheesh. I'm thinking (a) "our brave boys and girl" WERE in their water and (b) the media storm is humbuggery over next to nothing when compared with Gitmo with two UK-based plumbers (or the like) were arrested in Gambia (so someone could trouser $10,000 in rewards) and stuck there so far for 1914 days ... not 14 days, 1914 days.

They weren't going to be killed or imprisoned for seven years and I think they probably knew that.

John Gray said...

Hi Colin

I must admit that I am surprised to see you post this sort of stuff? I appreciate that some people are so twisted by their opposition to Blair and Bush that they somehow feel obliged to stand up for Ahmadinejad.

I don’t think people puke through physical fear for nothing.

By all means draw a comparison with the media lack of interest in the Guantanamo Bay detainees, but that doesn’t mean you have to make out that the sailors are liars nor that their gross mistreatment was at all justifiable.