Posted on 04/05/2007 5:03:27 AM PDT by redstates4ever
Have you ever faced a line-of-duty life-or-death situation? If not then you do not know how you would behave. You may woof and pose but you can’t know.
Does it occur to you, Master of Sarcasm, that this might actually be a joke? Buy a clue, genius.
No, I do know. Don’t question my willpower or morals. I was in the Marines and now I’m a police Officer. I would fight to the death in the Marines and I’ll do it now as a police officer. I know my training and remember it every day. I’d rather eat a bullet then have pictures of me, rifling through an Iranian goody bag, circulating thru the internet for posterity. Maybe you can sit there and have doubts about your patriotism but I know where I stand. If it would take me getting skinned alive so that my family and friends could stay alive then so be it. I’d rather say a few more things but I don’t want to be kicked off FR.
These are soldiers, not civilians.
Why should any of this be a joking matter? So maybe there should be jokes about the soldiers in Iraq dying by Iranian hands while this dog & pony show is going on?
A LOT of questions remain unanswered...why didn’t the Mother Ship fire on the Iranian boat and where the heck was this ship? Why didn’t the British captain and the driver of the boat know their locations?
FMCDH(BITS)
Note that I asked if you ever had. I did not assume that you had not. This forum is full of tough guys who never left the driveway.
Semper Fi. Every single bit of this is revolting and disgusting. I too am a former Marine and am shocked. Just LOOK at those photos. And the point here is NOT “How do you know how you would react?” but just that the behavior is shameful and wrong. I can’t say for certain how I would react, but if I acted like these guys it would be shameful and wrong. If you did it, it would be shameful and wrong, if your critics did it it would be shameful and wrong, and when these Brits did it it was shameful and wrong. Again, maybe I would have done the same, (sure like to believe I wouldn’t), but if I did do it, I’d spend the rest of my life hiding my face.
Oh, so now you’re serious? The joke is the picture, that is the whole point of this string. It is not about soldiers dying in Iraq. There are many, many other venues here for serious commentary, but you really need something besides your own word to back your views. Ridicule and insults won’t do it.
____________________________________
Marines but why quibble?
Oh, and my brother was also in the Corps — more than 20 years in the infantry, both Gulf Wars, Panama, etc. And he has always said the best soldiers in the world he has ever met, even better than the US Marines because they are such a small unit, and the smaller the unit the more highly trained they can be, is the Royal Marines. I am dying to know how many of these 15 were Royal Marines, and am PRAYING that it’s the 3 who aren’t smiling like trained monkeys. BTW — remember when Jesse Jackson got our guys out of Bosnia?? Kosovo?? how they came across the border singing and holding hands? Or was it just holding hands? Unbelievable.
Even worse! (You knew I was gonna say that...)
My bad. Maybe you can direct me to the “Serious Threads” section and the “Joking Only” section so that I can discern which threads I need to be posting on because, obviously, I’m looking at these small little happenings as being way bigger and more serious than they truly are.
LOL! You kill me! :)
Now this is actually funny. I.E. it leaves little interpretation for my small feeble serious mind.
And those goofy British Kids all left with parting smiles, trinkets and gifts ...
* * * * *
A CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION TAKES OVER.
Ahmadinejad’s Demons
by Matthias Küntzel 1 | 2
Post date 04.14.06 | Issue date 04.24.06
During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran’s forces were no match for Saddam Hussein’s professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child’s neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.
At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. “In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. “Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”
These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army.The Basij Mostazafan—or “mobilization of the oppressed”—was essentially a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction. “The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies,” one veteran of the Iran-Iraq War recalled in 2002 to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. “It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander’s orders, everyone wanted to be first.”
The sacrifice of the Basiji was ghastly. And yet, today, it is a source not of national shame, but of growing pride. Since the end of hostilities against Iraq in 1988, the Basiji have grown both in numbers and influence. They have been deployed, above all, as a vice squad to enforce religious law in Iran, and their elite “special units” have been used as shock troops against anti-government forces. In both 1999 and 2003, for instance, the Basiji were used to suppress student unrest. And, last year, they formed the potent core of the political base that propelled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—a man who reportedly served as a Basij instructor during the Iran-Iraq War—to the presidency.
Ahmadinejad revels in his alliance with the Basiji. He regularly appears in public wearing a black-and-white Basij scarf, and, in his speeches, he routinely praises “Basij culture” and “Basij power,” with which he says “Iran today makes its presence felt on the international and diplomatic stage.” Ahmadinejad’s ascendance on the shoulders of the Basiji means that the Iranian Revolution, launched almost three decades ago, has entered a new and disturbing phase. A younger generation of Iranians, whose worldviews were forged in the atrocities of the Iran-Iraq War, have come to power, wielding a more fervently ideological approach to politics than their predecessors. The children of the Revolution are now its leaders.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060424&s=kuntzel042406
I hope they dont come back talking about how well they were treated, even if they were they were mistreated by being taken captive in Iraqi waters in the 1st place.
It will be interesting to see how much was an act to gain their freedom. Most of it was I suspect.
I think things have changed so much in the UK that this is to be expected. The British people have for the most part given up God & Country. It seems there is nothing precious enough to them to fight for. Look at the polls. I fear we are headed down the same path.
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