Free Republic

you very obviously know very little about healthcare in the UK. private health companies exist in the UK and very profitable they are too. pretty much any medical procedure carried out by the NHS can be done privately - cancer care, orthopedic work, anti-natal, childbirth, heart surgery - you name it.

if you wish to look a fool then carry on, otherwise read up on your subject before commenting.

the drug was tested for the first time on humans by giving it to healthy adult males. if there were to be side effects probably better to find out what those side effects might be before discovering them in the treatment of a critically ill four year old with lukemia.

re: 'plenty of distate'.

Israel is seen as an educated, civilised, humane, powerful state. bulldozing homes, shooting rock-throwing idiots and annexing land is seen as somehow 'beneath' the standards expected of such a state. hence the vitriolic nature of the criticism, were Israel to be percieved as backward and brutal then such policies would be percieved as 'natural' as well as disgusting.

sorry, but while i accept the figures i can't say that britain is an anti-semitic place to live. i've done so for 30-odd years and only on two occasions has my religion been alluded to in a negative way.

the first was at school when i was asked by a catholic girl - who was about 6 - why i'd killed christ. i had no idea what she was talking about - as i was also 6.

the second was a few drunken yobs outside a synagogue following a wedding. they were arrested almost immediately.

i have no doubt that the yobs would of abused anyone who wasn't wearing sports clothing, cheap jewellery and the smell of very cheap alcohol, whether they were black, jewish, asian or islamic. they were yobs with no more political sophistication than my toenail clippings and should be treated as such.

the 'christ-killer' incident i find rather harder to deal with, though i do note that no one else i know who is Jewish has been asked such a thing.

i can only go by the experiences of my family, my friends and myself - which contains a mix of those you might identify in the street as Jewish and those, like me, who you probably wouldn't.

i'm afraid i do come across low-level racism in the UK, against Black, Eastern European, Asian and Muslim, but - apart from the two incidents above - no anti-semitism.

plenty of distate for israeli actions, but not anti-semitism.

sorry, but while i accept the figures i can't say that britain is an anti-semitic place to live. i've done so for 30-odd years and only on two occasions has my religion been alluded to in a negative way.

the first was at school when i was asked by a catholic girl - who was about 6 - why i'd killed christ. i had no idea what she was talking about - as i was also 6.

the second was a few drunken yobs outside a synagogue following a wedding. they were arrested almost immediately.

i have no doubt that the yobs would of abused anyone who wasn't wearing sports clothing, cheap jewellery and the smell of very cheap alcohol, whether they were black, jewish, asian or islamic. they were yobs with no more political sophistication than my toenail clippings and should be treated as such.

the 'christ-killer' incident i find rather harder to deal with, though i do note that no one else i know who is Jewish has been asked such a thing.

i can only go by the experiences of my family, my friends and myself - which contains a mix of those you might identify in the street as Jewish and those, like me, who you probably wouldn't.

i'm afraid i do come across low-level racism in the UK, against Black, Eastern European, Asian and Muslim, but - apart from the two incidents above - no anti-semitism.

plenty of distate for israeli actions, but not anti-semitism.

the same goes for turnabout. operate from our territory but don't let us operate your ports - despite us being the best at port management in the world. some ally.

Iraq has one port, though not a very deep - or secure one - and Afghanistan, well, good luck with getting a ship to Afghanistan.

what with it being some 300 miles from the sea.

have you not learnt what happens when a state falls and nothing replaces it?

Iraq had no 'state appartatus' for just two months after the invasion, yet two years later 150,000 troops are still there fighting an insurgency that shows no signs of abating. Iran is twice the size of Iraq and has three times Iraqs population.

Afhganistan had no state apparatus after 1991 - most would say 1989 - and look what happened there, look at what gets born in states that have no government - of whatever persausion.

do you have a magic hat to pull the vast numbers of troops needed for any Iranian operation from? even if there were to be airstrikes rather than a full iraqi-style invasion, the danger that the iranian state might fall and the potential consequences of that fall would be such that a vast force would have to be on hand just in case.

i've no love for the Iranian regime, but i know - because the CIA, IAEA and the British SIS tell me - that while hugely annoying and unpleasent the Iranians are they are no threat to anyone in the next five to seven years.

terror-exporting? yes.

vile dictatorship using torture and death to keep its people in line? absolutely.

all of the above, but not a serious threat to the vital national interests of either the United States or the United Kingdom. why? because regardless of the rhetoric, Iran has no ability to actually do anything to follow through on its rantings.

i know its pretty grim but i don't see why the iraqi government would have held onto this officer in 1991 when it returned the other POW's and the bodies of allied aircrew and soldiers that it held.

if they wanted to use him as a hostage then surely we would of seen him paraded on TV in 2003 handcuffed to Saddam Hussein.

the article mentioned his flying suit, i'm assuming that it showed some indication of what happened to him, whether he was injured, whether he was able to dump the suit and go on an E&E that didn't work or whether he was captured and stripped.

the accounts of British POW's were that they weren't changed into POW overalls until just before they were released, and that they and most of the other prisoners were kept in the same prison and had been able to establish some contact with each other.

we know that three british SF soldiers who were killed in western iraq in 1991 were buried by the local army units in marked graves and their remains were returned in the weeks after the ceasefire. one of the soldiers was way off the beaten track when he died and was buried and his grave took some time to locate, but the iraqis did hold up there end of the agreemets with regard to the return of POW's.

i can't speculate on why his body would not have been returned but given the british experience i would be very surprised if the iraqis had deliberately either hid his body or kept him in prison for 12 years without making some propaganda use from him.

prayers for his family, but i fear they will hear no good news.

yeah, i checked out quid's postings on ST as well. lots of cheap muslim bashing, lots of 'told you so' in relation to border security, but no concern for ST posters who may have been in the london area, no general message of solidarity - just the normal 'brit-bashing' articles that quid uses because he's not smart enough to articulate his own ideas.

germany is offering quite a bit, like japan its offering oil from its strategic reserve and a big wedge of cash.

the RAF should be arriving about now with 500,000 24hr ration packs and vast swathes of tents.

the lad was on the radio here this morning and said that the british embassy is washington was useless and the consulate in NO had 15 feet of water in the front garden.

both the lad and the lass were very complimentary about the US military who looked out for them to an enormous degree, said it was the only thing that kept them alive.

the lad said that the greyhound busses were cancelled on saturday evening and the trains and planes were full or cancelled. they were just stuck.

i'm not sure which countries you are refering to, but you have a very warped understanding of other countries attitudes to the US.

the only people i've seen saying 'what a good thing' hurricane Katrina was have been fruitbat 'preachers' who think its Gods punishment for America not shooting its gay population - these are the same folk who interupt the funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and declare their deaths 'deserved' because of Americas attitude to homosexuality.

nice people.

i can't tell you what other governments will be sending, but i've just watched my government put half a million 24hr ration packs, 10,000 tents and God knows what else of a string of planes at RAF brize norton.

from promise to delivery in what, 24hrs?

i suspect that the other western governments will be similarly rapid in their response.

we could say that america is far richer than us, so why give aid to a richer man than oneself? but we don't, we see people in need and we help them.

much like after 9/11, NATO activated the mutual defence articles and European partners took over all NATO air defence and AWACS taskings to allow US assets to safeguard the CONUS, European navies beefed up their contributions to STANFORLANT to allow the assigned US assets to return to US waters and then prosecute the Afghan war.

you might notice that NATO runs the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, you might notice that the US is disengaging fron Afghanistan and that its forces will be replaced by yet more British, French and German troops who will be responsible for hunting AQ and the Taleban in Afghanistan. yet again European partners are replacing US forces so that those forces can be deployed in a way that further secures the US - most likely in the horn of africa.

America is not alone, it may suit the warped ideology of some to say that it is, but its not. pity that some fall that rubbish...

you may remember a place called afghanistan, no effective central government, total international disinterest.

look what based itself there, look what took power because no other force was able to resist it.

if you remove irans government - its instruments of state power - you need to replace them with something else. that needs occupation - and iran is twice the size of iraq with three times the population. moreover you won't be able to move seemlessly from iraq to iran, any civil disorder in iran will spill into the southern shia areas of iraq very quickly.

so, limited airstrikes aimed at removing irans nuclear capablity are ok, but widescale airstrikes aimed at removing the iranian government from power without a viable replacement being available are a disaster waiting to happen.

if iraq uccupies some 100,000 us troops with a friendly north and a fairly benign south you may have fun finding troops to handle all of iran as well.

and we all know what happens to countries that are destroyed but not rebuilt...

the C-17 i saw on TV this morning was in RAF service, i'm given to understand the RN crew got there a few hours before the USN crew, but that will be going out to the sub's location together.

that information was on the BBC at about 07.30 BST, they said the team would be moving to the area about 4 hours after arrival in kamchatka (sp?), so about now really...

i'd take the 'incompatability' thing with a pinch of salt, anything that hangs off a NATO declared aircraft has to be inter-operable with other NATO aircraft. a german tornado bomber could land at a US airbase that had bever seen a tornado before and the fueling hose would fit. a loaded magazine from a british army L85A2 or a german army HK36 will slide right into a US M16/M4 and you can pop away to your hearts content without noticing.

the telegraph, although normally reliable, has an agenda on this issue. yes european defence industries are joining up, but they want to sell to the US and israeli market as well as their own - as witnessed by the new US Presidential helicopter being a european design - but US/European inter-operability is one of the big selling points of european equipment, to remove that would be commercial suicide.

while most people know that mobile phones betray your position - and lets not forget that one of the leaders of the madrid cell owned a mobile phone shop in madrid - its not the medias' fault that this information came out.

the italian police held a massive news conference with live feeds and every journalist in rome to show - step by step - how they arrested this guy.

personally i doubt this information was new to anyone at all, and if it was, it is the fault of the italiann police, not the media.

i think the guy in his pants will squeal both quickly and fully: the police were very reasuring to him about his saftey and his modesty, they helped him into the suit and the pictures i saw indicated a couple of coppers chatting aimiably to a bloke they'd just met.

another poster said something about a 'reverse' stockholm syndrome, in which the criminal identifies with the police. i think they have a point - especially given the way the police and suspect acted in each others company - yes there were guns and body armour and paper suits, but the body langauge was very friendly.

not as satisfying as a dead terrorist being dragged down the steps of the flats, but much more useful.

i'd be amazed if he held out.

i'm not sure i'd get too worried about the suits. i just watched footage of the bomber dressing in the white paper suit and there were two police stood right next to him in plain clothes helping him into the suit.

any chem/bio is very unlikely as theres now masses of police stood outside the flat in shirt-sleeves.

no idea why the other two officers were in plastic suits, but those suits are radically different to the chem/bio suits that the police/fire service use. they look like mortury suits....

bizarre.

do you actually read anything?

is it the mans fault that he lived in the same block of flats as another man being watched by police?

is it the mans fault that he happened to wear a coat that police officers thought was a bit OOT for that days weather?

was it the police's fault that the man presented himself - unknowingly - in a manner synonamous with suicide bombers?

the answer to those questions is no.

had there been no suicde bombings in london the man would not have attracted any attention whatsoever, it is only that he lived in the same block of flats that brought him to police's attention, it is only his foolish - though innocent - behaviour that the police reacted to. had he not run when challenged, had he not worn a large coat and had he not lived in that block of flats then this incident would not have occured. if any of the componant factors in this puzzle been absent the man would not be dead, it is the suicide bombers who have brought these unrelated factors together, not this man.

the man is innocent, the police are innocent, it is only the bombers who are guilty of this mans death.

the day that an immigration crime warrants being shot is the day that the war on terror is no longer worth fighting.

it now appears that the man in question had come to the UK legally and for a limited period, however while he was here - or possibly in brazil - he additionally obtained a false stamp in his passport osstensibly giving him leave to enter and remain in the UK for work purposes.

that stamp fooled at least one immigration officer when the man came back to the UK after visiting family in brazil, however the Home Office have confirmed that the stamp in the mans passport was not in use on the date stamped in the passport. so the man was in the UK illegally, but he had been legally allowed into the UK previously.

it is believed that his immigration status which made the man run from police on the day in question. it is not his fault that he lived in a block of flats that a terrorist used, anymore than any american is guilty because they lived near Timothy McVeigh or Mohammed Atta, and its not his fault that police mistook him for a bomber because of his clothing, brazil is rather warmer than the UK - and i regularly see american and australian tourists wear far more clothing than i would consider appropriate for a summers day.

it is his fault that he had not acclimitised politicly to living in the UK, immigration officers in the UK do not carry guns and they don't chase people down the street, only the police - and only when engaged in policing of the most serious of crimes like terrorism and armed robbery - carry firearms.

the man died because a number of utterly unrelated factors came together to produce a horrific result, had any of those factors not been present the man would have been stopped and possibly arrested.