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British Navy Sailors


jdobbin

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The accuracy of those reports may / may not be an issue. However the Captain of the Cornwall stated emphatically they were NOT in Iraq waters.

Disputes over territorial waters are ongoing all over th world - in fact Canada has several with the United States and with Denmark.

I suspect sabre rattling at this time would be more detrimental to the cause than not. I also suspect those soldiers may be gone for a very long time unless there is some serious negotiating from both sides.

Unfortunately, the Iranians have very little to lose and much to gain - so they will be in the drivers seat - should they indeed even be interested in solving this issue.

The Brits care far more about the welfare of their people than the Iranians would about Iranian soldiers or sailors.

I suspct it will play out over a couple of months - hope I am wrong but that is my immediate take on this one.

Borg

I don't think the Britsih should negotiate with Iran but instead treat this kidnapping as a declaration of war against Britain, and launch an all out offensice against the people and government of Iran.
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You guys are babbling. The key point here is that Iran is pushing the limits and they need to be pummelled into sumbission before they get the nuke. Period.

Oh I agree. I think that every country has a right to do whatever they deem necessary to ensure their own survival, be it lie, cheat, abuse their power or whatever. So really, I see nothing wrong with Israel abusing their close ties with US to eliminate its Middle East enemies. After all, we live in a jungle and we all follow the rules of the jungle - might makes right.

The only thing that pisses me off is people taking the moral high ground and claiming they are "holier than thou" with regards to the people who are on the other side of the scope. And what doubly pisses me off are people who honestly believe that their country (US, brits, israel, etc) is "seeding democracy and improving peoples lives" and that muslims are unwashed barbarians.

Hypocricy is what i cannot stand.

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I don't think the Britsih should negotiate with Iran but instead treat this kidnapping as a declaration of war against Britain, and launch an all out offensice against the people and government of Iran.

It'll be like Lebanon all over again. As well all know Hezbollah is now non-existent because of that offensive.

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I don't think the Britsih should negotiate with Iran but instead treat this kidnapping as a declaration of war against Britain, and launch an all out offensice against the people and government of Iran.

That would be stupid.

DoP

The trouble with the much trumpeted 'no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq' is that it fails to account for things such as 4500 tons of VX nerve agent which Saddam had stockpiled.

Link? That number seems ridiculously high. Most estimates I've heard ranged between 1.5 and 3 tons.

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Britain does have a right to get its sailors back, and makes a good case. The most force required for a situation like this is a deployment of the navy in Iranian waters, if the sailors are returned then the Brits can be on their way. If Iran wants a war, they can fire the first shot. The use of a navy has proven successful in getting stubborn governments to cooperate.

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Figleaf has been proven once again to be the only one on these posts who understands what is really going on in this world.

Well Rue, I've decide to report you for stalking and trolling.

Do you report yourself everytime you post one of your assine polls?

You really should.....

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I don't think the Britsih should negotiate with Iran but instead treat this kidnapping as a declaration of war against Britain, and launch an all out offensice against the people and government of Iran.

That would be stupid.

DoP

The trouble with the much trumpeted 'no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq' is that it fails to account for things such as 4500 tons of VX nerve agent which Saddam had stockpiled.

Link? That number seems ridiculously high. Most estimates I've heard ranged between 1.5 and 3 tons.

We need to pummel those assholes.

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I don't think the Britsih should negotiate with Iran but instead treat this kidnapping as a declaration of war against Britain, and launch an all out offensice against the people and government of Iran.

It'll be like Lebanon all over again. As well all know Hezbollah is now non-existent because of that offensive.

EDIT: Nvm, sorry!

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It's hard to believe, given today's GPS technology and satelite surveillance that it can't be determined and demonstrated exactly were the sailors were.

If they were really in Iraqi water as Britain claims, don't you think the Brits would have fired on them when approached?

The whole thing stinks like a provocation.

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It's hard to believe, given today's GPS technology and satelite surveillance that it can't be determined and demonstrated exactly were the sailors were.

If they were really in Iraqi water as Britain claims, don't you think the Brits would have fired on them when approached?

The whole thing stinks like a provocation.

Agreed. I recall reading that the soldiers involved have already stated that they were in fact in Iranian waters.

The US/UK have been the one provoking. Very sad for the Iranian people - but I guess they hate us for our freedoms.

;)

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Wasn't CNN the same news organisation who reported on the WMD in Iraq?!

The point I am making is that CNN HAS lied before - so how do you know that they aren't lying again?

B_Cat I assume.

The trouble with the much trumpeted 'no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq' is that it fails to account for things such as 4500 tons of VX nerve agent which Saddam had stockpiled. As this chemical weapon requires VERY SPECIAL facilities NOT FOUND IN IRAQ to destroy, most sane people will conclude that this stuff is either still buried in the desert somewhere or in the possesion of a neighbor such as Syria. But since everyone's dog & cat now claim "no WMDs"...out of sight...out of mind.

*snip*

Hi gatekeeper.

The majority of the WMD which Saddam had accumulated while he was still the US' patsy were destroyed during the first Gulf War. You can stop shilling.

Not to mention that the ones who are actually using weaponry against civilians which can have lasting effects which far outweigh your "VX" gas are the Americans in the forms of DU artillary as well as phosphorous weaponry. So... think about it.

Now, can we get back on topic at all? Or do you always like to divert?

:)

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I betcha these Brits end up getting back home without a scratch but the Iranians that US special forces went in and kidnapped will get their skin scraped off, electrodes shoved up their a$$es and get boiled in oil somewhere in Uzbekistan by IMF sponsored graduates of the school of Americas. Of course they will be killed when the party is over and never get home again.

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macqueen:Was these assertion of your's actually in some actual news report or are they coming out of your obvious hate for the Americans that you just make these theings up in your head. I read a lot of news, and I have not read where the U.S. or any Western countries have been committing acts of terror anywhere including inside Iran.

TimesOnLine

This kind of thing is standard operating procedure for US before they attack a country. They also sneak in with special forces and do terrorist attacks before declaring war as even the Discovery channel showed after Iraq war #1.

What kind of news are you reading ?

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It's hard to believe, given today's GPS technology and satelite surveillance that it can't be determined and demonstrated exactly were the sailors were.

If they were really in Iraqi water as Britain claims, don't you think the Brits would have fired on them when approached?

The whole thing stinks like a provocation.

Firing on them would be a good way to start a war, they figured to go along with it as it would most likely be the most peaceful way to solve it.

The map on CNN.com should put all that malarkey to rest

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Link? That number seems ridiculously high. Most estimates I've heard ranged between 1.5 and 3 tons.

1 ton of VX spread over Baghdad would render the place uninhabitable for perhaps decades. But I should correct myself and state that these were precursors rather than finished product. Still, in this case 1-3 tons seems ridculously low.

Kim Al-Khaleej...a UAE company based in Singapore supplied Saddam with 4500 tons of VX nerve agent precursor (the chemicals needed) in the 1980s. Very little (if any) was used in action and the rest was claimed destroyed. As this seems highly unlikely due to the problems with actually destroying it, we can assume it is somewhere...perhaps buried in the desert as its form of 'destruction'. It should be noted that Iraq started its own VX and Sarin production during the late 1980s. Sadly, UN inspectors had no way of knowing if it's all gone. They supervised the destruction or verified Iraq's supposed unilateral claims of destruction and came up with your source's figure of 1-3 tons missing. Wishful thinking.

According to Iraq's account, the remaining choline from the 10 tons was burned in early 1988 and the remaining 247 tons of phosphorous pentasulphide was discarded in 1991 by scattering it over an area of land and putting it in pits. Iraq also claimed that 213 tons of di-isopropylamine was destroyed by bombing during the Gulf war. However, while the Commission has found traces of these chemicals at the sites at which Iraq states their destruction occurred, it has not been able to verify the quantities destroyed. Thus, precursors for the production of at least 200 to 250 tons of VX could not be definitively accounted for.

Most of these claims of destruction are unilateral...sort of a "did you guys get rid of that stuff?"..."yeah, we got rid of that stuff" situation.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/program.htm

http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/s/s1995-0284.htm

http://www.iraqwatch.org/suppliers/Iraq-oped-nyt-2003.htm

As a side note: the terrorists in Iraq apparetly used a Sarin gas shell + bomb back in 2004.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4997808

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I can imagine that the Iraqis undertake the destruction out of fear. If they had denied it, if they had said no, that certainly would have played into the hands of those that would like to take armed action immediately. I have no illusions in that regard.

---Hans Blix

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Hi gatekeeper.

The majority of the WMD which Saddam had accumulated while he was still the US' patsy were destroyed during the first Gulf War. You can stop shilling.

Not to mention that the ones who are actually using weaponry against civilians which can have lasting effects which far outweigh your "VX" gas are the Americans in the forms of DU artillary as well as phosphorous weaponry. So... think about it.

Now, can we get back on topic at all? Or do you always like to divert?

Hi Revisionist.

I eagerly await your first anti-Sem...errrr...anti-Zionist thread. You're free to read back through this thread and find my quite relevant posts. I include maps and sources as per usual.

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Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed.

---Anne Frank

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Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed.

I bet they called Anne a conspiracy theorist back then.

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Back on topic....

If one cruises along the Shatt al-arab using Google maps, one can see the HUGE number of boats used on this river. No wonder the Brits are searching for weapons there. It's just a short hop across the river to Iran and its supplies. In the middle of the night I'd say there'd be few problems getting contraband across.

Check out this mob of boats for example....

Plus if you pull back a bit...you'll see three boats over halfway across the river on the Iranian side. As they're likely Iraqi tugs (due to the proximity of the Iraqi port) one might assume the Iranians are pretty selective about who is 'in Iranian waters'.

Army Guy: My only question about this whole affair, is what was the skipper of the frig thinking about letting his boarding party be siezed by a few Iranian gunboats. I'm not a naval boarding party expert, but the frig should have not been more than 500 meters from the boarding party in the first place....and they should have known well head of time that the iranians gunboats were on route to intercept them...

The Shatt al-arab and it's mouth are a nightmare of sandbars. The HMS Cornwall would probably have some real problems with groundings operating in the close confines...thus the smaller craft that head up the river. The heavy ships stick to the Gulf...but you can actually see some smaller frieghters moving up the river through the deepest channels...apparently on the Iranian side again...lol.

Army Guy: And why did he not inform the iranian gunboats to keep thier distance or be fire upon...i mean a modern frigate could have easily handled the gunboats....Can someone out there with a navy back ground explain this to us...

The HMS Cornwall was nowhere near. But the Royal Navy had a helicopter in the area keeping tabs on the searches.

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There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.

---Sir Francis Drake

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It's hard to believe, given today's GPS technology and satelite surveillance that it can't be determined and demonstrated exactly were the sailors were.

If they were really in Iraqi water as Britain claims, don't you think the Brits would have fired on them when approached?

The whole thing stinks like a provocation.

Definitely not - to have opened fire would have violated the international Rules of Engagement and only worsened the matter. You do NOT fire upon someone or something just because this is taking place. ROE is paramount.

It is legal to stop and search a vessel if under a UN / NATO or established miitary operation when that ship enters the "search" zone - no matter what the flag.

It is illegal to fire upon a vessel without clearance to do so unless in a free fire zone or in self defence.

I noted the Iranians did not use weaponry - therefore the Brits were forced into the same mode of operation. Ifthey had opened fire on the Brits it could have and might well have been a different story as self defence could have been claimed. I am sure there is film of this available to the Brits - someday we may even get to see the truly applicable stuff - but only if we are lucky - it will be close hold info.

If a foreign ship enters territorial waters that is it "not supposed to be in" that vessel is to leave via the most expeditious routing. Usually a straight line to the border. Avoiding any obstacles and dangers of course.

It is quite legal for a tresspassing (intentional or not) vessel to ask for permission after the fact. This is a common occurence. It is also usually granted immediately and may / may not come with a warning to not come back.

If the vessel is boarded by the home team, it is quite appropriate if the decision is made - and this is rare - to escort that vessel to the nearest port and hold it in isolation - but it is not appropriate to withold legal or political contact with that vessel's home country.

I can apply this to aircraft as well - not only along the Korean border and the once upon a time east vs west of the "old Europe - but in fact also along the Canadian and U.S arctic borders and airspace.

Armed Soviet aircraft would often purposely enter north American airspace and be escorted out by U.S. and Canadian aircraft. They were NOT shot down - it would have violated ROE. It is strict and it is well known by all sides.

I can assure you that the Iranians know the ROE as well as the Brits - and probably used portions of it to their advantage - knowing full well no one would open fire on them if they violated certain sections of this established ROE.

If it had been a US ship or a Canuck ship or one of the European ships this would have still happened in exactly the same manner.

Certain countries do not follow - unless to their advantage - international protocol and established ROE - hence the shooting down of some aircraft by the Soviets. Powers excluded please. Different circumstance and accepted by both sides.

It is not considered an act of war to stop and search a vessel at any time if it is in waters that are considered under the operation and control of United Nations or NATO patrols or for that matter under war time operations by the vessel in control of that particular "space and time".

All civilian operators are aware of this and to the best of my knowledge - unless carrying out illegal operations - comply fully with the orders of the patrolling vessel.

Knowing what I do about international operations I will once again state that borders and various lines of "shall not cross" are scrupulously regarded and meticulously avoided. This is done to ensure international incidents like this do not take place.

I see as well that the prisoners are now - for publicity - speaking their pre-rehearsed lines that are provided for them by their "hosts". I am sorry I do not remember the lady's name. I also suspect there will be more statements by other crew members.

If she is released, she will not likely be allowed to speak publicly on what happened until the entire episode is over with.

No matter now - 24 hours has more than passed and they can speak as they are told - the negotiations and the politics and the "war rooms" have been established including direct lines of comms with the main players in each country.

This could still go south in a bad way - there is some very serious concern - for obvious reasons.

Must run - my ride has arrived for the airport.

Borg

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Army Guy: And why did he not inform the iranian gunboats to keep thier distance or be fire upon...i mean a modern frigate could have easily handled the gunboats....Can someone out there with a navy back ground explain this to us...

The HMS Cornwall was nowhere near. But the Royal Navy had a helicopter in the area keeping tabs on the searches.

After the prior incident (2004?), I was surprised that the boarding wasn't executed with more care about possible harassment from Iranian patrols (common since the moderates lost power). Perhaps HMS Cornwall's skipper considered the angels flight (Lynx) to be enough of a deterrence, but detection of the Iranians on radar or visually should have caused immediate measures to alert the boarding party and egress from the anchored vessel at once.

Heavy traffic could have cluttered the tracking of surface contacts by radar, but visuals from the Lynx or "Big Eyes" on the Cornwall should have alerted the Brits that something was up. Rules of engagement would clearly prevent the Cornwall from firing on the Iranian craft (not fired upon), plus, as DoP stated, Cornwall was several kilometers away.

Here is a good map of the relative positions from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6502805.stm

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The Brits did not have weapons other than side arms, not sure why or what the rules of engagement where. The U.S. ships are armed and probably would have fired.

All boarding parties are armed with side arms - your comment about the U.S. shows you do not understand ROE and/or are quite incapable of accepting the fact that the US Navy is a very professional operation.

I would have bet my career you are wrong.

In fact many times I did bet my career.

ROE is self defence only - you do not fire unless fired upon.

Helicopter is well armed and could have accomplished some serious damage - guarantee you they wanted to.

Borg

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The Brits did not have weapons other than side arms, not sure why or what the rules of engagement where. The U.S. ships are armed and probably would have fired.

A US Navy warship may have fired warning shots, but only after certain criteria were met (ROE). Operations Orders, prior experience with harrassment, and escalation risk (e.g. torpedo/cruise missile attack as return fire) figure into such decisions. Naval operations in the littorals is different from sinking the Bismarck.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/t..._gun.jpg/250px-

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BC-2004: Here is a good map of the relative positions from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6502805.stm

Thanks BC-2004...

Yeah...that map semed to be a few days in coming. What it doesn't show is that due to massive mud flats and sand bars, ship traffic must go certain ways depending on tonnage. To add to the fun, the Persian Gulf's odd tides change these channels on a regular basis...especially at the northern end.

http://www.vims.edu/physical/research/TCTu...ideanalysis.htm

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Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

---Admiral David Farragut: Battle of Mobile 1864.

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