A great man!
- Thread starter lonesomebob
- Start date
I was amazed that one of his own servicemen reported him after he did what he had to, in order to get the captured soldiers back and saved lives. He's the kind of officer I'd be proud to serve under.
Seems like there's always at least one person on board who doesn't get it.
I would follow someone like that wherever he felt there was a need to go!
Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
Websites like that are what you consider news?
What is wrong with you? its a true story and can be verified by a hundred different sources.
If our troops were allowed to be soldiers instead of police, we would have been out of Iraq and Afghanistan years ago. When you do get a true soldier acting like a man, in a very critical situation that saved lives, you get in trouble because of the damn liberal policies that kill our soldiers over there.
Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
What's "wrong with me" is that this "news article" resorts to name calling (of a highly decorated General who did a lot to make the situation in Iraq better) and insinuation about a controversial situation in which Lt. Colonel West ultimately admitted he did not do what was right.
Also, it's a bit hard to see how the Code of Military Justice and the Army's own rules and regs on interrogation are "liberal" policies, but I do understand your extremely polarized world view and how in it all things good are "conservative" and all things bad are "liberal."
Now off to your private messaging world with the rest of your buddies.
Also, it's a bit hard to see how the Code of Military Justice and the Army's own rules and regs on interrogation are "liberal" policies, but I do understand your extremely polarized world view and how in it all things good are "conservative" and all things bad are "liberal."
Now off to your private messaging world with the rest of your buddies.
Jeff, I'm not trying to bait you, I just want to know how you feel. If you were an officer how far would you go to protect your men? I would go to any length to protect my men in a hostile environment and I would give what was given to achieve that.
Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
I would do what it took to protect those under my care within the bounds of what I believed to be moral and ethical. If that meant breaking a rule, I'd do it but I would accept the consequences of breaking that rule.
Here, from the reading I did on this incident, there is some dispute if the situation was as dire as Lt. Colonel West protrayed it. He also admitted he had not followed procedure. The Army responded in accordance with its rules and regulations. I can agree with criticizing that decision or discussing it.
I can't and won't agree with the tone of this article (Bill "Loathe the Military" clinton? The "Odious Politically Correct General?") and find it disturbing but predictable that Lonesome Nutjob gets his information from places like this.
Here, from the reading I did on this incident, there is some dispute if the situation was as dire as Lt. Colonel West protrayed it. He also admitted he had not followed procedure. The Army responded in accordance with its rules and regulations. I can agree with criticizing that decision or discussing it.
I can't and won't agree with the tone of this article (Bill "Loathe the Military" clinton? The "Odious Politically Correct General?") and find it disturbing but predictable that Lonesome Nutjob gets his information from places like this.
And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you to understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves still loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes, of the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is disservice, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal."
Bill Clinton's Draft Letter | The Clinton Years | FRONTLINE | PBS
With all the nasty, bitter, bile spewing guys like, Olberman, Mathews, Moore, and the misinformation of the MSM, PBS, Huffington Post, etc. etc., its fun to just put up the truth and let them scramble to cover it in lies and smear.
Bob,
Here is a military man supported by his countrymen who were “proud to serve under him “ and would “also follow wherever he felt there was a need to go” He and his men were soldiers in a critical situation.
It is a reminder of what happens when the military believe themselves to be above the law.
Ratko Mladić
Mladić came to prominence in the Yugoslav Wars, initially as a high-ranking officer of the Yugoslav People's Army and subsequently as the Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb Army) in the Bosnian War of 1992–1995. In 1995, he was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In July 1995, troops commanded by Mladić, harried by NATO air strikes intended to force compliance with a UN ultimatum to remove heavy weapons from the Sarajevo area, overran and occupied the UN safe areas of Srebrenica and Žepa. At Srebrenica over 40,000 Bosniaks who had sought safety there were expelled. An estimated 8,300 were murdered, allegedly on Mladić's order. In November 1995, when Judge Fouad Riad indicted Mladić for genocide in Srebrenica at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, he stated that the events were "Truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history".
In comparison an imperfect man but a great military leader, who understood the boundaries the military could not cross, much like your Colonel West.
I will never forget the news clip of him confronting a Croat soldier in the area as described below, after just witnessing for himself the atrocities they had carried out on a civilian population.
Bob Stewart
Conservative MP for Beckenham
Colonel Bob Stewart visited Hampton School this lunctime to deliver a fascinating talk about his time as commander of the 1st Battalion The Cheshire Regiment in Bosnia during the brutal conflict there in the early 1990s.
Sent to the Balkans with no operationals objectives or plan but to expect to take heavy casualties, it became a personal mission of Colonel Stewart to save as many lives as possible. To do so militarily was impossible - he had neither the number of troops, firepower nor remit to stop the war. Nevertheless, by cleverly using the hundred or so journalists personally accredited to him Bob was able to reveal to the world the terrible atrocities that were being perpetraited in the area. In particular he related to us the terrible story of the Ahmici massacre.
On April 22nd 1993 Colonel Stewart led his men into the village of Ahmici. He had been asked to go there by Muslim soldiers who had refused to stop fighting because, they said, Croats had massacred women and children in the settlement. To verify these claims Stewart took his men to investigate. The video clip that he showed of what he discovered was horrific. One scene in particular was particularly hard to take. First, we saw the charred remains of a man and teenage boy lying in the doorway of a house. The father and son had evidently been trying to defend their womanfolk who were hiding in the cellar of the house. As the camera went down into the cellar it was clear that the mother and young daughters had not survived but been murdered in grotesque circumstances.
The clip subsequently showed Bob angrily confronting a Croat soldier in the area. It was with a sense of satisfaction that he was able to say that the man he had fronted up to had since been put behind bars for his crimes.
In conclusion Colonel Stewart left us with a very powerful thought: even if you only catch and convict one war criminal in a hundred it is better than none. To do nothing would be to leave us as accomplices, to make the perpetrators face justice is a signal that the civilised world will not stand for genocide.
I am sure you will argue that Colonel Allen West didn't do anything like Ratko Mladić did and it is ridiculous to compare them. However, you don't eat an elephant whole you do it in little amounts and you and your article writer have taken the first bite by suggesting his actions even if believed unjust should not be questioned.
Colonel Allen West on the other hand acknowledged he didn’t follow “proper procedures” in questioning the prisoner, he understood the implications of his actions and was prepared to hold himself accoutable for those actions, and that is what makes him a leader and a man.
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Who makes the rules for interogation? In countries where the civilian can't be distinguished from the enemy I would say the rules are broken already.
Nick, I fully understand Yugoslavian atrocity as my father's parents were put in a camp, starved, and then fed bread with ground glass in it by the Tito Communists.
http://www.dvhh.org/history/genocide/index.htm
http://www.dvhh.org/history/genocide/index.htm
Al,
The problem is the ones who make the decisions as to who are terrorists that can be interogated so often get it wrong.
I have total respect for British soldiers, in my opinion they are the most disciplined and best in the world, even they can get it so wrong.
Baha Mousa, an innocent civilian, welcomed the British forces who occupied his hometown of Basra in April 2003, because their arrival signalled the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
But less than half a year later the 26 year-old father-of-two had suffered a brutal, humiliating death at the hands of a small number of British soldiers he saw as liberators.
A post-morterm examination found Baha Mousa suffered asphyxiation and at least 93 injuries to his body
Two photographs graphically illustrate the horror of the hotel receptionists ordeal in UK military custody.
In the first, he and his wife Yasseh are smiling as they hold up their two young sons, Hussein and Hassan, the perfect portrait of a happy family.
The second picture, taken shortly after Mr Mousa's death, depicts his face bloodied and scarred, his nose smashed, his eyes bruised and medical tubes still in his mouth from attempts to revive him.
Mr Mousa's life was marked by hardship and tragedy before the turn of events that led to him being mistakenly arrested by British troops as a suspected insurgent.
That's a terrible thing to happen, but at the same time there can't be rediculous rules of engagement that cost the lives of soldiers. How do we interrogate? What is torture? When I was a kid I think I had two spankings, my older brother got lots of spankings until he was put in the corner for 15 minutes and asked my mom "if you spank me can I get out of the corner?" He did corner time from then on. I did a search and found that no one has ever died from waterboarding. It's very unpleasant, and your brain tells you that you are dying, but you're not. How do you get someone give you information that could save lives? We shoot, blowup, and otherwise kill people in war but tying someone down on a decline, covering the face with a towel and pouring water on the towel is inhumane? Men in prison in Arizona live under worse conditions than those in Guantanamo. Could you imagine the indignant uproar if we made the prisoners at Guantanamo wear pink undershorts? For those that haven't seen waterboarding. Sure beats bamboo under the fingernails or nerve stimulating injections, or numerous beatings!
Watch Christopher Hitchens Get Waterboarded (VANITY FAIR)
Pete McCluskey.
Lifetime Supporter
When you are fighting people who will use women and children as human shields
and happily blow up a market place full of their own people including the aforesaid women and children there are no rules. Well not on those bastards side.
The rules on engagement in Afghanistan are bullshit and are getting our young men and women killed. And for what?
and happily blow up a market place full of their own people including the aforesaid women and children there are no rules. Well not on those bastards side.
The rules on engagement in Afghanistan are bullshit and are getting our young men and women killed. And for what?
