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.
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.