Is it time to pull British troops out of Iraq?

[marky]

Originally Posted by Damien

You run the risk of be killed in a war when you join the Army. It isnt holiday camp. People may join with the best intentions but at some point the Government will send you to war and you will fight, and some will die

Point taken, but when they cant fight back it stinks

The very worst will be if we are seen to run away..Lets us leave by all means but on our own terms and to a ratified timetable.Of course if the Iraqi government asks us to leave earlier than the timetable...

[jtwn]

No way, we should have never gone in in the first place, such a needless loss of life on all sides but now we are there, we stay. We ****ed the country up even more then under Saddam (or to a greater degree, the Americans) so we stay until it stabilises to a point where its own government can be left to take full control. Yes, there may of been oppression under Saddam and all the pro-war, pro-bush nuts, exclaim the official line that removing him from power was a good alternative to WMD but if we just left now we are leaving the door open for Al-Zakawi and other retards to take advantage of all those who are desperate and have been through dispair and create an equally bad situation as before.

You can't just lay waste to a country then leave, and if you didn't like the scenes yesterday, well to be frank, welcome to war. Its not all fine and dandy for the people with the bigger bombs, people are going to get hurt on all sides. Pictures like those yesterday just stir up emotion like seen here.

If we don't want it turning into the next failure that is Afghanistan; a breeding ground for terrorists then we have to stay. With Saddam gone, and our forces gone, it'll be a haven for Al Qaeda. The campaign isn't finished, it isn't finished until there is a working government and working law and order.

Originally Posted by Orior

Fair point Earl. He who writes the history determines the outcome though eh?

No I dont think so Orior, certainly the vistors will write history as they see it. But no matter what official historians try to tell us, the truth of most conflicts will out eventually. Time needs to pass before an unbiased opinion of any historical even can truely be written, but eventually the dogma of victors and loosers will fall away and ''hopefully'' a truer understanding of events can be recorded....

[BBKing]

The problem is that where and when things are going well it's not so 'sexy' for the media to report that.

Quite. But since we're talking about the two most media-savvy and manipulative Governments on the planet, don't you think they could get the truth out, if the truth was that the country was 'getting back on its feet'? What is this great unspoken truth that illustrates how the country is 'getting back on its feet'?

Instead we have got what turn out to be a succession of lies ('we're going in to disarm Saddam of his WMDs','the insurgency is a small number of ex-regime elements','the insurgency will stop when we capture Saddam','We're going in to stop terrorism','things will get better after the election','things will get better after the constitution is ratified','100,000 police have been trained','We have no differences with the Iraqi Government'). Given that history, anything coming out of Washington and London needs to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.

You can't argue with the graph of US deaths, which has steepened over time (despite the greater security around US forces), indicating that the country is getting progressively more violent.

Gotta love Cox & Forkum

Who are, er, part of the media. Bias can swing both ways (ask Fox News). And if capturing insurgents is what you celebrate two and a half years after the invasion (while ignoring the body count back in Baghdad), that's really rather indicative of how low expectations now are ('beacon of democracy' hopes replaced by 'hope the civil war isn't too bad after we pull out and that Iran isn't running too much of the country').

An Iraqi film maker writes in the Grauniad today:

You cannot go immediately because the country will collapse - and it is you, after all, who brought the chaos. You destroyed Saddam, but you also destroyed a system that had worked for 50 years. You didn't just take Saddam, you took the whole order: the police force, the way the police worked, the way security was kept and managed.

Withdrawal right now will mean the complete collapse of our society; if the British and US forces stay, the collapse will just be more gradual. I don't want to be too pessimistic - I've thought about this for a long time - but I can't see the answer. I've been all over Iraq in the past year, and been asked by many, many people what the best solution is. I don't know

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...575416,00.html

[makikomi]

It seems like the military action was carried out without serious consideration given to what to do in the aftermath.

The flattening of the prison was something I'd have expected from the Yanks, but not the Brits. There will be militants using that and twisting it so that it becomes a symbol of "Westerner's interference" and just ignoring Iraqis.

Allowing loads of other prisoners to escape was stupid too.

As for whether the troops should come out, of course they should. Their job is now largely done. If a presence is needed, it should be clearly working with the Iraqi military - units paired up so that you have the benefits of Western experience and technology with Iraqi cultural and geographical knowledge.

Remember the story about a group of Military Policemen (MPs) who were trapped in a police station by a mob of Iraqis? And the sergeant who refused to leave his men despite a way out being shown to him? I knew him. Simon Hamilton-Jewell was a member of the judo club I went to down South. Despite showing incredible restraint, and eventually surrendering, Simon and his army colleagues were murdered. My father went to HJ's funeral.

[CJU]

Listen up i have lost family in iraq because both our country and america can't leave well enough alone. Unless they come over here killing like Hitler did stay out the way and get our troops back.
And as for Northern Ireland come on its been going on since 1983 and will continue to go on until the bueracrats get out.

[marky]

Originally Posted by CJU

Listen up i have lost family in iraq because both our country and america can't leave well enough alone. Unless they come over here killing like Hitler did stay out the way and get our troops back.
And as for Northern Ireland come on its been going on since 1983 and will continue to go on until the bueracrats get out.

Sorry but N.I has been going on for a lot longer, ive no doubt a date will soon be posted.
And sorry about your lost family.

[CJU]

Just checked on history site sorry you are right got onenumber wrong its been happening N.I since 1953.

Originally Posted by CJU

Just checked on history site sorry you are right got onenumber wrong its been happening N.I since 1953.

More like 1641, or thereabouts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelin...sh_rebel.shtml

[CJU]

We aren't referring to when they came over here to help the scots and William Wallace more along the lines of since our beloved country tried to enforce our criminal justice system as is it and rules on education and religions etc which given by the britannia encyclopedia website is 1953 if you like you can talk to my Nan on the matter she is 89 and was born and raised in Ireland for 35 of those years

[BBKing]

Troops went in in 1969 (this time). You could go back to the 12th century when the Normans invaded (my ancestors) if you wanted to be pedantic - British military meddling in Ireland has gone on for centuries (partly from the occasionally legitimate fear that the island would be used by other enemies of Britain, which hasn't been the case since 1945 (one benefit of the EU, I suppose - the French are hardly likely to respond to spats over the CAP by sending troops to Dublin).

As for flattening the prison, I'd expect nothing less of a British commander who thinks his troops are in danger. It's what soldiers do. It does, however, rather jar with the 'things are getting better and it's all a media con' line being spun by the politicians - it's more like something you'd see in Sierra Leone than a fledgling democracy 'getting back on its feet'. Proper countries don't need heavily armed SAS lads in mufti running around trying to find out what the bad guys are doing.

bueracrats

? Heavily armed, are they? Those paperclips can give you a nasty nick when used in the right hands.

Originally Posted by CJU

We aren't referring to when they came over here to help the scots and William Wallace more along the lines of since our beloved country tried to enforce our criminal justice system as is it and rules on education and religions etc which given by the britannia encyclopedia website is 1953 if you like you can talk to my Nan on the matter she is 89 and was born and raised in Ireland for 35 of those years

Crikey - you ever heard of punctuation?

The FACT is that the IRA has been around at least since 1916, so you're still way off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army

[CJU]

Originally Posted by BBKing

Troops went in in 1969 (this time). You could go back to the 12th century when the Normans invaded (my ancestors) if you wanted to be pedantic - British military meddling in Ireland has gone on for centuries (partly from the occasionally legitimate fear that the island would be used by other enemies of Britain, which hasn't been the case since 1945 (one benefit of the EU, I suppose - the French are hardly likely to respond to spats over the CAP by sending troops to Dublin).

As for flattening the prison, I'd expect nothing less of a British commander who thinks his troops are in danger. It's what soldiers do. It does, however, rather jar with the 'things are getting better and it's all a media con' line being spun by the politicians - it's more like something you'd see in Sierra Leone than a fledgling democracy 'getting back on its feet'. Proper countries don't need heavily armed SAS lads in mufti running around trying to find out what the bad guys are doing.



? Heavily armed, are they? Those paperclips can give you a nasty nick when used in the right hands.

I suppose - the French are hardly likely to respond to spats over the CAP by sending troops to Dublin).
The french couldn't beat us at a game of war if they tried i mean come it wasn't so long ago they complained about the paramount channel playing Sharpe and sharpe's sword for nearly a month because it showed them as yellow bellies

[BBKing]

Yellow bellies who conquered most of continental Europe under one of the greatest military leaders ever.