UK Parliament refuses vote to prevent the persecution and prosecution of soldiers involved in historic operations.

[Phil Perry]

Following on from the disgusting prosecutions of military personnel in the Afghanistan / Iraq wars, they now have opened the door to those who wish to prosecute soldiers working in Northern Ireland during 'The Troubles' . . .where, until the crowning of King Tony Blair in 1997, who stopped all operations against the murderous IRA, when they were all but beaten by our security forces, . . .the lawyers moved in, as they they idi much later in the Blair reign of terror in the uk with prosecutions of British soldiers for 'War Crimes', often on the flimsiest of evidence, later to be proven false, and an entire firm of Lawyers discredited and disbarred from practice.

 

Now it is the turn of those who were involved in Northern Ireland. Some of whom will face prosecution, including members of the SAS, for doing their jobs, under Government guidelines at the time.

 

The British Government are a bunch of disconnected A$$holes in my view, ( and that of many others ) in allowing retired members of the forces to be prosecuted, when Tony Blair gave out around 135 letters to various IRA terrorists, absolving them of any personal blame for all of the bombings and atrocities that they carried out, and giving them a 'Get out of Jail free' clause against future prosecution. . . .you REALLY couldn't make this $hit up !. . . .

 

This is ONE response to the injustice. . . . .

 

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But it will go ahead anyway. . . . this country is FINISHED as a viable place to live. No matter for Whom we vote for,. . they are ALL A$$holes with their noses firmly in the bloody trough.

 

[Yenn]

It is Blair, Bush and Howard that should be prosecuted.

 

The politicians are always at the front of the queue to be photographed with the troops, except when they came back from Viet Nam. Then they went and hid and denigrated the troops for the disgusting deeds of the pollies.

 

I wonder why I ever volounteered as a regular soldier.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

It is Blair, Bush and Howard that should be prosecuted.The politicians are always at the front of the queue to be photographed with the troops, except when they came back from Viet Nam. Then they went and hid and denigrated the troops for the disgusting deeds of the pollies.

 

I wonder why I ever volounteered as a regular soldier.

This has had an effect Yen,. . .applications from young people to join all three UK Armed forces are the lowest in history. . .I wonder why ? ? /sarc.

 

 

[coljones]

Sometimes you have to take a stand! Do you let the Nazi and Japanese off the hook, just because they are soldiers. Do we forgive Lt. Caley for his efforts in Vietnam? Being a soldier is bad enough but coming home under a shadow of coverup only makes it worse. We should be honest with our soldiers and praise them when they have done good but submit them to the courts when they are alleged to have done bad things. 1066? Wasn't there but undoubtedly that invasion and that of the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Romans would probably count as illegal and the behaviour of the invaders be dubbed as war crimes.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Sometimes you have to take a stand! Do you let the Nazi and Japanese off the hook, just because they are soldiers. Do we forgive Lt. Caley for his efforts in Vietnam? Being a soldier is bad enough but coming home under a shadow of coverup only makes it worse. We should be honest with our soldiers and praise them when they have done good but submit them to the courts when they are alleged to have done bad things. 1066? Wasn't there but undoubtedly that invasion and that of the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Romans would probably count as illegal and the behaviour of the invaders be dubbed as war crimes.

I was introduced to a long de-mobbed chap who was a sniper in Afghanistan, in the early days. He was questioned late last year by police and one of the questions was ' Did you issue a warning to the person prior to firing your weapon ? . . '

 

Issuing a warning before shooting an enemy combatant some 800 yards away is difficult. . .I don't know how that case is going, but the incident was one of several, this is what snipers are trained to do. They are not forewarned before they take on the onerous task, that they may face prosecution under Civilian terms, decades down the line,. .if they didn't fight under Queensberry Rules.

 

I have no problem with those who have been proven without a shadow of a doubt to be 'Murderers' in contravening of the Geneva Conventions, as were some American soldiers in the Abu Graib prison incident in Iraq. . .who delighted in beating, torturing and degrading naked prisoners. This behaviour is, in my view unforgiveable and I don't give a feck what they were supposed to have done.

 

BUT THEN AGAIN . . .I have never been in a war zone subjected to live fire from people who want to kill me. Neither have the lawyers who judge from a standpoint of No Experience of warzone stress whatsoever.

 

 

[Yenn]

Calley was a renegade, in an army that has plenty of renegades. The atrocities committed by the Germans in WW2 were in the most part not committed by the soldiers, but by the senior officers and politicians. The Japanese were very similar, but in their case the officers treated their own troops appallingly.

 

The USA has always done whatever it wants, with no regard to the rules of war. G W Bush couldn't understand that waterboarding was torture. Guantanamo is still holding people without trial. Osama Bin Laden was murdered on the Presidents say so. It would not have been beyond possible to have taken him prisoner and put him up before a court. but of course if they had done that a lot of unwanted info would have been aired.

 

The charging of soldiers with war crimes should be taken from the top down, rather than from the bottom up.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

This has had an effect Yen,. . .applications from young people to join all three UK Armed forces are the lowest in history. . .I wonder why ? ? /sarc.

For similar reasons there's a scarcity of male teachers in primary schools.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

...I have never been in a war zone subjected to live fire from people who want to kill me. Neither have the lawyers who judge from a standpoint of No Experience of warzone stress whatsoever.

Excellent point. Phil. It's easy to sit in our comfortable homes with full bellies and good health and pontificate about how our troops should behave. I can remember how gut pain from poor and irregular diet, tooth aches, etc have affected my own mood. Had I been exhausted from lugging heavy equipment, traumatised by seeing a mate die and living in constant fear of being maimed by a roadside bomb, I reckon I'd deserve a medal for not taking it out on the first person to look threatening.

 

 

[spacesailor]

Now here's a thing !.

 

Can I sue the demobed soldiers who tortured us little Angel's in the 50's in the name of Edukashon.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

The whole thing about war crimes in incredibly complex and from our arm chairs (and having just drunk some NZ wine - arghh - I feel violated) it is easy to say what the right standards of behaviour should be. In "normal" military training, there should be some level of pyshological hardening - and there is (a mate of mine used to be a US Navy Seal and he was describing the mental conditioning training they used to undergo so they could keep it all together in the most threatening and stressful situations - yes that is an elite unit, but on a lesser scale, such training is ubiquitous).

 

Obviously, the architects of war crimes - Milosovic, Hitler and his senior staffers, etc (can I add Blair and Bush possible war criminals - though not on the same scale as the aforementioned), have a case to answer. But a seargant at a concentration camp ordered to indiscriminantly kill innocent people or his own family would suffer a painful death in front of him - I would suggest no training would cover that. Should be be guilty of war crimes or be considered what in (UK) legal terms is called an "innocent agent"? There is so much politics that surrounds each and every war crimes trial, that it is no longer fit for purpose. I note that Sadam Hussain was left to the local courts rather than the international war crimes court in the Hague for his trial as his fate was certain in the former - not so in the latter.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

... the architects of war crimes - Milosovic, Hitler and his senior staffers, etc (can I add Blair and Bush possible war criminals - though not on the same scale as the aforementioned), have a case to answer...

Jerry you're right on the money, but for Iraq 2 you left out the leaders who went along with the Big Lie.

 

The "coalition of the willing", no doubt to ingratiate themselves with Bush, included 46 countries. Most only gave non-military support, but Howard sent troops to fight.

 

(One irony that tickled my history bone was that Japan, whose post-war constitution forbids its forces fighting overseas, sent a big army team to rebuld infrastructure.

 

Thus unarmed, there were Japanese soldiers building a railway, guarded by Australian troops...)

 

 

[old man emu]

(One irony that tickled my history bone was that Japan, whose post-war constitution forbids its forces fighting overseas, sent a big army team to rebuld infrastructure.

 

Thus unarmed, there were Japanese soldiers building a railway, guarded by Australian troops...)

That's enough to make a bloke Kwai.

 

With apologies to those POWs involved in the Thai/Burma Railway construction.

 

 

[willedoo]

The "coalition of the willing", no doubt to ingratiate themselves with Bush, included 46 countries. Most only gave non-military support, but Howard sent troops to fight.

I can't comment on our Boer War involvement as I'm not very familiar with it. But all the other major wars Australia has been involved in seemed to be a case of us fighting the good fight. WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam, the first Gulf War, we were helping people who were being invaded by hostile forces. All that changed with little johnny and Doubleya's second Gulf war. We attacked and invaded a country that had done nothing wrong to Australia, and were part of a coalition responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. At the time, Iraq was one of our major trading partners. All of a sudden, we were the hostile forces.

 

That was a huge blemish on Australia's record and a very dark day for this country. We can never again say that we've always fought on the good side. A lot of Australian's will never forgive Howard for that.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

...All that changed with little johnny and Doubleya's second Gulf war. We attacked and invaded a country that had done nothing wrong to Australia, and were part of a coalition responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. At the time, Iraq was one of our major trading partners. All of a sudden, we were the hostile forces.

That was a huge blemish on Australia's record and a very dark day for this country. We can never again say that we've always fought on the good side. A lot of Australian's will never forgive Howard for that.

Howard will never be forgiven for many things. Many people believe that he sacrificed a highly successful national institution, The Australian Wheat Board to appease our so-called "mates", the USof A. An act of treachery.

 

 

[spacesailor]

"and Vietnam, the first Gulf Wa"

 

The Vietnam was an Oppressive French colonial uprising that they couldn't win, so asked the UN to help them, England was then asked to participate & couldn't win, then the Commonwealth was involved, & again couldn't win.

 

Enter America & we all know they Didn't win either.

 

Is this

 

Power to the people

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

"and Vietnam, the first Gulf Wa"The Vietnam was an Oppressive French colonial uprising that they couldn't win, so asked the UN to help them, England was then asked to participate & couldn't win, then the Commonwealth was involved, & again couldn't win.

 

Enter America & we all know they Didn't win either.

 

Is this

 

Power to the people

 

spacesailor

I wasn't aware that Britain was ever involved, other than their brief control of French Indochina at the end of WWII. When the handful of British troops arrived to take the Japanese surrender, they were so short-handed that they gave weapons back to the IJA troops and used them to police the restless locals until the French arrived in numbers.

 

 

[spacesailor]

They poped in, had a look & told UN "no way"

 

spacesailor

 

 

[willedoo]

And yet when you go to the Imperial War Museum in London, you would think they fought the Vietnam War single handed. Not much about Australia in that museum.

 

 

[kgwilson]

Vietnam was a political con job based on the original McCarthyism theories of the domino effect of communist takeover. It was of course total BS and the war rapidly became deeply unpopular everywhere. As soon as Vietnam was reunited they just got on with the job of rebuilding their country and lives. Look at it now. The big difference with the Gulf wars can be summed up in one word, OIL. The justification of the second one was the big lie of WMD. Afghanistan was even a bigger cockup, the justification being getting rid of Al Queda. No one has ever won there, The Poms, Russians, & the great western coalition have all failed & rightly so. I travelled through Afghanistan in 1975 & they were a proud nomadic people doing their own thing & selling lots of opium to developed nations. I always felt safe there. The trouble was the west & Russians could not control the opium supply, and so it started all over again with the Russian invasion. And so it goes on.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

And yet when you go to the Imperial War Museum in London, you would think they fought the Vietnam War single handed. Not much about Australia in that museum.

I've heard an American veteran say that Australia won its Vietnam War. The tactics used by our military were so successful that the other team shifted their focus to other areas of the country. The actions of Aussie troops resulted in a surprising degree of respect between combatants, so that decades after the war, Aussie veterans are welcomed back by their former enemy.

 

 

[Yenn]

The Viet nam war was just as much fought on a lie as the other wars USA has got us involved in, but as commented above our troops did what was the right thing.

 

Nobody here has mentioned East Timor, which was a war that our government did not want to be involved in. They wanted to hush up the Indonesian atrocities and share the oil with Indonesia.

 

When it became impossible for our government to ignore it, our troops did a magnificent job. Led of course by our present Governor General.

 

West Papua has so far been hidden from general view.

 

Back to the original subject of this posting, we need to look at the behaviour of the UK army, who committed war crimes on the orders of senior officers.

 

We could also look at the USA shooting down of a civilian airliner in a country it was not at war with. Quietly forgotten.