Heating up the rhetoric with ignorance

A second member of the boats crew and boarding party arrested by Iran has been paraded in an Iranian video in which he "apologized" for entering Iranian waters.

In the video Friday, Royal Marine rifleman Nathan Thomas Summers was shown sitting with another male serviceman and the female British sailor Faye Turney against a pink floral curtain.

Both men wore camouflage fatigues with a label saying "Royal Navy" on their chests and a small British flag stitched to their left sleeves. Turney wore a blue jumpsuit and a black headscarf.

"Again I deeply apologize for entering your waters," Summers said in the clip broadcast on Al-Alam television. "We trespassed without permission."

That got a couple of mouthbreathers over at the Blogging Tories all hot and bothered precipitating a descent into ignorance which can be measured by the Cheezie™ dust on their laps.

No, I'm not going to link to them. Use teh Google.

These clots seem to think being taken into detention in this situation is a straight-forward "prisoner of war" event. They also seem to have developed a view that these people are in a position to defy their captors while puffing on a filterless cigarette as they stroke their Death before dishonour tattoos. One of them went so far as to suggest that Leading Seaman Faye Turney would never be able to show her face among her countrymen again, and that being taken prisoner in this instance was the true test of a warrior.

The writers of that crap, so willing to broadcast the definition of a "true" warrior and the test of combat and captivity demonstrate through their use of language that they have no experience as members of any armed service and their opinions are formed from watching Hollywood renderings of prisoner of war dramas and comic books.

Something needs to be put into perspective here. Those fifteen Royal Navy personnel are not Prisoners of War. They are hostages. Britain is not at war with Iran and while this all has the potential to spiral right out of control, the suggestions by still others that Britain close down any negotiations and simply attack Iran is tantamount to signing a death warrant for all fifteen of those troops.

The several suggestions that these hostages should only be providing "name, rank and serial number", (Yes. One actually said that.), demonstrates further ignorance of both the situation and the training those people would have received.

In a hostage situation, and all of those troops would be well aware that such is their condition, the dumbest thing they could do is to antagonize their captors. Cooperation will both keep them alive and perhaps in good condition. No "apology" or letter of contrition has any meaning outside the place of detention. Those things are being done to feed the domestic situation in Iran. The rest of the world is well able to understand that coercion is being used and if it does anything, it makes the Iranians look worse.

We have no way of knowing how those people are actually being treated, except through a previous experience, which would suggest they are receiving adequate treatment although suffering severe humiliation. None of them will know their location and they will not have access to information of any negotiations save that which their captors provide.

The one thing that they are expected to do is stay alive and as healthy as possible. Getting killed through an act of defiance serves absolutely no purpose and may escalate the situation well beyond where anyone wants it to go. I know that denies the war-bloggers of their orgasmic moment but it isn't them that gets killed.

Both sides are using those sailors and marines as fodder for a dangerous spin game. Despite both sides claiming a boundary in that zone of the Persian Gulf, there has never been resolution and neither side can make the claim that one or the other actually trespassed across an internationally recognized boundary. There isn't one. That will be the subject of another post later today.

Still others are foaming at the mouth insisting that Blair "do something" and quit messing around. I'll admit, I don't like his response to this point either, but not for the same reason some of the Blogging Tories are complaining about. While Blair needed to be forceful, he should have weighed what needed to be done to get his sailors and marines back. Then start piling on the rhetoric.

Iran could have made themselves look like world-class diplomats had they held those people for a day and then returned them with a comment like, "They were in our waters. Don't do it again."

Since that didn't happen, it's now a matter of keeping things even enough to prevent a disaster. And, as far as the clowns barking that some form of action should be taken, it demonstrates another lack of knowledge.

How do they know something isn't being planned? Just because they don't read it in a press release doesn't mean there isn't an incursion and rescue being readied. I'm also sure that if that kind of event took place, the same loudmouths would be patting each other on the back for knowing that the SBS or the SAS came through as usual.

More later.