I'm no lawyer, Jimbo, but regarding the RoE you love to trot out, to the best of my knowledge the International Law of War (it's a proper noun... that is, just as real as the Geneva Convetions) state that a Military person, in the performance of their duties, has the right to shoot back. More succinctly, you have the right to defend yourself against hostile forces.

For all I know, the right to defend yourself is in the universal Bill of Rights the European posters love to trot out.  


We do know quite a bit about what happened out there on the water. Shallow water limits the size of the vessels used, and it was the Iranian Coast Guard, not the Navy.  Not that it matters much, Coast Guards are recognized (at least here) as a branch of the military, on the other hand, they tend to lack heavy anti-ship weapons.  We HAVE seen video footage of the 'internees' being escorted back to Iran, and the initial news suggests they drove their own boats ashore.  We also know that a cordon is useless at sea unless you are willing to engage the other guy with hostile force... you just can't block ocean that throughly.  

I'll admit freely that some, even several POW's broke down.  Hell, I read most of the autobiography of the 13 year dude you mentioned.... I think.  Doesn't mean it's right, and it doesn't mean we don't treat them, within the military community certainly, with the contempt they diserve.  It's like Nox, we don't want that sort of behavior being 'acceptable', so we condemn it, vilify it and the people who perpetrate it.  

Someone did have a curious bit to point out: photos of the 'internees' being released were largely cropped. Uncropped photos (the first run) show several of the marines looking very upset, the rest of them (the ones easy to see in the cropped photos) are all smiling and cheerful as they shake 'Bob's' hand.   While it may be unfair to tar those who did not cooperate with the same brush as those who did, we don't know enough about them to seperate them out. Guilt by assossiation.

As for your rebuttal to my 'condemnation comment': bollocks.  They admitted they, and their nation was in the wrong. Meanwhile, the PM and the British Navy were claiming otherwise.  Guess what, that's condemnation, that's making a liar out of your nation and service. It is most certainly providing care and comfort to 'the enemy' and only a lack of a declared state of war between Britian and Iran saves them from going to Courts Martial as Traitors.  That and I assume there are 'mitigating factors' for POW's and possible torture.

Maybe I overstate my case.  Subtlety does not seem to make the point.

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EDIT::: Removed for personal reasons, since Jimbob has already had a chance to read it.

In Europe, the UK and Australia, typically the RoE are more restrictive than the laws of war generally, or bills of rights or whatever.

For example, in the US-led mission in Somalia, and the UN mission in Rwanda, and the Australian-led intervention in East Timor, Australian troops had rules of engagement which said, broadly,

If someone fires on you, you may fire back. If they present their weapon as though to fire, you must warn them, and only after the warning may you fire back. Once they stop firing or presenting their weapon in that threatening manner, you must also stop firing - so you cannot shoot at them while they're changing magazines, running away, or running to a new firing position further away from you.

[Somalia and Rwanda had, but Timor did not -] You may only fire in defence of yourself and your unit. You may not fire in defence of civilians.

These sorts of rules are more restrictive than the civilian rights of self-defence and protection of others. In civilian life, if someone attacks me with lethal force, I can keep attacking him until he gives up - I can have a go at him when he's running away because he might be running off to be a threat to someone else, too. I can also use lethal force to protect an unarmed person who's under threat.

So the RoE there give you less rights to use force than in civilian life. These RoE meant that in Somalia and Rwanda Australian soldiers witnessed massacres of civilians, but were permitted to do nothing. But they also meant that the largest firefight in the Timor intervention, between an Australian company patrol and an Indonesian, was stopped without serious casualties, and did not lead to a larger conflict. Incidentally, that Aussie-Indon firefight started because the Indons, using Dutch maps from 1947, thought the Aussies were on the Indon side of the border... the Aussies had more up-to-date maps.

Had the patrol been a section patrol instead of a company patrol, it may have happened that the Indon company surrounded the Australians, and presenting their weapons as though to fire, demanded the Australian section surrender. The Aussies' only chance of escape would have been to fire first and charge out of the ring of troops around them; this would have violated their RoE, so they'd have had to surrender.

War's a complicated thing. That's why we have Boards of Inquiry - because it's not possible to judge things properly without all the facts. I realise that we all enjoy a nice trial by media, but as I've said before, the media has a problem with premature speculation. Let's not follow them there.

Yes, I get that, Jimmy. You seem, however, to be missing the point. The British Marines who were taken in did not have to fire first, they still had the right to shoot if attacked. They could have, SHOULD have, attempted to break contact, and then if necessary legally defended themselves.

As we have no accounts of shots being fired, or anyone being injured or killed, they did not.  You keep saying 'well it was that dratted NATO ROE'.

And I keep saying 'bullshit'.  Going on about different ROE's doesn't change the fact that they were not helpless in the face of agression from Iran, they had no orders to surrender without a fight (which in this case includes attempting to move to freindly filled waters). They chose to give up instead. And then they compounded that with poor decisions that have been discussed at length here.

That darn NATO ROE is not an excuse to surrender without trying anything.  We could go around and around what 'might have happened out there'...

From a military standpoint their actions were deplorable bordering on appalling.  Better than Abu Ghraib, sure. From a political standpoint it was a disaster for Britains government, one they apparently managed to work with reasonably well.

The only person who came out of it with any smiles is Bob, who we all know is a hardline, fundamentalist Islamist with a serious anti-western point of view. Forgive me if I'm not willing to congratulate him on his gamesmanship, nor go 'oh, good, those stupid fuckers got out unhurt'.

And you're missing the point that we don't know exactly what happened on the day of their contact.

This is why the military has Boards of Inquiry. Several senior officers, with hearings of several hours a day over several weeks or even months, go over every detail of the events in question. They interview all witnesses, all commanders involved directly or otherwise, and take submissions from interested parties (family members, qualified servicepeople, etc). After that, they issue a report with recommendations for charges (if any) and/or changes to procedure.

Whereas we're getting a few media reports and judging by them. We just don't have enough information.

I'm reminded of Borat, where old Borat went and got himself in trouble at a rodeo - he spoke up and said that he hoped George Bush would kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, and leave not even a lizard - most of the crowd cheered. Then he messed with the national anthem, and had to be escorted out by security for his own protection. Then the local tv station reported the incident, and showed him making the speech about Iraq - but the tv news report cut it off there, and did not show the crowd cheering him.

So there's a good and obvious example of the imprecision, sloppiness and bias of the media. It's an excellent example of why we should not have trial by media.

We just don't know enough to judge. When US soldiers are accused of some new atrocity, everyone says, "wow, if true, how terrible... but we don't know, we can't judge yet, we can't have trial by media, let the military follow its regular procedures to investigate." Why should it be different for UK sailors and marines?

You're heading back into harm's way soon, you tell us, Spike. And your country's servicemen are distressingly regularly accused of pretty terrible things. So you might want to hold back on that support for trial by media.

Let's wait until we have all the information needed to judge.

Quote from: JimBobOzWhen US soldiers are accused of some new atrocity, everyone says, "wow, if true, how terrible... but we don't know, we can't judge yet, we can't have trial by media, let the military follow its regular procedures to investigate."

You're kidding, right?

Quote from: James J SkachYou're kidding, right?

Well, by "everyone" I mean, "patriotic Americans."

On the other hand we've got America-haters who just assume that US troops are constantly committing atrocities, that Dick Cheney blew up the WTC towers, etc. Again, it's people mistaking "media premature speculation" for "evidence."

But the American patriots tend to automatically cleanse their own guys, while automatically condemning everyone else. The slightest questioning of US policy or military actions is taken as vicious condemnation. Failure to condemn the latest enemy as the Devil himself is taken as praising him. "You're either with us or against us." And so it goes, Americans aren't not too different to other countries in this regard.

I'm suggesting a more balanced view. We here on the internet have access to a wide variety of news sources - with a small effort, we should be able to see where there's a broad spectrum of opinion represented, and where the same non-stories are repeated again and again. Fabrication, speculation, it's hard to tell sometimes which is which. "Private Jessica Lynch went down firing from the hip at the hordes of attacking Iraqi soldiers who then raped and tortured her..." "Saddam's WMDs will be found soon..." "Illegal wiretaps..." "Al Gore has won the Presidency..." "Australia's nuclear plans will never involve weapons..."

Fabrication and speculation. It's wise to look with a critical mind on the stories we're presented with. It's hard to spot outright lies, but we can usually spot when we're simply not being told things. Which is what's relevant to this particular case - what were the UK's RoE in the Persian Gulf? What forces did they have nearby, and what were they confronted with? We don't know. That's a big gap in the story.

That's a big gap which some people discussing it here have filled with their premature speculation. I'm offering a kleenex for them to clean that up, leave it there and it might get smelly.

Quote from: JimBobOzBut the American patriots tend to automatically cleanse their own guys, while automatically condemning everyone else.

Wait, so let me make sure I understand you. Saying to wait and not have a media trial is cleansing the subjects?

Isn't that what you're doing with the Brits here in this discussion with Spike?  You're saying let's wait until we have more information and not have a media circus drive our decisions? Then aren't you "cleansing" the Brits?

Dangerous when you start hurling invective JB.  You are so reflexively anti-American that you can't even stop yourself from getting caught in your own circular argument.

And this is from someone who sees Spike's argument and your argument as both having some merit. Spike's weakness is that he's basing it on certain assumptions. However, his overall argument is not necessarily reliant upon them. Your argument has the common sense benefit of saying "we don't have the whole story." However, as you may have not meant to point out - we may never know. We may only get speculation as the governments involved might never release the specifics.  And once they do, the other side will have "proof" of it's own that contradicts. So finding the objectively true answers to the questions you pose may lead to a lot of murk, something Spike might already have accounted for (a survival instinct in America these days) and so based his opinion on his specific knowledge.