He died like a Dog!

[Nudga]

   I'm going to be honest and say I struggle to have an actual opinion on this.There is no doubt that he was a tyrant responsible for ordering attacks that led to the deaths of many people including allied servicemen..And that's before the torture,abductions etc etc..People are quick to jump on the Trump hating,quickly presuming that his own ends was why he ordered this attack..Yet nobody knows what intelligence they had or what he was planning...Some of you are just happy to presume as long as it supports your own point of view..

That said sometimes decisions have to be made on what's best for the balance of world peace and was this the right thing to do??? I couldn't say..

American and British forces shouldn't have been there in first place.
No wonder the middle Eastern countries and people hate westerners with our phoney foreign policy.

Wars are good for business though.

[Donnywolf]

The timing of the assassination was questioned last night as it has over shadowed the Democrats and their Impeachment agenda.

Reminds me of the sinking of the Belgrano for those of a certain age

Don't agree with that for one second Wolf..Argentina was the aggressor in that situation and Belgrano was a threat to our forces..She was rightly sunk and that resulted in the Argentine Navy never leaving Port for the duration..No doubt Saving British lives...

I have no doubt the Argentines were the aggressors AND of course they went in (ironically) to deflect mounting unrest at home

The rest I have not studied but I always understood that there was a deal brokered by US and Peru which was about to bring the conflict to a conclusion

Mrs Thatcher again for political ends did not want "just" an end to hostilities and so ordered the sinking of The Belgrano which was not in the exclusion zone and not steaming towards our Ships

Indeed in a programme (similar to Have I got news for you) someone did a spoof piece showing that Thatcher had been right all along as they said it was headed on this course - and our projection shows that had it travelled all this way (and pushed it all around the Globe) it was indeed heading right for our boys

I also dont know if the Conqueror the Sub which sunk it ever did disclose its log book - it seems fo far away

So my statement was really based on 2 coincidental things in that I think Trump did take the opportunity to kill this General to deflect "domestic" troubles and that Mrs Thatcher did similar to The Belgrano for her own ends

Must have a look to see about the Log Books on Google
EDIT best I can do - it seems the Log Books which may or may not have proved "factual" accuracies were never found
THis is from Hansard but will be coloured by ones political tendencies I suppose
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1984/nov/07/hms-conqueror-log-book

[Filo]

If there were n’t any oil reserves there they would be allowed to kill each other to their hearts content. Because there is Western Countries feel the need to help them out killing each other

[Donnywolf]

.... and can often forget that they are siding with Country A against Country B when only a decade ago (or less) they were doing something contradictory to that position

[wing commander]

A few comments on that Donnywolf.There was a deal brokered by the Americans and Chile but it had not been agreed by Argentina or Britain when the Belgrano was Sunk.Britain accepted the deal on May 5th after her sinking but it was then rejected by Argentina.
Chile had intercepted messages sent to the Belgrano days before she was Sunk instructing her to work with the other Argentine Naval forces at Sea with the aim of sinking one of the British carriers at sea as they knew the loss of any of the two carriers would have made the war unwinnable..

Whilst she was not sailing towards the inclusion zone at the time,she had moved significantly closer over the preceeding 48hrs and positioned herself in a position to enact a pincer movement with the Argentine fleet at Sea to attack the task force..

Conquerer sank her in deep water and if the Belgrano would have changed course again towards the British fleet the water would shallow off making her detection much easier..Naval log books come under the official secrets act and are never released publically whether in war or peacetime..

Once sunk the Argentine Navy still at sea was instructed to return to Port at once and never came back out.The only exception to this was the santa fe,a Argentine submarine that was damaged beyond repair on South Georgia...Once the Naval option had been taken away,Britain could concentrate on just one front(the Argentine airforce) instead of two..

You will be very hard pushed to find a military strategist who didn't agree that the sinking of the Belgrano was the correct course of action from a military point of view.Argentina invaded the Islands,dug in,resupplied from land and sea and had the Junta had full passionate support of the Argentine people.They were never going to just pack up and leave..

[selby]

  We should have sent a Polaris sub only, and given them seven days to start getting off the Falklands, or forget about local derby's River Plate against Boca Juniors.

[Filo]

  We should have sent a Polaris sub only, and given them seven days to start getting off the Falklands, or forget about local derby's River Plate against Boca Juniors.

f**king hell, Donald Trump!!!

[selby]

  Filo, I bet it would have concentrated their minds, especially if a dummy one had been fired eight days before into a pre determined field where nobody could be hurt.
  Much better than over three hundred Brits and even more Argies getting killed, cheaper than a task force as well, and quicker. What is the point of having the tackle  costing millions if you shit the bed if you have to use it.

[Sprotyrover]

The Nuclear alternative was never even considered as an option. We we about to hand over Sovereignty to Argentina.It was the unstable Fascist regime that became the major problem.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Let me get this right. We've got grown men, with votes, talking about whether we should have threatened Argentina with nuclear missiles in 1982?

God al-f**king-mighty.

[selby]

  Big game of bluff Billy, I will leave you to guess whether I would have used nuclear missiles.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Is it f**k a game of bluff.

It's a game of certainty. You establish clear and unequivocal rules that say, "If you step over this line, this will be the response."

[scawsby steve]

Is it f**k a game of bluff.

It's a game of certainty. You establish clear and unequivocal rules that say, "If you step over this line, this will be the response."

Were JFK and Kruschev bluffing in 1962?

[BillyStubbsTears]

No. The lines of escalation were crystal clear. I'll dig out a quote from one of the members of Kennedy's ExComm later on. It crystallises it.

[scawsby steve]

No. The lines of escalation were crystal clear. I'll dig out a quote from one of the members of Kennedy's ExComm later on. It crystallises it.

I can remember the deadline day well. I was working at the Plant, having just left school. At snap time, lots of us were looking up at the clear blue sky. One of the blokes said "Well there's nothing coming over yet".

Secretly I think he was sh*tting himself. Talk about whistling Dixie.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Bob MacNamara, Kennedy's Defence Secretary left the War Room and went out to see the sunset on the Saturday night of the crisis, because he thought he wasn't going to see another one.

[wilts rover]

Suleimani wasn't in Baghdad on a sightseeing tour, thank god Corbyn isn't PM!

Is it only me that finds the reason he was in Baghdad fascinating?

Apparently he was negotiating with the Saudi's about de-escalating tensions in the region and was due to have a meeting with the Iraqi PM who was acting as the go-between.

Did  the US - who supply billions of dollars in arms to the Saudis - not know about these peace talks? If they did, why on earth would they want to do anything to disrupt them?

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/qassem-soleimani-death-iran-baghdad-middle-east-iraq-saudi-arabia-a9272901.html

[BillyStubbsTears]

SS.

Here's the narrative from ExComm I promised you.

Dean Acheson had been Truman's Secretary of State at the start of the Cold War. Kennedy invited him to join ExComm as the crisis developed, to draw on his experience.

On Black Saturday, when the Soviet boats were approaching the exclusion zone with more nuclear missiles for Cuba and time was running out, Kennedy was considering sending air strikes (conventional weapons) to destroy the ballistic missiles in Cuba. He asked Acheson what the Soviet reaction would be.

Acheson: I know the Soviets well. I know what they are required to do in the light of their history and their posture around the world. I think they would knock out our (nuclear) missiles in Turkey (a NATO member).

Kennedy: What do we do then?

Acheson: I believe under our NATO treaty, with which I was associated, we would be required to respond by knocking out a missile base inside the Soviet Union.

Kennedy: Then what do they do?

Acheson: That is when we hope that cooler heads will prevail and they will stop and talk.

Source: Theodore Sorenson's (Kennedy's adviser) submission to the Kennedy Library oral history programme.

The USA knew what that would lead to. The Soviet Union knew that if they continued pushing, they would force the USA into that line of action. Both sides knew what the others' red lines were. As a result, Kennedy reined back on the plan to attack Cuba and the Soviets instructed their boats not to push on with delivering more missiles to Cuba.

During one ExComm meeting in which some of the US military top brass were pushing for military action, Kennedy took an aide to one side and said "Do those people realise that if we make a mistake here, there may be 200 million dead?"

About the same time, Khruschev was having similar discussions with his generals. He claims to have said to them "Can you guarantee that holding fast would not result in the deaths of 500 million human beings? They looked at me as if I was out of my mind, or worse, a traitor. The biggest tragedy for them was not that our country might be devastated, but that the Chinese or Albanians might accuse us of weakness. What good would it have done me in the last hour of my life to know that, though our great nation and the USA were in ruins, the national honour of the Soviet Union was intact?" (Source: The Cold War by Martin Walker.

Both Presidents knew that neither their side, nor the other side were bluffing. There was a remorseless logic to each side's reactions and because Kennedy and Khruschev both knew that, they both had the sense to find a compromise solution, rather than breech the other side's red lines.

I've read voraciously on the Cuban Missile Crisis. It holds a morbid fascination for me. I've never seen the word "bluff" once in the tens of thousands of words I've read.


Regarding Selby's daft comments earlier, I assume he was making a sick joke. If he was serious then the way his mind works is terrifying.

[bpoolrover]

The good news is we have a Tory government where boris is wanting to de escalate things who has said not to bomb culturel targets, if this was labour and Tony Blair he would have took us into a illegal war and lied his tits off, so when all is said and done well done the tories and boris

[SydneyRover]

But what if Robert Walpole was still PM bp?

[Sprotyrover]

But what if Robert Walpole was still PM bp?

Who??? 😂😂😂

[Filo]

The good news is we have a Tory government where boris is wanting to de escalate things who has said not to bomb culturel targets, if this was labour and Tony Blair he would have took us into a illegal war and lied his tits off, so when all is said and done well done the tories and boris

OK, so because Corbyn is anti war, and because of your anti Labour stance you feel the need to find a Labour leader that might have taken us i to war. Was n’t it long ago that you were slating Corbyn for potentially doing what you are now praising Johnson for doing?

[MachoMadness]

What this affair has done is show how many people out there genuinely believe foreign policy and nuclear war is as simple as negotiating a better broadband contract or something. Bluffing! Nuclear war! Christ.

[Hounslowrover]

Didn't Cameron take us into Libya without an exit strategy, leaving the mess that is Libya now. It's not only Blair who has made poor calculations.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Looks like a few Americans have died tonight in retaliation.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51028954

Iran has also said that if the USA retaliates, they will wipe out Haifa in Israel and Dubai.

This is getting rather f**king serious.

[bpoolrover]

Agree if any us soldiers are killed I think there will be massive issues

[bahrain rover]

Here in Bahrain we are extremely nervous. This is a tiny nation in between Iraq and everywhere else wanting a go at them. Also Bahrain is home to the US 7th Fleet, and a large British naval base. Making this an easy target. All approximately 1.5 miles from my house

[Ldr]

Stay safe mate

[wing commander]

Hopefully that will be the end of this escalation..Looks like no casualty,and it's a very weak response from Iran followed by a flood of iran social media messages trying to bring the temp down...

[Filo]

Hopefully that will be the end of this escalation..Looks like no casualty,and it's a very weak response from Iran followed by a flood of iran social media messages trying to bring the temp down...

Trump won’t recognise that though, he’s thick as pig shit