I am deeply saddened.

Now there’s no need to be condescending young man 😮

I still ocasionally fill in and do some work for the people I use to work with/for.
For those who don’t know I used to be a Trade Union Official ( Teamsters for our US cousins ).
Today I was ‘manning the office’ for a while and I spent a good hour on the phone talking to someone in a neighbouring Branch (Local [US]) who lost somebody last Thursday.
Two hours later following a welfare enquiry call from elsewhere (and after a couple of calls to ‘the Met hotline’) I put two and two together and I had to phone the same person back and tell them that another member of their Branch was listed as ‘missing’, and by all accounts probably still buried in the wreakage at Kings Cross.

Sorry, I got the bit about Kings Cross wrong.
Giles Hart died on the bus.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4668245.stm

Well that’s two whole lines you have contributed, care to expound ?
(look it up. It’s just at the end of E, if you get to F you have gone too far)

Now there’s no need to be condescending young man 😮

Seek with Google and ye shall find.

Also I suggest you acquire the March 1999 issue of AFM and read the Headline article on page four.

I have to agree with Alex here, Viper. The reports of atrocities and mass-murders commited by the Serbs leading to Operation Allied Force were highly inflated, if not completely falsified.

While Serb-commited massacres and/or ethnic cleansing like in Bosnia may have been avoided by Allied Force, i do think that the casus belli for this one was very shallow. There are a few legal issues which did support NATO’s campaign, but not to the extent that NATO became the air fleet of the UCK in their campaign for an ethnically clensed, independent (Albanian) Kosova.

Like Iraq, this was one of those poorly thought out wars which might seem a good idea on the short term, but are likely to cause an incredible amount of trouble in the long run.

You maybe should have done.

Well that’s two whole lines you have contributed, care to expound ?
(look it up. It’s just at the end of E, if you get to F you have gone too far)

For Christ’s sake, this isn’t the bloody telegraph you know!

And your point is ? Did I sign off as “Angry of Tubridge Wells” ?
P.

You maybe should have done.

For Christ’s sake, this isn’t the bloody telegraph you know!

And your point is ? Did I sign off as “Angry of Tubridge Wells” ?
All I was saying was that (weather or not you believe UN sanction still holds any sway) by siding with Bush and going into Iraq without it, Blair lost any moral high ground he may have had.
As a nation if we ‘feel’ we are ‘right’ we will fight to the end. If we don’t have that feeling it leaves a nasty taste, particularly when the bodybags come home.

I missed Alex’s post (the one that Grey Area has turned red….. maybe just as well) but I assume from further reading that it alluded to some lack of sympathy for the victims.

I still ocasionally fill in and do some work for the people I use to work with/for.
For those who don’t know I used to be a Trade Union Official ( Teamsters for our US cousins ).
Today I was ‘manning the office’ for a while and I spent a good hour on the phone talking to someone in a neighbouring Branch (Local [US]) who lost somebody last Thursday.
Two hours later following a welfare enquiry call from elsewhere (and after a couple of calls to ‘the Met hotline’) I put two and two together and I had to phone the same person back and tell them that another member of their Branch was listed as ‘missing’, and by all accounts probably still buried in the wreakage at Kings Cross.

I didn’t know either of the people involved but don’t think that I don’t feel it, far from it.
It has not been an easy day.

P.

Horribly mutilate and dismember all first born sons so that they don’t do it again, or force them to watch every episode of Friends, back to back, with no toilet breaks?
How inhuman! – Nermal

No Nermal I have a far better idea then that make them watch home videos of those they murdered in the namer of there so-called god 24/7 with out any sleep let them go insane and then really get nasty with them. Killing them is to clean and easy these blighters need to live out their lives in a living hell just like the one they have now caused all those who have lost love ones to this madness.

You know if the Arab World really wants to be taken seroiusly then they need to step up and start dealing with these radicals how I could care less shooting them would be to easy. Also I think its time for the UK to re-think its views on all those so-called freedom fighting Arabs that they have let stay in there country read a very nice piece about how London is the hot bed for all Arab radical trying to escape punishment abroad.

RER

I don’t feel anger, I feel shame and sorrow.

The British people will fight anyone to the death in a cause that we believe to be just, for that is our way. It is the spirit we live our lives by, it is the soul of our nation, we are born with it.
By the same token we understand the tenacity of a determined foe and use that understanding to ultimately gain victory.
It is not arrogance by any means, but we know it to be true because our long history is steeped in it.
60 years ago the great and permanent bond between the US and Gt.Britain was finally forged in the victory over the Nazi rule of Europe.
A bond between two nations often at odds but with a common cause, a bond forged in the blood of hundreds of thousands, a bond of freedom.
That bond should never have been able to be called upon by the whim of two people.

Yesterdays dreadful events were unecessary Mr Blair…
You knew that this day might come once you stood shoulder square with Bush over Iraq without proper Parliamentary Debate and particularly without UN sanction.
You knew…. and yet you still gambled with the lives of British servicemen and women and the probable deaths of innocent people under the guise of standing up to terrorism. You have now cost many of both.

You Sir, should have stood up to Bush at the time.
By not doing so you besmirched and belittled the memory of all those of both nations who gave their lives in forging the ‘special relationship’ that our two nations rightly have.
Removing Saddam may have been desirable but was it ‘lawful and just’ to be involved in doing so ? By completely ignoring the rest of the World what did you hope to gain ?

You Sir, allowed the whole thing to run away from you, totally out of control under the supposed threat of WMD.
You Sir, knew that the threat of WMD to this country was rubbish yet still took this country into a conflict that the nation would have strongly supported and stood more proudly alongside our American cousins, had we felt it to be a just cause rather than the will of their current leader.
Our service men and women have been, and now The Nation as a whole pays the price of your gamble……….a gamble that made the events in London yesterday inevitable.

I call on you to resign with immediate effect.

For Christ’s sake, this isn’t the bloody telegraph you know!

Yes. Civilian losses will always be an inevitable consequence in any armed conflict, especially in an air campaign. The implementation of SDBs, the development of more advanced guidance systems, better intelligence etc. will never eliminate the risk completely, at least not in the foreseeable future.

How many more Kosovo Albanians may have lost their lives to the Serb onslaught if NATO hadn’t intervened?

:confused: (Must be the heat again).

Worse, of course. I think it was right to remove the Hussein regime, but I’m still not so sure whether the negative consequences of the occupation are completely worth the heavy losses, not to mention the opportunites seized by the terrorists. The recent CIA report says a lot. I don’t think the world has become a safer place after the invasion.

The deportetion of the Kossovar Albenians stared after the NATO assault,
not before. There were clashes and battles with seperatist (terrorists)
but not mass murder like in Bosnia. If you have a proof of mass graves
discovered in Kosovo then please post them. I don’t think the world has
became a safer place either (although it’s better they fight over there)
but if there was a solid support for the US and Arab countries would have
joined the policing it would have been much much better. I also think if the
US didn’t dismentel the Iraqi army things would be as bad.

As I’ve stated before, comparing Operation Allied Force with Operation Iraqi Freedom is more or less stillborn. The pre-war situation and the events that lead to the war were completely different. There were never any plans to invade and occupy Serbia and Montenegro. The relatively foreseeable consequences would probably have been very, very bad if NATO hadn’t intervened.

Either it’s a legal war or it’s an illegal war. In the war on Serbia hundreads of
innocent civilians died and the UN (great democarcies like Syria, Sudan
North Korea and Cuba) didn’t approve (Russia would have veto it anyway).
The Premise to the war was reporting mass graves and mass mureder that was taking place and prove to be false (sounds familiar). Yet i don’t here
about Serbs blowing up subways in Berlin.
P.S.
Do you think the situation for the Shia and Kurds (not in mass graves already) would have gotten better or worse and saddam and his psycho
kids?

Get a grip Alexz33, this is a reasonable discussion about the whys and wherefores of a dreadful act – attacking the person making one element of the argument adds no value at all.

IMHO we are seeing freedom fighters vs freedom fighters. There are those who feel (and in many cases are) oppressed vs those whose ideology is that all should live under the umbrella of “democratic” freedom. The fight will continue until the “oppressed” feel they have come out from under that oppression. And given both sides believe they are working to this end … well.

What realy got me upset was this statment.
“The British learned that if you leave well alone you will not be bothered.
You may not like what other people do but that is their part of the world, let them get on with it for if you prevoke them you will face a long and drawn out struggle.”

Many countries (even muslim) that totaly opposed the war were hit by
terrorist acts like the one in London and by the same organization. Furtermore the terrorist are NOT Iraqis or Afghani nationals.
If one is upset With the war being conducted without the support of the UN then he/she will have to explain why NATO including Germany and France had no problems bombing Serbia without an UN approval?

we all no where I stand and what I BELEIVE SHOULD BE DONE.

Horribly mutilate and dismember all first born sons so that they don’t do it again, or force them to watch every episode of Friends, back to back, with no toilet breaks?
How inhuman! – Nermal

Come on Alex, Whalebone was hardly excusing the mass murderers and blaming the victims. Whalebone is of the opinion that Tony Blair should bear some responsibility for Thursday’s attacks after bringing the UK into a war with Iraq (particularly in the light of what we now know about WMD in Iraq) If you don’t agree with the opinion fine, but please don’t accuse people of ignoring the victims of last Thursday’s blasts because their opinion differs from yours.

Get a grip Alexz33, this is a reasonable discussion about the whys and wherefores of a dreadful act – attacking the person making one element of the argument adds no value at all.

IMHO we are seeing freedom fighters vs freedom fighters. There are those who feel (and in many cases are) oppressed vs those whose ideology is that all should live under the umbrella of “democratic” freedom. The fight will continue until the “oppressed” feel they have come out from under that oppression. And given both sides believe they are working to this end … well.

Sorry if i upset anyone,. 😮
i sort of lost it when i saw people making up excusesfor mass murderers and igonering the victims.
PS.
I got nothing against the moderators so i don’t know why they think
i offended them (and if i did then i apologise)?

alex33,

With all do respect your comments where a tad on the personal side one can express their thoughts with out getting nasty. I should know since I rank right up their as one of the most vile person on this forum.

As for the thread I’m not going to say anything since it would be edit by the Left-Wing Group here we all no where I stand and what I BELEIVE SHOULD BE DONE.

RER

Erez.

With all due respect….

“How could it be that the British intelligence failed so badly, and couldn’t do anything to prevent the attacks?
And what is taking the British police so long to figure out what exactly happened in each attack scene and recover the remaining bodies?”

As one who has experienced many attacks in your own homeland, might it not be more pertinent for you to question the efficacy of your own intelligence services? How many have died as a result of bombings within Israel? If you think about that question then perhaps the answer to your question regarding British intelligence will be clearer.

It is taking what you perceive to be an inordinate amount of time to recover the bodies for several reasons.

Each ‘target’ is now a crime scene. It seems likely now that these attacks are not suicide bombings.

The conditions within which rescue, recovery and forensic/intelligence teams are working, in three cases, are underground in dark tunnels and in horriffic conditions.

In Britain this whole scenario is managed by civilian services. We do not have soldiers armed to the teeth wandering around the streets. As far as I am aware, our security services do not have the right to arrest people in large numbers on the vaguest of suspicion, or because they are Palestinian and hold them without charge. It seems our legal processes are far different.

I think your question is slightly pointless really. With Israel having one of the allegedly best intelligence services it shows them to be failing on a far larger scale than British intelligence when Israelis have been targeted far more regularly than the British don’t you think?

“When Israeli civilians are attacked by terrorists, well withing the international borders of Israel, most of the world’s reaction is pretty cold. Yes, it’s true we have many of these attacks, but it doesn’t make each attack easier. Therefore I think that the world must react much more strongly against any terrorist attack, anywhere in the world. We are no less humans than the British nation, we too want to hear the world supporting us and condemning these cowardly acts.”

Should the world also act more strongly against the Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian homes? Or the cold blooded shooting of a young boy caught in a firefight? It is difficult for many in the world to support Israel in condemning atrocities when Israel as a nation is often the perpetrator of atrocities against Palestinians.

Regards,

kev35

[

Get a grip Alexz33, this is a reasonable discussion about the whys and wherefores of a dreadful act – attacking the person making one element of the argument adds no value at all.

IMHO we are seeing freedom fighters vs freedom fighters. There are those who feel (and in many cases are) oppressed vs those whose ideology is that all should live under the umbrella of “democratic” freedom. The fight will continue until the “oppressed” feel they have come out from under that oppression. And given both sides believe they are working to this end … well.

Alexz33 – Your opinion is as valuable as anyone else’s, but in this Forum you are asked to express it without insulting other Forum members or attacking the Moderators.

Thank You

Grey Area
Moderator

Read the openening thread. He is already running with a white flag.

Well you may have read Alexz33 it but you obviously didn’t understand it.
If you think I am running then I will stand still, you catch me up and try and take the flag that you think I am holding off this Englishman, you will regret the attempt I promise you. 😡 I hope you are able to grasp the concept of ‘figure of speech’ 🙁
To those of you saying ‘nieve’ I was being sarcastic, I know it will never happen, as some of you say ‘No integrity’.

Quite rightly Vortex said that Al Queda listed Great Britain as a target but then they listed every allied nation that took part in the first Gulf War as a target (although I am not quite sure what he means by the “sounds like 1930’s Britain the way you wanted it” part, perhaps Vortex could explain) for an appeaser I am not !

What Blair missed was the opportunity to prevent Bush falling into the trap Osama bin Laden and Al Queda had set for him.
To stand my country beside a gung ho US president and allow it to fall into the same hole is unforgivable.

To go into Iraq a second time and without UN sanction was sheer folly and shows a complete mis-understanding of the Arab mindset (regardless of his/her religion).
“Any attack on my brother is an attack on me” It’s deep rooted from birth and ‘in the blood’.

Flattening villages in Afghanistan may eliminate a few target individuals but it also turns the mind of the innocents that also suffer.
Invading Iraq because Saddam gave sactuary to terrorists (true) or on the grounds of WMD (un-proven and certanly not deliverable to the West in any great quantity nor would thay have ever been at Saddam’s behest, he was quite happy just being in power and a constant thorn in the West’s side) has not solved the situation. It has had the opposite effect.

Where did all the ‘terrorists’ that he harboured go ?
They were long gone before a single GI or British Squaddie stood (or lost their lives) on Iraqi sand.
Where are the WMD ?
Conveniently forgotten about, as is the paper trail that leads back to many large corporations and company’s in the West that had dealings with Saddam.

What are we left with ?

A nation in total turmoil, a magnet to every US hating extremist group, a people who deep down may be glad to see the back of Saddam but don’t feel good about it because thousands of their people died in the process.
A process undertaken by the US and her allies, hate one hate all.

By ‘going in’ without UN sanction it has made it far easier for Osama and/or Al Queda to justify ‘reprisals’.

Somewhere in the UK, in respectable street, in a quiet suburban neighbourhood there are people who know how Thursdays deeds were done.
In the communities they live in there will be some who ‘know’, but they will never tell.
What are we to do ? Flatten swaithes of Luton or Bradford or the parts of London with high concentations of Molsems because our intelligence services say that someone there has connections that prove they must know whodunnit ? Unthinkable behaviour yes, but don’t forget it’s the first hand experience of many innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

F-18 Hamburger writes
“love me flame me, i don’t care. If you ask me, I think the British gov’t should continue supporting the war on terror because they are partially responsible for the whole mess in the first place, a long time ago that is. It was the British (along with the French) that sought to hasten the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire (where conflicts between Jews and Muslims were nowhere near as bad as today), manipulate the situation in Egypt, made many irresponsible policies over Palestine/Israel, and their adventures in Iran. The latter two problems being transplated to the Americans.”

I have to agree with him to an extent.
The British Empire was in many cases an awful thing to fall under. We made dreadful mistakes at the end of WW2 regarding Palestine and the same in the vast bulk of the middle east in the 1920’s however, we eventually realised that you cannot impose your will on nations that will not be imposed upon. In esscence we met our equals, eventually realised it and ingloriously withdrew leaving them to it.
With the benefit of hindsight what we left behind may not have turned out the best but (bear in mind that warring tribes and factions, power struggles and terrorist bombings are nothing new) it was the best that could be done at the time.
Today things are different. The Grandfathers of those affected in those times did not have the power of projection that today’s freedom fighter has.
If they had posessed it then, the ‘Flying Scotsman’ train or the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner would probably have been blasted in reprisal.

Regarding ‘transplanted to the Americans’.
I don’t take sides but I see an odd difference between American reaction to Israeli armoured bulldozers demolishing an entire Palestinian township and an RPG fired into a Israeli settlement usually built on legally occupied Palestinain ground that was probably forcebly taken away in the first place.
The people on the ground don’t care about marking or insignia but they are wise enough to realise that the death from the sky that usually follows comes from an American built helecopter gunship or F15/16 fighter bomber.
It only serves to reinforce the hatred.

The British learned that if you leave well alone you will not be bothered.
You may not like what other people do but that is their part of the world, let them get on with it for if you prevoke them you will face a long and drawn out struggle.
Unfortunately our attitude became far too relaxed and the end of the conflict that we celebrate the 60th anniversary this year resulted.

Today we (should) be wiser and I think European wise we are. For other matters we also learned that “softly softly catchy monkey” is the better way. Leave it to the dark and quiet worlds of MI5 & MI6, eventually they will get the job done withiout too much fuss.

The point that I make is that Blair should have remembered all of this and not poodled up to Bush without realising that one day death and destuction would come to Londons streets.
Don’t look upset now Tony, we the nation knew it would come.
Come one come all, we will never be beaten for we are British, our resolve is solid.
We British (just like any other) will fight and defend what we believe to right, if we beleive that we are in ‘the right’.
We now know that we were not ‘in the right’ on two counts ( lack of UN sanction and WMD) yet our leaders still caused the country to make sacrifice.
It is something that sits uneasy with us as a whole nation, and now we pay the heavy price.

Erez, you post dropped in before I had finished composing mine. Thankyou for your thoughts for our lost and injured ones. Peace be with you and your family.

First, I want to express my sorrow and grief over the death of all of the British and foreign civilians in these coward terrorist attacks.
As a person living in a country suffering many terrorist attacks, I understand well what’s going on in Britain now.

However, with your permission, I have two questions bothering me for a while now.
1) How could it be that the British intelligence failed so badly, and couldn’t do anything to prevent the attacks?
And what is taking the British police so long to figure out what exactly happened in each attack scene and recover the remaining bodies?
2) Well, not really a question, and forgive me if it may sound a bit rude, it’s not my intention. The question is, why do people here and in the UN condemn so quickly and strongly the terrorists, both those who commited this horrible act and those who are based worldwide and planning more of these attacks?
The UN particulary. When Israeli civilians are attacked by terrorists, well withing the international borders of Israel, most of the world’s reaction is pretty cold. Yes, it’s true we have many of these attacks, but it doesn’t make each attack easier. Therefore I think that the world must react much more strongly against any terrorist attack, anywhere in the world. We are no less humans than the British nation, we too want to hear the world supporting us and condemning these cowardly acts.

With all regards to the British people, and peace loving people, may they be Christian, Muslims or Jews.