Indeed you are spot on here, the article was utter nonsense and an unwarrented non-factual attack on our armed services. A pathetic farce of a news article (just like the “bike locks secure nukes” BS the BBC was hyping up a while back http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=75988&highlight=lock+nuclear

An attack on our armed services and MOD by the father of someone who died in the conflict to be precise

I would never claim the BBC is perfect, but as a news organisation its one of the best and most reliable. Every news agency has an angle or “bias”, all reporters have baggage and opinions. Would the “European Jewish Press” you quoted have reported a pro-jewish/ anti-palestine bias in the same way? Of course not, this story and its angle is an interest story for them. The “Cut and Shunt” story was reported because-

a) The Helicopter debate is one of the top stories of the week.
b) The quoted man has a direct interest and a relevant angle on the story in a week when we have had the heighest weekly death toll.
c) as I outlined above, this story is a real issue, why should the government rely on our techies to rebuild a wreck when they should be just buying a replacement chinook.
d) The story does not in any way have the BBC directly attacking the RAF, the quoted man does. The MOD is culpable as they direct policy and made the excutive decision that money should be spent supplying our troops with a rebuild rather than a new helicopter.

I agree totally with you and I would probably swap points (a) and (b) in terms of importance.

Well I won’t harp on about this subject after this post but you BBC lovers need to read the article again and notice
Sentances such as

“If you gave them flip flops and catapults they’d still go out there and do the job for us, but we don’t support our men.”

But Mr Sadler said it was a “real scandal” and showed a lack of support for the troops fighting in Afghanistan.

“Mr Sadler’s son, a trooper in the Honourable Artillery Company, was killed when his non-armoured Land Rover hit a mine.”

“An admission that a “cut and shut” helicopter was used in Afghanistan has angered the father of a dead soldier.”

All of these sentances were left in the article for a reason and if you cannot figure that out I feel bad for you.
But the bigger question is why do the article at all? The BBC know very what they are printing and here they are guilty of printing antiwar propaganda with no factual basis, unless of course you believe the Guy they quoted to be a rellibale and informed source. I imagine you guys are going to try and claim this is fair coverage of the Afghan conflict when the reality is they have printed a pack of sensationalist lies.

I have no issue with the article or the way the BBC handled it, I only posted it here to highlight a view that despite there being a lack of helicopters in Afghanistan the MOD had needed to ‘withdraw it’ for reasons unspecified (normal service rotation perhaps?).

The comments mentioned above were not made by the BBC and clearly a grieving father has every right to make these sort of statements and the BBC were right (given his previous approaches to the MOD et al to publicise the perceived issue) to highlight them.

I could point you to a thread in the General Aviation forum where the BBC were clearly wrong and sensationalist but I will leave you to find it for yourself.