Pick Your Poison

[maggiethecatiii (deleted)]

Will argrue with anyone about anything. Choose a topic... pit bulls, gun control, taxes, the stock market, pro-life, pro-death, smoking, drone attacks, the war or current revolution of your choice (current or historic), legalising pot, which tattoos are coolest, the value (or not) of message boards themselves, anything.

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

[jasongary]

hi there, it is pointless arguing with you about any war the US has been involved in as generally they require British back up to be on the winning side. with the notable exception of the rebellion you guys had back in the 1700's where admittedly you did win, but not with out help from the French of all people.

does this start an argument?

Jason

[maggiethecatiii (deleted)]

jasongary wrote: hi there, it is pointless arguing with you about any war the US has been involved in as generally they require British back up to be on the winning side. with the notable exception of the rebellion you guys had back in the 1700's where admittedly you did win, but not with out help from the French of all people.

does this start an argument?

Jason

Pathetically I think we are in agreement. I am anti almost all American wars with exception to WWII.

We could talk about the Brit massacre of civilians in Iraq that was reported in the media, then oddly expunged and which involved a soldier who was also involved in the deadly Sunday massacre of civilians in the North of Ireland. Same guy. Not only not discharged from Sunday (inquiry going on and on endlessly even decades later), but promoted and somehow he ended up in the Iraq version of similar decades later. Let me see if I can Google up his name.

Hopefully, we can fight about that.

Barring that, you and I can rag on Americans together over Iraq and Afghanistan (to seemingly no opposition, lol).

Welcome!

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

[maggiethecatiii (deleted)]

So far looking for that guy's name, I found this rather interesting site on war crimes:

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"...Under the orders of Lieutenant Coronel Derek Wilford, Captain Michael Jackson and thirteen other soldiers of the parachute regiment opened fire “on a peaceful protest by the Northern Ireland civil rights association opposing discrimination against Catholics. In just 30 minutes, 13 people were shot dead and a further 13 injured. Those who died were killed by a single bullet to the head or body, indicating that they had been deliberately targeted. No weapons were found on any of the deceased.” (Julie Hyland, “Head of NATO Force in Kosovo was Second-in-command at “Bloody Sunday” Massacre in Ireland”, World Socialist Website, 19 June 1999).

Both Wilford and Jackson were rewarded rather than prosecuted for their role in the 1972 massacre.

Wilford, who subsequently retired from the Armed Services, was awarded the Order of the British Empire by H.M. Government in October of 1972, less than a year following the January 1972 massacre.

Michael Jackson’s role in Sunday did not hinder his military career. In fact quite the opposite. He ascended to the highest rank of the British military, before retiring in 2006 from the rank of Commander of the General Staff (CGS)..."

I'm thinking it was Jackson who was at both massacres.

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

[maggiethecatiii (deleted)]

`Yeah, it was Jackson.

(removed)

[jasongary]

I served under him in the army many moons ago and he was one of the best field commanders we/I ever served under. He looked after the soldiers under his command and woe betide the junior officers who did not.
From speaking to my father who served in the troubles the situation was volatile and confused to say the least. As far as I am aware the term peaceful protest in the context of the province is very tongue in cheek, notably when hijacked by the IRA, (not very nice people I might add). I still get annoyed when the murderers Gerry Adams etc are on the news spouting peace when quite happily having murdered people in the past to further their cause.

I will look at the link in a minute and nice to hear back from you

Jason

[jasongary]

`The "massacre" in Iraq was as I understand it a rescue operation to retrieve two British army soldiers. Heavy handed though it was is it not better to go in hard and fast to reduce the chance of casualties to your own side. Look after your own first and worry about the other side later. This may seem like a bias view on it but that is the way I am.

To be totally honest with you I have never looked too closely into the sunday incident and find the news reports you have offered very interesting, yet still think that if a soldier believes he is under fire he is right to return fire even if he is wrong. One must remember that the rules of engagement cards for use in Northern Ireland had not been printed at that (note will check that), and even when they were issued later on were all but useless.

[maggiethecatiii (deleted)]

`You completely delighted me by coming back to argue with me about this old news. However I have one hell of a busy day upcoming, I actually checked the boards in hopes you might have answered. Yay! I will return tonight and we can take up the saintly PIRA and the Iraq morass as two separate issues. :D

[maggiethecatiii (deleted)]

jasongary wrote: I served under him in the army many moons ago and he was one of the best field commanders we/I ever served under. He looked after the soldiers under his command and woe betide the junior officers who did not.
From speaking to my father who served in the troubles the situation was volatile and confused to say the least. As far as I am aware the term peaceful protest in the context of the province is very tongue in cheek, notably when hijacked by the IRA, (not very nice people I might add). I still get annoyed when the murderers Gerry Adams etc are on the news spouting peace when quite happily having murdered people in the past to further their cause.

I will look at the link in a minute and nice to hear back from you

Jason

Have to say Gerry Adams is a genius who had a successful long-term plan for peace. What he achieved could not have been done any other way, I feel. I would call Adams 'the great peace-maker', hardly a murderer. Would add that fighting for one's civil rights as half of a civil war (which IS the American official view) doesn't make freedom fighters murderers by any stretch.

I bet we can have a rousing debate about this particular subject in it's own right. :)

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

[maggiethecatiii (deleted)]

jasongary wrote: `The "massacre" in Iraq was as I understand it a rescue operation to retrieve two British army soldiers. Heavy handed though it was is it not better to go in hard and fast to reduce the chance of casualties to your own side. Look after your own first and worry about the other side later. This may seem like a bias view on it but that is the way I am.

To be totally honest with you I have never looked too closely into the sunday incident and find the news reports you have offered very interesting, yet still think that if a soldier believes he is under fire he is right to return fire even if he is wrong. One must remember that the rules of engagement cards for use in Northern Ireland had not been printed at that (note will check that), and even when they were issued later on were all but useless.



I actually understand your view on looking after your own first but... I have zero respect for the American unilateral invasion of Iraq so to me it looks like your country and mine have waged an illegal war and killed a huge number, hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iraqi women, children and other non-combatants.

I think we should make multiple threads, one for the legitimacy of war in Iraq at all, and another for the North of Ireland on the the difference between terrorism and a civil war and what role the U.K. military should have played in that situation (if any), and perhaps yet another on the multiple conflicting accounts of Sunday but let me say to you now there is only one truth to that day's events and a whole heck of a lot of continuing obscuration of it ever since. Truth isn't relative. Brit paras shot, fatally and multiply, into crowds of unarmed women and children marching in a peaceful protest.

Imho, Brits did themselves one of the greatest disservices ever during the Troubles... IRA recruitment went to an all time high and emotional soft support for the Cause did as well.

That is why it is so surprising that the British military would continue to make the same mistakes in Iraq, even knowing how insane it is. Early on in Iraq and now smothered news, a Brit squad led by that man Jackson did indeed shoot directly into a peaceful protest attended by innumerable Iraqi civilians. This news is so suppressed I have found it difficult to locate a news item on it now, but I watched it make the news, then disappear days later, at the time it happened. I will keep searching for that event, which is different from the other one in Basra.

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

[jasongary]

`Agreed on the invasion of Iraq. It should never have happened and would never have happened if the US, the UK, and all the other coalition forces had been allowed to finish the job properly following the invasion of Kuwait. That said the forces sent into Iraq found them selves there through no fault of their own but that of our respective governments, which is where the buck should stop misters Bush and Blair.

[jasongary]

maggiethecatiii wrote:

Have to say Gerry Adams is a genius who had a successful long-term plan for peace. What he achieved could not have been done any other way, I feel. I would call Adams 'the great peace-maker', hardly a murderer. Would add that fighting for one's civil rights as half of a civil war (which IS the American official view) doesn't make freedom fighters murderers by any stretch.

I bet we can have a rousing debate about this particular subject in it's own right.

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

Yes Gerry Adams is a very intelligent man, more so than myself, but it is fact he is also a liar. He has repeatedly denied that he is or ever has been a member of the IRA. Yet was instrumental in the planning of the Friday bombings.


(removed)

In which 9 people died and 130 people were maimed and injured. Only two of those that died were soldiers.

If Mr Adams had followed the ballot box route from the very beginning of his career the bloodshed would have been much less. One has to remember the only reason the British Army was deployed to the province in 1969 in the first place was to protect the Catholic population from the Protestant population. The civil rights movement and catholic community in general welcomed the protection provided. It was the militant republican factions notably the IRA, who twisted the deployment of troops to their own ends, to increase recruitment and further their own cause through violence and murder rather than let the civil rights movement (which was just in my eyes) carry on their peaceful campaign. This (civil rights) would have worked and achieved a peaceful solution to the problems at least ten years before the end of the actual troubles.

I do not believe that the civil rights movements in your own country would have ever have achieved its aims had it gone down the same route as the Irish went. For certain the government state or federal would never have seen it as a civil war, as they seem to have portrayed the situation in Northern Ireland.

Jason

[maggiethecatiii (deleted)]

jasongary wrote: `Agreed on the invasion of Iraq. It should never have happened and would never have happened if the US, the UK, and all the other coalition forces had been allowed to finish the job properly following the invasion of Kuwait. That said the forces sent into Iraq found them selves there through no fault of their own but that of our respective governments, which is where the buck should stop misters Bush and Blair.




Here we agree.

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

[maggiethecatiii (deleted)]

jasongary wrote: maggiethecatiii wrote:

Have to say Gerry Adams is a genius who had a successful long-term plan for peace. What he achieved could not have been done any other way, I feel. I would call Adams 'the great peace-maker', hardly a murderer. Would add that fighting for one's civil rights as half of a civil war (which IS the American official view) doesn't make freedom fighters murderers by any stretch.

I bet we can have a rousing debate about this particular subject in it's own right.

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

Yes Gerry Adams is a very intelligent man, more so than myself, but it is fact he is also a liar. He has repeatedly denied that he is or ever has been a member of the IRA. Yet was instrumental in the planning of the Friday bombings.


(removed)

In which 9 people died and 130 people were maimed and injured. Only two of those that died were soldiers.

If Mr Adams had followed the ballot box route from the very beginning of his career the bloodshed would have been much less. One has to remember the only reason the British Army was deployed to the province in 1969 in the first place was to protect the Catholic population from the Protestant population. The civil rights movement and catholic community in general welcomed the protection provided. It was the militant republican factions notably the IRA, who twisted the deployment of troops to their own ends, to increase recruitment and further their own cause through violence and murder rather than let the civil rights movement (which was just in my eyes) carry on their peaceful campaign. This (civil rights) would have worked and achieved a peaceful solution to the problems at least ten years before the end of the actual troubles.

I do not believe that the civil rights movements in your own country would have ever have achieved its aims had it gone down the same route as the Irish went. For certain the government state or federal would never have seen it as a civil war, as they seem to have portrayed the situation in Northern Ireland.

Jason

Consider that the PIRA consists of diverse people with diverse opinions and goals. If Adams had gone pure ballot box, lots more of the PIRA would have split off and peace between the PIRA and the proddies would never have happened. There were in fact splits anyway, the RIRA continuance of the Troubles is an example. But that number would have been much larger had not Adams approached the situation as he did. I have had a lot of time to think about it and it's my opinion. Only in the way Adams approached it would have had results as positive as they are now. The man is a chess player with a lot of patience and who kept his eyes on the prize - peace.

I think the unfortuanate offshoot IRAs, whom I do not give my blessing, are at a minimum because of Adams' ingenious methods.

And you are overlooking American history if you think violence wasn't part of it. It wasn't all MLK, it was also MOVE and the Panthers and other self-defense groups who were willing to both kill and die who achieved black civil rights.

I know it is common even among Irish Catholics to believe the PIRA delayed peace, but it is my opinion those people are wrong. They let the few idealists fight and die for their rights. The PIRA deserves respect, imho.

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention."

[jasongary]

`Trust me anyone who has served in HM Forces has/had a lot of respect for PIRA. A lot more of us would not be here now if we had not.
The main problem I have is that there was never any need for violence. The civil rights movement in Northern Ireland would have got the same end result given a little time. PIRA started the violence against the security forces even though the army was there originally to protect their community. They thought they could get a quick result using violence threats and intimidation. It did not work. Gerry Adams belatedly saw this and went down the ballot box route but he never fully let go of the bullet route which he never had to touch in the first place.