[Closed] Drone Strike authorised by Cameron

my point is that the killing of baha mousa (was not an isolated incident according to our own report)

and the torture of prisoners at abu graib etc, (also doccumented by the troops that carried it out)

a [u]million[/u] dead Iraqi civillians, daily drone strikes for the last 10 + years, these IS Jihadists grew up in this
we helped create their mentality

What the QLR's did was reprehensible

where do you get the million dead from?

and the uk forces were not committing barbaric acts as the norm as you suggest.

Iraq body count varies wildly, 1millions defintely the upper estimate!
all reports put the majority of dead as civillians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties

add up Afgahnistan and ****stan etc however

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/08/german-intelligence-confirms-isis-used-mustard-gas-in-iraq-says-news-report

Sigh.

really reprehensible? thats the best you can up with, it was murder for fun as far as I can tell, IS are surely guilty of far worse crimes

reprehensible
?r?pr??h?ns?b(?)l/
adjective
adjective: reprehensible

deserving censure or condemnation.
"his complacency and reprehensible laxity"
synonyms: deplorable, disgraceful, discreditable, disreputable, despicable, blameworthy, culpable, wrong, bad, shameful, dishonourable, ignoble, erring, errant, objectionable, odious, opprobrious, repugnant, inexcusable, unpardonable, unforgivable, insufferable, indefensible, unjustifiable, regrettable, unacceptable, unworthy, remiss; More

and I would love to see them punished for them but
I dont believe that invading and bombing the shit out of the region again will do anything other than create more monsters

I was looking at that wikipedia and the fugre varies massively

one is too many, but hard to get accurate numbers.

Two more cretins from IS are not something I will lose sleep over

I can't disagree. But I also haven't yet heard a remotely viable proposal from anyone about what to do about it.

Absolutely, I wish I did have a solution

but based on the last decade of western intervention in the middle east bombing IS to protect the people they are brutalising will only end up killing more civilians than IS soldiers

I'm usually pretty live and let live..

I understand that our persecution and attempted westernisation over centuries and backed up with extreme military action has led to the current situation.. That probably it wouldn't be very unlikely if ISIS believed that the [i]west[/i] had waged holy war on [i]them[/i]

But unless we are prepared to martyr ourselves to their cause out of a sense of guilt (I'm not prepared to do that) then they have to be stopped..
That is the present reality

And all's fair in love and jihad

Telegraph Poll. 96% support action as self defence.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11849429/Con-Coughlin-Good-riddance-to-British-terrorists.html

It's all well and good when we're deploying drones to take out terrorists. What will be interesting is when Putin uses them to takes out someone in Latvia, China in Tibet, North Korea,....

We won't have much of a moral high ground will we!

After that he'll be poisoning dissidents in London with Polonium 210.

Cameron's 'authorisation' has little to no bearing on said drone strikes ..

crankboy - Member
Hard to think of another group who burn people alive or drown them in cages as a propaganda exercise. Last mass beheadings were the Japanese in China . War is very horrible and lots of truly appalling shit happens but this institutionalised torture porn propaganda is out of the ordinary I can think of some other examples e.g. isolated incidents in Serbia and Vietnam but to suggest it is a norm of war is wrong.

My point is that innocent lives are taken in war by all sides with great disregard, I struggle to see isis beheading someone and bombs being drop form 30,000ft as something vastly different.

Murder is murder to me.

And that's before we get into ISIS being a direct result of UK/US foriegn policy. So the blame for them comes right back to our door step. So it's all nice to be morally outraged, but lets remember why they are doing what they do.

you really cannot see that you can wage war and wage war in a much worse way? 😯

The term war crime must be really confusing for you
thanks aracer and toys it works great

Junkyard - lazarus
you really cannot see that you can wage war and wage war in a much worse way?

The term war crime must be really confusing for you

It's not confusing to me in the slightest.

Slight hijack.

😆 => Channel 4 Jon Snow (just now about female refugee brutality in neighboring countries) = talking about the brutality of war to a female Egyptian journalist, the Egyptian journalist was very surprised when Jon snow made a big deal about all the brutality. The female journalist responded by saying nothing new about ISIS chopping off hands/heads etc [b]coz in S. Arabia everyday is ISIS[/b] ... That shut Jon Snow up ... 😆

There was an article linked to by someone on here the author tried to understand ISIS in their own context he argued they are a deliberate planned Death cult. Their horrific actions beheadings, burning alive, drowning throwing off tall buildings deliberately reference incidents in the historical account of the Koran. If so then they actually want to engage in a boots on the ground conventional war and the difficult bit is they expect and want to lose in a massive bloody and costly way as a necessary prerequisite for a resurgence of a "pure" Islam . The argument is that all their actions are provocations to bring about this Armageddon Prophesy .
If true not sure where that leaves our military might. Personally I would explore containing isolating and starving them of funding then let their state collapse economically and socially. To do that in an ethical way would necessitate us accepting and accommodating those who fled the region though.

You remember correctly. The excellent article is here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

My point is that innocent lives are taken in war by all sides with great disregard, I struggle to see isis beheading someone and bombs being drop form 30,000ft as something vastly different.

You really can't see any difference between a fraction of a millisecond of white flash and being burnt alive in a cage? Seriously?

richc - Member
You really can't see any difference between a fraction of a millisecond of white flash and being burnt alive in a cage? Seriously?

http://www.panarabiaenquirer.com/wordpress/syria-only-weeks-away-from-bono-charity-single-warns-un/

a fraction of a millisecond of white flash

Bombs are rarely if ever that precise in the devastation they deliver.

zippykona - Member

http://www.panarabiaenquirer.com/wordpress/syria-only-weeks-away-from-bono-charity-single-warns-un/

Bono is a billionaire, apparently he sold some of his share on Facebok and now richest musician, so he can do whatever he likes ...

May have been answered, but who confirms the kill, and that it is infact the intended target?

MSP
Bombs are rarely if ever that precise in the devastation they deliver.

Too true, which is why a 7.62mm or 12.7mm to the cranium is far better. Cost effective and, well, effective.

Murder is murder to me

Really? You don't subscribe to the principle of justifiable homicide, such as in self defence?

ninfan - Member
Murder is murder to me
Really? You don't subscribe to the principle of justifiable homicide, such as in self defence?

I view our leaders and those who do their bidding as culpable.

Too true, which is why a 7.62mm or 12.7mm to the cranium is far better. Cost effective and, well, effective.

It's not politically cost effective because bullets need soldiers to fire them. Which costs you political points with a public unwilling to get involved - bombing makes us all feel like we are doing something when in reality the only way to make things better are lots and lots of foot soldiers but no one has the stomach for the body bags.

So things will go on as they are, we'll carry on taking young men in as asylum seekers, whilst we lob the odd high explosive into Syria, we'll wash our hands whilst watching the entire region turn into a gigantic uninhabitable blackhole by telling ourselves that all we could do was take people in and bomb a few people.

Meanwhile Germany is happy having all those young fit working men as it will help alleviate their declining population and help keep their historically artificially low wages, lower still. Helping to screw southern Europe even further. Like Miss "Multikulti ist tot" Merkel, actually wants to help asylum seekers for humanitarian reasons. AHHHHHHHAHAHAH.

"That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox . . ." - Solaris

If we actually cared, we'd be breaking out the amphibious assault ships.

we've done them a favor - they are now martyrs and are enjoying their 70 dark haired virgins.

It's what they wanted, no need to feel guilty about it.

@Tom_W1987, indeed. Better to seem like we're doing something, than [i]actually[/i] doing something. 😆

“A drone strike is a terror weapon, we don’t talk about it that way. It is; just imagine you are walking down the street and you don’t know whether in 5 minutes there is going to be an explosion across the street from some place up in the sky that you can’t see. Somebody will be killed, and whoever is around will be killed, maybe you’ll be injured if you’re there. That is a terror weapon. It terrorizes villages, regions, huge areas. It’s the most massive terror campaign going on by a long shot.”
— Noam Chomsky

May have been answered, but who confirms the kill, and that it is infact the intended target?

So my answer would be both those plus social media / mobile chatter immediately after

@kimbers so having seen Muslims tortured at Abu Gharib ISIS was formed so they could kill many more Muslims ? ISIS decided the shit smearing wasn't sufficient they they went for behheading and throwing people off buildings ? Kind of we Muslims can out do you kafirs when it comes to killing Muslims ?

I haven't had time to catch up on this whole thread yet but I heard on R4 that the father of the Cardiff boys who joined ISIS should not be targets for drone strikes as "they where not posing a direct threat to the UK". I can see the distress that the father must be going through but the minute they signed up and went to Syria it was quite likely they'd end up dead, one way or another

“A drone strike is a terror weapon, we don’t talk about it that way. It is; just imagine you are walking down the street and you don’t know whether in 5 minutes there is going to be an explosion across the street from some place up in the sky that you can’t see. Somebody will be killed, and whoever is around will be killed, maybe you’ll be injured if you’re there. That is a terror weapon. It terrorizes villages, regions, huge areas. It’s the most massive terror campaign going on by a long shot.”
— Noam Chomsky

I see your Chomsky quote and raise you a Hitchslap.

My quarrel with Chomsky goes back to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, where he more or less openly represented the "Serbian Socialist Party" (actually the national-socialist and expansionist dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic) as the victim. Many of us are proud of having helped organize to prevent the slaughter and deportation of Europe's oldest and largest and most tolerant Muslim minority, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. But at that time, when they were real, Chomsky wasn't apparently interested in Muslim grievances. He only became a voice for that when the Taliban and Al Qaeda needed to be represented in their turn as the victims of a "silent genocide" in Afghanistan. Let me put it like this, if a supposed scholar takes the Christian-Orthodox side when it is the aggressor, and then switches to taking the "Muslim" side when Muslims commit mass murder, I think that there is something very nasty going on. And yes, I don't think it is exaggerated to describe that nastiness as "anti-American" when the power that stops and punishes both aggressions is the United States … In some awful way, his regard for the underdog has mutated into support for mad dogs. This is not at all like watching the implosion of an obvious huckster and jerk like Michael Moore, who would have made a perfectly good Brownshirt populist. The collapse of Chomsky feels to me more like tragedy.

😀

[img] [/img]

"they where not posing a direct threat to the UK". I can see the distress that the father must be going through but the minute they signed up and went to Syria it was quite likely they'd end up dead, one way or another

Who gives a ****, it strikes me as a bit racist to say they can kill Kurds but kill some Brits, oh that's just crossing the line.....we can't have that....savages should be allowed to kill each other...but Brits...nooo think about bombing Brits and we'll bomb you! I bet his dad didn't mind him killing some dirty kurds did he? I can't even believe we have to use the excuse that they were a threat to the UK, to kill them.

And whilst I'm on a roll, screw Erdogan and Turkey as well.

close the thread, people are quoting hitchens ffs! 😆 😐

[quote=TurnerGuy said]we've done them a favor - they are now martyrs and are enjoying their 70 dark haired virgins.

Finding them in Cardiff was always going to be a bit of an ask.

Is that bonkers climate nut hitchens?

Can't believe that people want to send troops into the middle East again, after failing so spectacularly in Iraq why would it work this time?

Can't believe that people want to send troops into the middle East again, after failing so spectacularly in Iraq why would it work this time?

Because ISIS's whole doctrine requires physical land. They're not an "idea" like Al Quaeda, they actually require a physical Caliphate. For this reason ISIS are unique amongst Islamists in that they really could be defeated in a conventionally military way, just by taking their land off them.

Of course another core belief of ISIS is that Rome (USA) will attack them in their Caliphate in a battle that ends the world. So attacking them on the ground would make that prophecy appear to come true.

Personally I'm strongly opposed to getting involved, but there is (for once) a rational case for it.

Is that bonkers climate nut hitchens?

Christopher was never a climate nut, not sure about is brother Peter though.

Can't believe that people want to send troops into the middle East again, after failing so spectacularly in Iraq why would it work this time?

Because they'd have more support from the locals like they had in Kosovo and we have literally hundreds of thousands of male refugees, who's hearts and minds we can win if we tell them that we'll look after their families if they fight for us.

We could even run our own version of "Français par le sang versé" or citizenship after a set number of tours.

It would take far too much vision for the EU leaders to pull it off though.

And of course, some do-gooders would end up whining about how we were employing mercenaries and that the fighting was getting a bit nasty, there'd be dozens of long rambling Guardian articles by authors washing their hands of the situation - when the real thing to be worrying about is ISIS and their treatment of the locals and how an entire continent on the edge of Europe is turning to shit.

and how an entire continent on the edge of Europe is turning to shit.

To be fair, its never looked that clever since we stopped running the place. Some people might say that's because we drew some random lines down a map, created a load of new countries, without any concern to the religions or cultures already there, and handed it over to puppet governments mainly consisting of brutal dictators.

But then that would be the lilly-livered, pinko Guardianista do-gooders view, so probably best not to mention it

We should probably invade and start killing people again. That always goes well....

That Noam Chomsky quote doesn't make any sense to me, drones are just that drones, they are just a form of aircraft. Sure they can be a delivery platform for firing Hellfire missiles from but so can a variant of this:

[img] [/img]

Tom_W1987 - Member
how an entire continent on the edge of Europe is turning to shit.

dragon - Member

That Noam Chomsky quote doesn't make any sense to me, drones are just that drones, they are just a form of aircraft. Sure they can be a delivery platform for firing Hellfire missiles from but so can a variant of this:

I like the look of that plane (King Air) ... I like much! Just need a big parachute for added safety. 😛

Drones are computer games ... 🙄

Middle East has rarely been stable through history see

[url= http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/imperial-history.html ]Maps of War Middle East[/url]

In response to people earlier saying ISIS are more brutal etc. Are they really? War is brutal, but historically we have heard about it through newspapers or TV news reports that have been censored. This time though, ISIS have used technology to their advantage for their campaign and put their stuff on YouTube. So now,for the first time we are seeing for the for ourselves the true brutality of war. Also, uncensored people are using the internet to write their own reports.

Furthermore, beheadings have been used by the state in parts of the middle east for years and rape is used as a form of state punishent in parts of rural India...