[karajorma]

Seriously. It's like they had a meeting and said "how can we make the situation in Iraq worse". Cause if I was going to try to make the situation worse I couldn't come up with much that improved on their last plan.

1) Take two soldiers, dress them up a Iraqis and act suspiciously so as to draw the attention of the Iraqi police. When their attention has been drawn proceed to get into a gun battle with the Iraqi police. Make sure that there are Iraqi casualties.

2) Make sure that said soldiers are then captured by the Iraqi police.

3) Have the ambassador for the UK demand the release of both soldiers on the ground that they are British.

4) Back up the demands by having APCs drive around the area looking threatening.

5) When said APCs are stoned and firebombed by crowds of understandably angry people make no attempt to calm down the situation with reasoned negotiations with the locals with whom you've managed to retain relatively good relations. Instead..

6) Smash down the wall of the police station where the soldiers are being held with tanks. Ignore the 150 escaping Iraqi criminals as long as you get your own two men back.

7) Streniously deny anything at all happened despite eyewitness reports to the contrary. Claim that a tank accidentally hit the wall and that it collapsed shortly afterwards.

8) Go shoot another Deepcut recruit through the head 40 times. Claim it was suicide.

Looks like number 8 is the only one left on the list.

[Roanoke]

isn't it 'spose to be the Americans who suck at this whole "occupation/liberation" thing ?

[vyper]

What the ****?

[karajorma]

This is worse than any cock up I've heard of from the Americans.

At least they could claim that they weren't on particularly good terms with the general public or leaders of the area at any time if they were stupid enough to have ever tried anything as moronic as this stunt.

[Sandwich]

Those nasty MODders. I wish they'd keep track of their polycounts!

[karajorma]

Update : according to the BBC websites feed the MOD are claiming that they negotiated the release now.

Maybe they mean in the way that you negotiate the tank around the rubble of the prison wall

[Kie99]

I agree that the army have made a huge F*ck up here, but there is no excuse for the Iraqis to firebomb APCs just for being there.  And aren't tanks supposed to be fireproof anyway?

[karajorma]

I agree that it's no excuse but the APCs were there to take away two british soldiers that the Iraqis considered were likely to be murderers. We've seen similar enough scenes outside British courts (although mobs here tend to stop short of throwing petrol bombs).

Point is that the APCs should never have been sent there in the first place. Had they waited a day or two this matter could have been sorted out fairly easily.

[SadisticSid]

I was amazed when I read the news. I never imagined we'd cock up on such a scale that the yanks'll now be forever able to laugh at us for our military blunders.

From the Government's response it seems this was sanctioned from the top too, so it's unlikely there'll be any heads a'rolling.

[aldo_14]

I believe one of the MOD quotes was along the lines of 'we accidentally knocked down the wall'

Now, who remembers 'lions led by donkeys'?

[phreak]

This thread be really funny in pie-rat talk.

[size=10]R[/size]

[Unknown Target]

*snickers and points fingers at the British* Haha! U r t3h st00p3d l1ke us now!!!111oneone LOLLOLOLLOOLOLOLOL!!111

[vyper]

Turns out the soldiers being held by the iraqis, spec ops or otherwise, had been handed over to a militant group. So we demolished  a prison for nothing. Got our guys back though.

[aldo_14]

If they'd been handed over to militants, then it's fair enough to have a rescue op.  Deeply distrubing, though; I'd read that some of the reasons why the south was relatively quiet was because a lot of control rested in the hands of Shia militants.

[karajorma]

You do have to wonder what they were doing in the first place or how the situation was so bad that they'd end up being handed over to militants though.

The fact that they're still denying the prisonner escape makes me very dubious that this story isn't yet another fabrication.

[aldo_14]

**** only knows, frankly.

[kasperl]

When I read this in the local Dutch paper this morning, which is a horrible local rag giving more attention to some bugger trying to buy the local stadium then to the budget discussions in parliament, all I thought was 'What a cluster****'. I'm just waiting for more info now. It seems pretty damn stupid, though.