Category Archives: armed forces

Not remembering the dead

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There is an extraordinary omission from this BBC article on South Korean troops leaving Iraq. Plenty of figures are given, from the four years and three months spent there to the 18,000 troops who served in Iraq. One figure is missing though- only one Korean soldier died in Iraq according to icasualties, and he apparently has been forgotten. Don’t you think it would be appropriate to mention this loss, especially as it helps to contextualise the Iraq war for history?

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100, NOT OUT?

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And so the sad landmark of 100 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan is reached and it provides the BBC with yet another opportunity to undermine the morale of our Armed Forces. Soldiers from 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment, were on foot patrol in Helmand Province when a scumbag Jihadist detonated himself. The blast killed three of our boys. Instead of examining what sort of deranged mindset encourages these homicide-bombers (Islam) the BBC’s defence correspondent Paul Adams instead questions the veracity of the progress our military is making and complains at the corruption of the Afghan government. I’m sure the next of kin will find this most reassuring – the subtext of course being that their men died in vain. Shame on Adams and the rest of the defeatist anti-military BBC.

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What The BBC Miss Out – or The Mysterious Vanishing Far-Left Again

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David reported yesterday on the hefty BBC coverage given to the views of one Paul McGarr, “a teacher from east London“, who doesn’t like our armed forces much. He featured prominently in news bulletins as well.

Alas, there were one of two things about Mr McGarr that the BBC didn’t care to share with their listeners, viewers and readers. A pity, as they may have provided much-needed context.

Oliver Kamm reports that Mr McGarr is a former council candidate in Millwall for the far-left Respect party. He also links to this piece by Mr McGarr in the far-left paper Socialist Worker, written just before the military campaign against Saddam Hussein.

Socialists have done and continue to do all in our power to build the movement to prevent war and to stop war when it starts. But if war starts the very worst outcome would be a quick victory for the US and Britain.

The best response to war would be protests across the globe which make it impossible for Bush and Blair to continue. But while war lasts by far the lesser evil would be reverses, or defeat, for the US and British forces. That may be unlikely, given the overwhelming military superiority they enjoy. But it would be the best outcome in military terms.

Mr Kamm puts it better than I can :

In short, and given the fact of the Iraq War, Paul McGarr and Socialist Worker wanted Saddam Hussein to win and our armed forces to be defeated. This is not what I say: it’s what they say.

I find it impossible to believe that the BBC would give several paragraphs to, say, a BNP activist talking about immigration, without (correctly) letting viewers and listeners know the political allegiance which informs their speech. Yet a far-left activist who actually wants our soldiers to be defeated is given a free ride. Is it that their journalists know, but don’t care ? Or are they too lazy to type a name into Google ?

The BBC have previous when it comes to this sort of thing. And it’s worth noting that the annual NUT conference is one of only FIVE recorded occasions when BBC News online have detected the presence of a British ‘far-left’. Admittedly the detection took place in 1999.

Hat-tips – DB and other B-BBC commenters, who also point out :

Reporter Hannah Goff is a union activist (I was once an NUR shop steward, mind, so I can’t talk)

Who produced this puff-piece about the keffiyeh-wearing chap who wrote this and this ?

Who fails to mention the fate of resolutions (p90) proposing that curriculum material be provided by CND-except-Iran, the Stop The War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign ?

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ARMY DREAMERS.

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It’s good to know that old communists don’t fade away, they just join the National Union of Teachers! Did you read the BBC’s report on the annual NUT conference in Manchester and the onslaught that the comrades have launched on the Armed Forced “preying” on schoolchildren? The BBC provides plenty of space for such illuminating comments as..”Join the Army and we will send you to bomb, shoot and possibly torture fellow human beings in other countries. Join the Army and we will send you probably poorly equipped into situations where people will try to shoot or kill you because you are occupying other people’s countries.
Join the Army, and if you survive and come home, possibly injured or mentally damaged, you and your family will be shabbily treated.”

It’s full on Dave Spartism – sixth form student grant political analysis from the National Union of Whingers yet the BBC gives the Ministry of Defence a mere two sentences to rebuff this hysteria. That’s not balanced! The NUT is of course entitled to its vicious anti-British Armed Forces rhetoric – what else would we expect from them?- but surely the MOD should have been given rather more space to take apart the ranting from the comrades?

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