Anyone have any thoughts on Marine A who shot a Taliban in his custody?

[Brentwood]

There's a big rally today in support of him

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11958227/Troo ps-expected-to-defy-ban-on-Sgt-Alexander-Blackman-rally.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11958227/Troops-expected-to-defy-ban-on-Sgt-Alexander-Blackman-rally.html)

I know he was in a war situation and all that, but he point blank murdered somebodywho was of no immediate threat to him. He was on camera muttering something about breaking the geneva convention. I must be missing something, but how can he have so much support?

[Classic Jorge]

[71 Guns - channeling the spirit of Mr Hat]

[Classic Jorge]

..."support our foreign policy".

WHich is just mental, even for anyone with a passing familiarity with history.

[71 Guns - channeling the spirit of Mr Hat]

She just worries about them and is totally opposed to any further participation in the ME etc.

[Berni]

It's been going on since war began and always will - the only difference is some arsehole filmed it and grassed him up.

Consider the alternatives. Do I think a British helicopter should have been sent in at great risk to medevac the Taleban out of there? Absolutely not. Do I think those troops should have exposed themselves to risk by staying with the Taleban to administer what medical aid they could? Absolutely not. Should they have carried him with them? Absolutely not.

So what are we left with? Leave him there to bleed out slowly? Let his mates come back for him and (potentially) save him so that he can come back and have another go? Or top him?

Of the available options, the one chosen was probably the most humane, tbh.

[Classic Jorge]

Mind you, there's no way I would let my kid join the army. I know what it's like in the south west and north east but still...

[71 Guns - channeling the spirit of Mr Hat]

Morrison's, Trago Mills or a seasonal ice-cream van :shrug:

[Berni]

site.

I would go so far as to say that Mr Robertson is a dangerous lunatic.

[Classic Jorge]

Isnt that Lord JCB bloke also from round there?

[IUFG]

enemy?

The right or wrong of killing methods / timings isn't really up for debate in a war / battle situation is it? Which I appreciate is a ethical and moral minefield for those of use who are, fortunately, miles removed from the heat of battle.

I am sure if they left a fatally wounded animal in distress, there would also be uproar.

[71 Guns - channeling the spirit of Mr Hat]

I have no idea whatsoever how that got past the planners :rubchin:

[Classic Jorge]

Safe to say whatever they did or didnt do it was far beyond your usual peacekeeping/liberation stuff.

[Berni]

refuse him planning permission in the past, which is quite funny. Less amusing were the ads they printed calling for gay men to be castrated (although that might have been his dad, tbf). And then there was that entirely accidental fire in 2004... :rubchin:

From what he said to me, his strategy is to ensure that he is one of the biggest employers in the area and use that leverage to get what he wants.

[Berni]

Whether it was actually a war is thus somewhat irrelevant. The Falklands was never a war, either, if you want to be technical.

The reason he's got so much support is that he did nothing wrong except to get filmed doing something he had every justification for doing. That is the absurdity of applying rules to warfare.

[71 Guns - channeling the spirit of Mr Hat]

personages.

The locals don't give a stuff as long as they can get their cheap tat and Jethro/Demelza can earn GBP3 p/h in their Saturday jobs.

[Brentwood]

[Classic Jorge]

Mind you, if you want to spend fifty billion and thousands of lives on something it would be nice if you at least got the terminology down before, or perhaps even during, the whole thing.

Mind you, if you've taken up arms and landed in a foreign country then it's fairly safe to assume you're already well beyond any sort of righteuos justifications.

[Berni]

are therefore required to be treated as the Geneva Convention dictates.

Either way he dies. This way just happened to be quicker.

[Brentwood]

This is what he said afterwards



Quote:



Speaking from jail, Blackman told the Daily Mail that the killing was a “split-second mistake” and added he felt he was “not the same person” at the end of his tour of duty as he was when he started.

“I have been treated like someone who had carefully planned to kill his wife, invented an alibi and buried her body in the woods. I made a split-second mistake,” the 41-year-old said. “I had been sent to a brutal battlefield to fight for my country in an unpopular war. And yet at the end of my trial the establishment lined up to portray me as an evil scumbag because it suited them to do so at the time.”

During the trial Blackman, who was known as Marine A, denied murder, saying he believed the victim was already dead and he was taking out his anger on a corpse.

[Berni]

thought he was already dead" line. However, that doesn't alter the fact that what he did wasn't really that big a deal. However, saying 'It really wasn't that big a deal' is going to go down quite badly as a defence - however true it may be.

[Classic Jorge]