Will Prince Harry Going To Iraq Put Squaddies At Risk?

[Albert Tatlock]

Every British force's member in Afghanistan is acting as a 'bullet magnet' - in the sense they are giving fundamentalists a target and keeping them away from our towns and cities. To say our forces are there to fight the drugs trade, following the biggest ever opium harvest (90% of the world's supply), is so obviously complete rubbish. This is a religious war, akin to the crusades, the underlying causes of which stretch back hundreds of years..

 

We have been sucked into a never ending religious war there by the policies of Bush and Blair, and it is only technology and tactics that is saving lives and keeping those killed down to double figures at present - the Russians lost 14,000 men in Afghanistan in the 1980's - and our own failures there go back many many years. In the meantime, for every terrorist killed, for every civilian killed - even more terrorists are born, even more people even living here become disaffected, and the problems only escalate. The gap between Islam and the western world is only becoming wider and much more fundamentalist on both sides. It even has our own society 'fighting' against each other in some senses in terms of civil liberties. Politicians have to find a way out of all of this.

 

Perhaps a Marshal plan equivalent. As well as sending thousands of soldiers, recognise the need to send thousands of civilians to help these people realise that they can do things to trade with each other and the rest of the world, replace all the poppy fields with a market for other crops such as biofuel plants etc. and that the vast majority of us, whilst not wanting to become islamist, are actually happy to get along with them on the planet. In other words set up an agreed way we can all work together and get along through economics. In the meantime we are spending, not only billions upon billions on war, but billions upon billions on fighting and badly managing the drug trade and its consequences. This approach is a complete waste of money, time, effort and lives.

 

IMO, both sides are on the brink of a major catastrophe that could take place anytime in the next 1 - 30 years, simply depending on what people get their hands on. My hope is that the next US president and British poodle prime minister sees seeking conciliation and tieing Afghanistan and other countries into the worlds economy as a priority. We have to face up to the fact that both sides will never convince each other of each other's belief systems, and must work toward a compromise - or instead face up to a war that will go on most of this century. The population of Afghanistan is only 32 million people, if such an approach means partitioning/ringfencing regions of Afghanistan at first to achieve this, then so be it. One teacher, one doctor or one entrepenuer could do more to end this war than 100 soldiers ever will.

[immortalpuppet]

NATO can listen in to all the chatter and produce combat indicators on what is most likley to happen, cracking codes in theory is easy but as the Welsh regiments found out in WW2 being creative with codes (speaking welsh.) will baffle code breakers. All it takes is for the Taliban to rename things like target to book and move to read and cade breakers could be listening to a book review but to a Taliban fighter that will be a set of orders to carry out an attack on a facility.

 

Having all the technology in the world will still not be able to decypher the best forms of codes which are made up names and code words. The simple fact that these people are communicating is enough of a combat indicator to suggest there is going to be a planned offensive against the NATO troops so it is just a case of how many people are involved in the communication and which voices are speaking (among other factors.) that will determin what actions NATO troops will take.

 

Now Terry Taliban are not stupid and know that we can listen in to what is being said so some of the more important information will be passed on by word of mouth or other means, using personal experience this can be anything from someone leaving a number of items on a washing line to parking cars in certain places, all this can be coded to mean something if you have a working network.

 

In the same way that te NATO troops gather information from the locals, the Taliban also gather information from people who have had contact with the troops. If an elder has a meeting with a new commander who says he is Major xxx from xxx regiment then this information can be passed on and the Taliban int network can pass this up and before you know it they are fully aware that the princes regt is in town covering xxx area. Chances are at some point they could mount probes and find out which area is more heavily guarded or prompts a greater reaction. What does this mean? well you can figure it out and like has been said before, these people know what they are doing and they are not just a bunch of rag tag militia.

 

All the pictures of Harry on Patrol as a normal Soldier are great and they show him doing the job but if you think that it was the same partols as the other soldiers do with the same amount of planning then personally i think you would be mistaken.

[immortalpuppet]

Damn spelling mistakes, i hate Mondays