The 15 sailors ...?

Question

while in captivity at least ... were being accused (by some)of kow-towing to their captors (the Iranians/president...

I heard at least one guy on the ';Wright' show yesterday say this

has the recent news about the treatment they recieved changed peoples minds .... or should it always be

..stiff upper lip .. Name ..Rank ...Number ....

What would you have done..?

Answer 1

the wright show? you take that seriously?

you should read any one of those books written by ex special forces service men. they all describe a training excercise where they are brought in for evasion training where they have to live off the land for a week and try to evade capture. they are always caught in the end and are brought in for a further 5 days of isolation and interrogation. they are never tortured but they get a severe psychological working over. in every one of their accounts they all break after a couple of days and do exactly what their captours ask them to do.
now these guys are being broken by their their own side in a training excercise so i cant even imagine what it would be like in a forgein prison compound surrounded by very hostile interrogators. i think most people would be doing the same.

there are plenty of armchair warriors out there who go on about doing this and that but untill they are in the same situation they maybe should hold their tounges and disregard the bulls**t untill they are in the posistion and then they can go on the wright show and tell us how they defied their captours.
anyhow it was extremley obvious from the drivel they where being forced to write and say when they appeared on tv that they where doing most of it against their will. even a blind man riding a bike could see it for the blatant iranian propaganda that it was.

Answer 2

I think they obviously did the right thing or otherwise they would not be here now they would still be in Iran. I don't think they compromised anything and acted in the appropriate manner. I think one has to be in that situation in the first place to understand how you would react. Imagine being blindfolded and having your hands restrained and then hearing firearms being cocked in the background. I personally would have thought that my final minutes had come. I think it would be a tremendous pressure. I felt sorry for the woman as she was told that all the others had been released and had been returned to England. Most times the psychological torture is far worse than being physically tortured. I admire their courage in the face of such inhumane and hostile treatment. I think it is deplorable the way the Government used the media to exploit these serving men and woman. There is probably so much that we don't know, and perhaps for good reason, after all their is a war going on over there. It is so easy to be an armchair politician when one is not in the face of such adversity.

Answer 3

Hard to say until your neck is the one on the line. It sounds like they were treated reasonably well to me. With our torture record under Bush I would probably choose to be captured by the Iranians then by the US.

I guess it depends on the nature of the threats. If it was just effecting one person (me) staying in prison for 7 years, I probably would have not admitted any wrong doing. However they probably threatened group punishment meaning that "you will all get 7 years prison unless you all confess" which is a different issue. I don't mind doing 7 years time for a moral stand, but I would think twice about making my fellow soldiers pay the price too.

Answer 4

It's truly a difficult thing to say what you would have have done. I personally hold to name rank and number, but if I were to be honest I know that I probably would have backed down. None of the what they were forced to say was sensitive operating info. But these people had families, children, wives... The rules of war differ much from what they used to. The Geneva convention isn't upheld by terrorists. These soldiers were likely to be killed for not saying what they were made to say. The whole thing was propaganda for the Iranians to try and keep support for their continued defiance in opposing all non-Muslim nations.. So when it all comes down to it, I believe they did the right thing. War is never fair and hardly ever played by the rules, but when a country so blatantly defies those rules, there's no telling what they could do. Those people just wanted to come home alive.

Answer 5

You just play their game and do what you can to survive. Then hope it's enough to get you back home. What they did was the right approach and even got them a cheap suit. :)

However the biggest mistake was their capture, by not having the right support in place at the time, and only the Captain of H.M.S Cornwall can answer as to why?

Answer 6

You can't even begin to judge these valiant sailors until you've endured the same type of ordeal and treatment as they were subjected to by their "all things western-haters" captors [thugs].

Answer 7

this is one of those impossable questions for armchair warriors, that were not in the vicinity. the claim yesturday was that they had been treated with some mental torture. some are saying is this made up, i dont think so because troops are not trained as decietful politicians looking like butter would not melt in their mouths. so i believe the troops.

Answer 8

I would have recognized I was in an insane asylum, run by the inmates. I would say what they wanted me to say, unless doing so would harm others or the strategic interests of my country and its allies.

Answer 9

well im sure the sailors didnt know an important thing about nothing, they just agreed to being in Iranian waters bc once again they didnt know any better.

Answer 10

Attitude gets you dead. They are alive. What good is a dead sailor to the Queen's Navy? So many are proud to die for their country....why don't they try living for it instead. Dead is forever.