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KEMBER - RANSOM WAS PAID FOR CREDIBILITY

kember reality check | 27.03.2006 21:27 | Analysis | Anti-militarism

It is ironic about claims that we should all be grateful to the security forces who apparently spent millions on a surveillance operation protecting Kember. However, lets consider the facts - no shots were fired, no hostages found and oddly enough lots of money was spent by special forces. Any operation to save a hostage required real intelligence not the kind Prince Harry specialises in or that of Sir Mark Thatcher's coup types.

Perhaps some of the world believes the BBC and other corporate media and they are becoming fewer and fewer, many do not - I am one of them, for others it will be easy to see that none of this makes sense unless of course you need good publicity for an illegal war, waged by a war criminal working with an imperalist colonialist - now that requires real thought for those who think activists ought to be grateful to armies.

This is no different to what the US forces did in Afghanistan, did anyone report how Medicins Sans Frontiere lost seven of their staff to masked gunman because the US armed forces tried to link humanitarian aid with their illegitimate efforts. Now the UK is there to join them - that tells you a lot about armed forces.

Which media office has bothered to report how the Taleban and Saddam Hussein came into power to reveal why people in the Middle East are stuck in an awful battle by people who have created a climate of danger, religious fundamentalism and fear.

kember reality check

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Try this for a reality check

28.03.2006 12:47


So "no hostages were found"?

What, apart from Kember and the other people who were taken hostage with him?

And isn't a rescue operation in which no shots are fired generally A Good Thing?

Norville B


Double take!

28.03.2006 19:30

Funny how most people being held hostage are normally held hostage by someone. What did the hostage takers do in Kember's case...pop out for a fag? What fool would take hostages and then leave them unguarded? Perhaps when a deal had been done and a 'rescue' operation negotiated?

Mean while here is five questions for the very judgemental General Sir Mike Jackson:-

1. When you took the British army into Iraq for Tony Blair what was your exit strategy?

2. Did your originally plan envisage keeping thousands of British troops in Iraq three years after the war-fighting stage had finished?

3. When are you going to express some gratitude to the British tax payer for continuing to pay your wages when you have failed to deliver either out-right military victory or a functioning Iraq after three years?

4. By invading Iraq without a clear objective and plan of how to create a democratic and stable country, isn't it General Jackson rather than Norman Kember who has acted irresponsibly in a war-zone and put far more people's lives at risk than Norman?

4. What precisely was your involvement on Bloody Sunday?

Ex-squaddie


> no shots are fired generally A Good Thing?

29.03.2006 01:10

Yes. It is a shame that you chose to release the head of the kidnappers simply to secure the release of a true Christian though...and it is shameful for any soldier to demand praise for releseasing a hostage who had already told you not to interfere.

Kidnapping is an epidemic in Iraq and the only way to end it is to stop paying ransoms or any such trading with kidnappers. Whatever awful events have driven someone to kidnap, they can no longer expector threaten our cooperation.

Three of those unarmed innocents risked their lives, and one lost his, but not in vain, at least more people in the occupying countries now have now heard of the tens of thousands of Iraqi kidnaps.

And then they might begin to question why every legal occupying force has a duty to provide security.

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