Does England not have survival school?

[5niner0]

The UK has a different SERE philosophy than we do.

 

[milplt]

Hey Pimp, you forgot to mention Lance P Sijan as another model of how they were supposed to behave.

First, my comments in no way made any judgement (right or wrong) on their actions since we didn't know what they were going through. For all we knew at the time, they may have been missing finger and toenails. My first response was directed to anyone who would even begin to start the whole "we brought it upon ourselves with Abu Gharib" diatribe - these Iranians were buggering and beheading Iraqi soldiers long before Abu Gharib. My second comment was in reference to the reply that said that they obviously weren't being mistreated - you could tell on TV (and, supposedly, so could Jane in Vietnam).

We all know the standard to which we should all aspire. But....there is always something that could be done to get anyone to make a movie - especially one that gives away no operationally valid info or jeopardizes no current lives or missions. How about if they came to you while you were captivity and said "We know you live at XX Poplar Lane and we had someone drive by the house and saw your wife drive that such and such car to work, we just wanted to know they are all just doing fine...?" In today's world with electronic databases and internet searches....I am not saying that happened, otherwise we would have heard about it by now. But, would you make a video saying that you were sorry if that happened to you? Give a private investigator a copy of your ID or just your name, rank, and SSN and see what he can find out about you. They can always get you to say something - especially if it is not tactically valid.

I will restate for clarity - at the time of the previous posts we had NO information as to the condition of the captivity - and it was ridiculous to make judgements as to their perceived behavior until they came out and revealed what actually happened.

Since we are going to make judgements now, I think their apparant behavior in captivity was more related to who the Brits had doing these operations in the first place. The Brit mentality overall was obviously not geared towards the combat operation that this really was. They had an ad hoc contingent of sailors/marines doing boarding operations with a mentality probably not that different from USCG ops in the Gulf of Mexico. If you disagree, tell me who in their right mind would have had two RHIB's doing patrols so far (out of LOS) from a larger support ship with far more firepower and, more importantly, radar. The entire intercept, confrontation, and retreat back to Iranian waters happened before the support ships could approach - and I think that it took quite a few minutes for the entire event to unfold. These sailors probably received no combat or SERE training - it just happened to be their turn to stand watch that day and drive the boats. Why are we always so quick to slam the grunt when the leadership should be accounting for their failures? Another example of peacetime leadership in a wartime environment and we are upset because the sailors said they were sorry a little too quickly.

 

[bssthound]

Why are we always so quick to slam the grunt when the leadership should be accounting for their failures? Another example of peacetime leadership in a wartime environment and we are upset because the sailors said they were sorry a little too quickly.

Extremely well thought out and stated. Great post.

 

[Mungusaurus]

Removed.