So why the change? What did the Brits give them or was it our carrier off the coast? Or perhaps it was the doing of Madam President Pelosi?

Posted by: Elric66 at April 4, 2007 10:32 AM

I think Ahmadinejad listened to Charles Rangle ont the Radio calling for a complete withdrawal/surrender of US forces in Iraq...

...what a slug....

Posted by: exsgtbrown at April 4, 2007 10:34 AM

UK has agreed to stay out of Iranian waters. Hence, it will not be part of any vigilante group to take out Iranian nukes. What has been miscalculated here by the Kingdom is that if the Iranian thugs are like this now, what will they be like after they have nukes?

Posted by: David England at April 4, 2007 10:38 AM

NOW CAN WE BLOW THEIR SHIPS OUT OF THE WATER?

Posted by: leonthepigfarmer at April 4, 2007 10:47 AM

The secret behind the deal is that the "spies" are released now in exchange for the UK not making a big issue out of the fact that the Spies were, for an indisputable fact, not in Iranian Waters! Another great Dhimmie victory!

Posted by: crux at April 4, 2007 10:48 AM

time for a change of british government.

Posted by: leonthepigfarmer at April 4, 2007 10:48 AM

This is a Munich moment. It's peace in our time. See? Every international problem can be resolved if we just act like reasonable men & talk it out. People will be deceived, just as they were when Chamberlain held up that scrap of paper signed by Herr Hitler. How Europe believes it can run away from this problem scarcely 70 years after the events leading up to WW II defies human comprehension. I weep for the folly & stupidity of man.

Once again, it will be up to the US to save Western civilization. Are we up to it? After Bush's performance, I don't know. He had a golden opportunity after 9/11 to deal w/ the islamic problem once & for all IF he had been able to explain the problem to the American people & offer a good, comprehensive strategy (including a Manhattan Project for developing energy independence from Arab oil) for solving it. But he did not. And now we're exhausted & dispirited. But that's also how we felt at the end of Carter's administration, before Reagan came along. So we must always have hope.

Posted by: sheik yer booty at April 4, 2007 10:57 AM

It is very possible that the Iranians demanded and received all sorts of concessions from Britain...An early withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, promises not do help the Americans with any strike on their nuclear facilities. Meanwhile, back home in Britain, they may have demanded more Shiite mosques, more Shiite Muslim members of the government, including law enforcement, schools teaching more of the Shiite brand of Islam, women allowed to dress in full burqas (with eye slits only) in education and other government positions,.....their wish list in Britain is endless...I am certain that the Iranians had a long laundry list and, unfortunately, the British government probably signed off on a good deal to get their sailors back home. After all, almost half of British polled did not want to engage in any force to get the service men and woman safely home. What was left to do except make nice with lots of smiles and shuffles?

Posted by: maryrose at April 4, 2007 11:05 AM

Another thought for the day!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9oX5Q2ftmA

Posted by: member_right_wing_conspiracy at April 4, 2007 11:09 AM

What a sham.

Let's hope there is not too much shame.

Posted by: dgene at April 4, 2007 11:10 AM

I suspect a swap is in the works where we have to trade our Iranian prisoners in Iraq for the UK sailors. I hope this isn't the case as it reeks of weakness on our part and the Brits.

Posted by: Bonniea at April 4, 2007 11:11 AM

I suspect a swap is in the works where we have to trade our Iranian prisoners in Iraq for the UK sailors. I hope this isn't the case as it reeks of weakness on our part and the Brits.

Posted by: Bonniea at April 4, 2007 11:11 AM

I hope not. We owe the Brits nothing in this since they didnt even attempt to protect their sailors and marines.

Posted by: Elric66 at April 4, 2007 11:16 AM

We all have bowed to our masters, it seems.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,263866,00.html
/I'm sure there is no relation to the British deal (yeah right)

Posted by: interestinconundrum at April 4, 2007 11:33 AM

From an Iranian press release:

"Great Britain laid herself prostrate at the feet of her Muslim Overlords today. In exchange for this act of appeasement, the Islamic Revoluntionary Guard has made a gift to the people of Great Britain by returning her criminal and transgressing military personnel. Mahmoud Ahmadenijad commented that the dhimmi government of Great Britain had adopted the proper attitude and should be rewarded. Without firing a shot, the people of Iran brought a member of the UN Security Counsel to its knees begging forgiveness. Without exerting an ounce of coersion, the people of Iran extracted a plea of guilty from all 15 sailors together with their abject apology for intentionally invading the sacred territory of Iran. Abandoned by the EU, UN, and NATO during the hostage crisis with Iran, the ruling elite of Great Britain contemplated life in the near future with a nuclear armed Iran. All the while, a majority of the people of Great Britain remained asleep dreaming of ways to blame the Great Satan and Little Satan for their misery."

Posted by: omvi at April 4, 2007 11:34 AM

"NOW CAN WE BLOW THEIR SHIPS OUT OF THE WATER?"

Hold your fire until the 15 are safely out of Iran. Then release the 10 plagues.

-XRDC

Posted by: XRDC at April 4, 2007 11:44 AM

Elric66, yesterday we released one Iranian diplomat we were holding. I will be sickened if we release more. And yes, I agree with you, Britian did nothing to protect their soldiers or try to get them back. It was our airmen who were flying around trying to find them after they were captured.

Posted by: Bonniea at April 4, 2007 12:00 PM

Elric66, yesterday we released one Iranian diplomat we were holding. I will be sickened if we release more. And yes, I agree with you, Britian did nothing to protect their soldiers or try to get them back. It was our airmen who were flying around trying to find them after they were captured.

Posted by: Bonniea at April 4, 2007 12:00 PM

Its only going to get worse before it gets better. Appeasement is in vogue among Western leadership. This is what 1937-1938 felt like.

Posted by: Elric66 at April 4, 2007 12:07 PM

He had a golden opportunity after 9/11 to deal w/ the islamic problem once & for all IF he had been able to explain the problem to the American people & offer a good, comprehensive strategy (including a Manhattan Project for developing energy independence from Arab oil) for solving it.

Bingo! When the history of the Islamic-Western Wars of the 21st century are written, this will be seen as the single greatest political and strategic blunder in the decades-long campaign. In the years to come, students of history will analyze why Bush refused to name the enemy after 9/11, why he did not immediately go after the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia (the party most directly responsible for 9/11 via their export of Jihad ideology and terror funding), and why he failed utterly to unite the nation by teaming with the tree-hugging democrats in a bid to develop alternative energy sources.

These failures will be viewed rightly as having added years to the war, drained hundreds of billions of dollars in national treasure, and cost thousands of unnecessary Western military and civilian casualties.

Posted by: Charles Martel at April 4, 2007 12:11 PM

Elric66-

"We owe the Brits nothing in this since they didnt even attempt to protect their sailors and marines."

So what you're saying, Elric, is that when any of our military are let down with either serious lack of suitable equipment and manpower or, specifically in this case, Rules of Engagement that far from suit the situation, then it's the grunts and the NCO's on the ground who should pay for it?.

As far as who owes what to whom, it's a shame that you feel our military "owe it to you" to act according to your narrow definitions as specified in "The World According to Elric". A shame yes, but not entirely surprising, or unpredictable even.

We of all nations owe it very much to our soldiers in the field to support them in every way and if that means pressure on our governments and military commanders to get their act together, to the point where our Rules of Engagement are reviewed and strengthened with a view to this sort of debacle never happening again.

Blame the policy makers if you will, but laying the blame at the feet of our soldiers and sailors, rather than the idiots that got them in this position in the first place, simply makes you look like a right pillock.

Posted by: Wishbone at April 4, 2007 12:28 PM

Posted by: Wishbone at April 4, 2007 12:28 PM

Did I touch a nerve because the Brits sold out their troops?

Posted by: Elric66 at April 4, 2007 12:31 PM

Say what you will, but the 15 Brit captives look positively stiff upper lip compared to the craven behavior of Steve Centanni and Olag Wiig.

And, to take craven-hood to its ultimate, Centanni is back on his Fox News beat, smiling and acting like nothing happened. Wretched, both on his part on on the part of Roger Ailes.

These sailors and marines will have no such luxury upon return to their command.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at April 4, 2007 12:59 PM

Steve Centanni and Olag Wiig also "converted" to Islam. I wonder if any such attempts were made with regards to the seamen.

I would like to think that I would risk death over such a forced coercive conversion, but obviously some things can't be known in advance.

Posted by: JSobieski at April 4, 2007 2:10 PM

I would like to think that I would risk death over such a forced coercive conversion, but obviously some things can't be known in advance.

Since the benighted blight of Islam and their endless Jihad war re-descended on our culture, our brightest of moments are pretty dim.

A less-than-totally dark moment over the last couple of years was the Italian journalist who refused the hood when his head was sawed off in the Abu Musab's slaughter room of Islamic sacramental rituals.

* 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 *

I don't believe that that "most excellent example" Mohammed had his decapitees in the hood.

Islam: It now be out from da prison yard and into da Hood.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at April 4, 2007 5:48 PM

"laying the blame at the feet of our soldiers and sailors, rather than the idiots that got them in this position in the first place, simply makes you look like a right pillock."

Oh, let him be. He's just a common or garden Brit-Ranter.

Posted by: JFGR at April 4, 2007 6:40 PM

Elric66:
So why the change? What did the Brits give them or was it our carrier off the coast? Or perhaps it was the doing of Madam President Pelosi?

The orang-utang wanted to demonstrate that Persian muslims are kind, generous and forgiving. It was all a good laugh and a joke.

Posted by: UK Infidel Lover at April 4, 2007 7:53 PM

so, when are you arm chair generals signing up to volunteer for iraq?

Posted by: leonthepigfarmer at April 4, 2007 9:36 PM

Why the change? Simple. Khameini, his fellow mullahs and the military and domestic security services -- the entities who really run Iran -- ordered Ahmadinejad to release the British sailors. Ahmadinejad is nothing but a figurehead -- a useful figurehead, certainly, but still a figurehead. Remember that Ahmadinejad was nothing but an unknown former mayor of Teheran when he "unexpectedly" won Iran's last presidential election -- an election that the mullahs and the military and security establishment rigged.

So why release the sailors now? I believe the Iranian leadership is more scared of the West's military capability than it's showing publically. They know that the U.S. has two carriers in the Persian Gulf with enough aerial firepower to destroy their most precious assets. Holding the sailors made no more sense because Iran not only wasn't going to get anything from Britain (did the Brits apologize formally for their craft being in "Iranian" waters? Of course not, because it *wasn't* in Iranian waters), but could well provoke legitimate reprisal.

Ahmadinejad lost a lot of face here, despite Iran's propaganda. The Iranians *have* to juice up the propagand just to obscure that fact.

Two more points:

1. The Goobs said it best: Quarintine the sailors to make sure they're not serving as agents of chemical warfare.

2. I just wish one of the sailors had spit on Ahmadinejad.

Posted by: Joseph D'Hippolito at April 4, 2007 11:59 PM

From Sheik's note above:

This is a Munich moment. It's peace in our time. See? Every international problem can be resolved if we just act like reasonable men & talk it out. People will be deceived, just as they were when Chamberlain held up that scrap of paper signed by Herr Hitler. How Europe believes it can run away from this problem scarcely 70 years after the events leading up to WW II defies human comprehension. I weep for the folly & stupidity of man.

Once again, it will be up to the US to save Western civilization. Are we up to it? After Bush's performance, I don't know. He had a golden opportunity after 9/11 to deal w/ the islamic problem once & for all IF he had been able to explain the problem to the American people & offer a good, comprehensive strategy (including a Manhattan Project for developing energy independence from Arab oil) for solving it. But he did not. And now we're exhausted & dispirited. But that's also how we felt at the end of Carter's administration, before Reagan came along. So we must always have hope.

Great post, Sheik.

What particularly caught my eye was the comment "now we are exhausted and dispirited." I just finished "Mohammed and Charlemagne" by Henri Pirenne (great read incidentally, mostly with respect to the decline of the West). This was precisely the case, according to Pirenne, when Islam struck the Byzantium (Easter Roman) Empire - the Empire was exhausted and expended from its victory over the (still not Islamic) Persians by Heraclius over Chosroes, circa 627 AD. After Mo died in 632 AD, Islam marched into both empires against little opposition, in less than a decade overrunning all of Christian North Africa and Syria.

So now we have the liberal whiners who are exhausted and dispirited, who want to retreat and eat crow, giving Islam the same opening that Heraclius gave the Musulmans in the 7th century. This time they would get the northern shore of Rome's Mere Nostrum,to start with, and then shoot (literally) for the rest of the world.

It would be great if we could force feed the Koran into the clueless Pelosi, Reid, et al (or better, Robert's books), and make them understand that Islam does not make "peace" with Dar al Harb, before, now or never. These two and their cohorts have both displayed an even greater ignorance of Islam than Bush and Rice.

The whiney liberals say lets talk-talk; the Islamists say "ok, but we call it taqiyya, until we get our nukes. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

A related issue. Can a speaker be impeached? I think it is impossible, since the speaker and her party controls the house! If that is so we have a severe constitutional defect that needs to be remedied. Good lord, she is 3rd in line of presidential succession to lead 300 million people, but she was elected by not more than a few thousand clueless liberal boobs from Marin County.

Posted by: Jimmy Bones at April 5, 2007 2:52 AM