Poppy Watch

[stew]

I don't think the Brits are always blowing about winning WWII. I think their take on WWII was that it was a gloriously defiant stand against a very powerful enemy. I think the Brits can probably justifiably say they won the war in Africa, but I find it's the Americans who think they won WWII. I think it's just lucky that Hitler attacked Russia when he did. If he hadn't opened up a second front in Europe then, Britain and the other Allies were in big trouble.

Indeed.

The U.K. and Ireland would have been facked if Germany had not invaded Russia.

The raison d'etre of Nazism was to create lebensraum in the east. If Germany had not been of the mind to invade the Soviet Union, they wouldn't invaded anyone else either.

Absolutely but it was the timing that fucked him. If hed continued to push home his advantage in the west it would have been curtains. To break his non aggression pact with Stalin when he did was his Waterloo.

He failed because he failed to learn from history and in the process millions of people died needlessly, he was a better soldier than he ever was military strategist and he was an evil bastard who wreaked havoc and misery on a global scale.

[Hardy]

That's the thing about the gaaboard - the totally unexpected insights.

[Rossfan]

He failed because he failed to learn from history and in the process millions of people died needlessly, he was a better soldier than he ever was military strategist and he was an evil b**tard who wreaked havoc and misery on a global scale.

You could be talking about Bush there, or indeed a goodly number of US Presidents.

[God14]

Absolutely delighted to read this morning that Colin Murray has been axed from his role presenting MOTD2

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2266133/Colin-Murray-axed-Match-Day-2-presenter-Mark-Champman-replacement.html

The above article includes references were the likes of Alan Hansen had to tell him to "leave the negative comments to the experts!"
However his comments on James McCleans refusal to wear the poppy were totally and completely unacceptable. MOTD isnt the place for a ballybeen estate loyalist to make snide remarks on such a contentious & emotive subject - where McClean couldnt defend himself. To be honest I was dissapointed that they were not edited out as the show isnt live - but i guess the British propaganda machine knows no boundaries.

Justice has been done here. Good riddance to Murray, he should never have had the opportunity anyway as he is a shite presenter at that.

[Onion Bag]

Cant stand him, he put me off wathing the Lakeside darts there a couple of week ago

[Hereiam]

Cant stand the p***k either. He put me off watching MOTD2 and the darts.

[Feckitt]

What exactly did he say about McClean?

[God14]

I suppose the transcript of his words wouldnt do it justice, but at the tail end of the show he made a big play on how ALMOST every footballer had paid their respects and worn the poppy.
Bear in mind McClean & Murray have history, and the main point in question is that MOTD has always been politically "neutral", I felt he was well out of line

[The Subbie]

just looked up colin murray on wiki 

Colin's passion for Radio came from his first career as a part-time member of the Fruit and Veg team in Sainsbury's at Forestside. After 3 weeks he left the job and began hustling 8 ball pool every Thursday night at Frames. It was at this venue were he famously came 9th in the 8 Ball Masters and from here he went on to become first reserve for the (SBBB) South Belfast Billiards Boys. Murray described his time with the SBBB as "a whirlwind of banter and an experience that I will never forget". To this day his cue remains in the club and in 2010 a statue was erected to honour his achievements, which was recently auctioned off for a staggering £13 to raise money for a vending machine at his old club.

[BennyCake]

Never liked him on MOTD2. He ain't no Adrian Chiles!

[red hander]

Wear it with pride...



The British government has apologised after the shooting of a disabled farm worker who ran away from soldiers almost 40 years ago in Northern Ireland.

John Pat Cunningham (27) had a mental age of less than 10 and a great fear of men in uniforms. He was unarmed when shot dead by soldiers from the Life Guard Regiment near his home in Benburb, Co Armagh.

Two soldiers suspected of the killing have refused to give an account.

The Historical Enquiries Team (HET), independent detectives investigating all conflict murders, said there were no grounds for their rearrest and no new lines of enquiry - a view disputed by his family.

Mr Cunningham's nephew Charlie Agnew said: "John Pat may have been disabled but he was a human being with exactly the same rights as anyone else.

"The question must be asked: did the British Army consider John Pat 'disposable'?"

The victim was walking home from the Servite Priory, where he helped out, in June 1974, along the Carrickaness Road when he was approached by a military patrol.

It had been deployed on follow-up operations after a different patrol was involved in a shooting incident with IRA gunmen two days previously.

A GP had already made representations to the Army about Mr Cunningham's fear of men in uniform.

Mr Cunningham appeared startled by the soldiers, jumped into a field and began to run for home pursued by two servicemen shouting commands for him to stop.

Evidence from another soldier, Soldier E, suggested he believed the man may have been armed, the HET report said.

Two troops then fired five shots and the victim died where he fell. It was not possible to determine who fired the fatal shot. The cause of death was recorded as bullet wound to the trunk, the HET added.

Soldiers A and B were interviewed briefly by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) under caution and exercised their right to silence. The Director for Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided against criminal proceedings.

The HET concluded that, because of the absence of original case papers, it was not possible to establish whether the investigation into the death was independent.

Its report added: "HET also concluded that by not obtaining the soldier's (sic) account of what happened more vigorously, the investigation was not as thorough or effective as it could have been."

It said interviewing soldiers A and B represented the only realistic lines of enquiry. HET requested interviews, but both declined - one after seeking legal advice.

The HET said: "They have both chosen not to engage and there are no grounds to arrest and further interview them under caution. There are therefore no new lines of enquiry to progress the investigation into John Pat's death."

The Team said his death was a tragedy which should not have happened.

"He was a vulnerable adult who was unarmed and shot as he was running away from soldiers. There is no evidence that he posed a threat to the soldiers or anyone else."

It said the soldiers' decision not to cooperate meant the full facts had never been established.

Andrew Robathan, minister for the armed forces, said it was right and proper to make an apology on behalf of Government.

"I do not believe that anything I can say will ease the sorrow you feel for the death of a much-loved relative, but I hope that the findings of the HET and our full and sincere apology will be of value by setting the record straight on these tragic events," he told relatives.

Mr Agnew said the soldiers had never been compelled to account for themselves.

"He was a completely innocent man who did not deserve to die," he said.

"In our opinion those who murdered him disgraced themselves, their uniform and the state in whose name they bear arms."

Family solicitor Kevin Winters has written to Attorney General John Larkin QC asking for a fresh inquiry, has sought a new compensation settlement after £750 was granted originally, and asked PSNI chief constable Matt Baggott to make the soldiers accountable.

[Rossfan]

They're getting good at issuing apologies.
Only a few hundred more to go......

[give her dixie]

They're getting good at issuing apologies.
Only a few hundred more to go......

And in the case of Iraq, a few hundred thousand, seeing as it's 10 years ago today that the British Army joined the US in an illegal invasion of Iraq.

[BennyCake]

They're getting good at issuing apologies.
Only a few hundred more to go......

And in the case of Iraq, a few hundred thousand, seeing as it's 10 years ago today that the British Army joined the US in an illegal invasion of Iraq.

You beat me to it, Dixie.

[give her dixie]

The Last Letter

A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to "liberate" Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called "democracy" in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq's oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn't lying a sin? Isn't murder a sin? Aren't theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_last_letter_20130318/