Well,if England isn't careful,soon they'll be an Islamic State and don't forget about IRAN in 1979 when they took US hostages and Jimmy Carter was to weak to get them out,thank God we elected Ronald Reagan.

Oh people died for a reason, not necessarily good reasons, or ones you or I agree with.

But certainly there is merit in the idea that leaders should be the first in the firing line of any war. But that is legitimisation of assination.

In days of yore, the monarch rode his horse up front into battle with his men.
Nowadays, if the people in charge (organising 'war') were to be in the firing line like that, when they get killed, second in command takes charge, and so and so forth.....I dont agree that the Big Guys should risk their lives as they need to stay at home, on the outside looking in with a clear head, else it all falls apart.
War *is* ruthless, there will always be the expendable men. Anyone joining the armed forces must know this, or dont join up.

Forgive me for being naive... but isn't our armed forces moto "For Queen and Country?" and not "GW and TB's disposable army"

at what point was our queen, or country in any danger from those sneaky WMD's that seem to have misteriously dissapeared.. ?

if you ask me, the hole situation was over Black gold.. not wmds and.. it's still my opinion that those men and women died for no reason.
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Stu, i was merely commenting on the bit about the heads of state etc heading the battle, getting in the thick of the actual fighting/risking their lives.

sorry, i didn't direct that at you, i was merely having a small rant - which i do every now and then..
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Well this will get those "about blank" windows opening again I guess, posting on here, still at least I shall put the truth as I see it so hate me as much as you like for what I can see and speak of.

Try not to see just Iraqs oil when you look at this, Iraq threatend its neighbours and those areas it sought to take from Iran and Saudi where the chief oil bearing locations in those countries. It the threatend the region when it was strong and threatend the region again when it was weak.

And you need oil, your probably typing on plastics made from hydrocarbons, and guess where they came from.....extracts of oil of course. On a computer made with the use of oil, brought to you by burning oil in combustion engines.
Maybe you got a headache from stating at your screen, well those asperin you took might well be made in part with hydrocarbons (oil again), and in plastic containers (oil) in a carboard box with a nicely printed outside, inks made from hydrocarbons....yes you guessed right, oil.
Asperin made by machines, lubricated by oil, made in turn by machines lubricated by oil and all those parts brought together by truck or van and we all know what powers them.....
Even some of the electrical power that keeps your computer going might come from burning oil.

And even if you and the entire UK does'nt need Middle Eastern oil, what about your customers and suppliers who buy your goods giving you employment and who sell you theirs so you can have fresh fruit out of season or bread, or the latest computer or whatever.
They need oil too, if they don'nt have it they can't buy your goods or sell you theirs, so there goes your standard of living.
But then considering the goods include food and vital materials for modern living there goes not just your standard of living but your ability to keep the benefits of this modern life....
like life expectancy
or those high rates of live births for example with modern medacin and modern hospitals.

So this was never a question of sitting at home and pretending things where OK. Even as it was there was a major effort to keep Iraq bottled up and unable to access military equipment. That effort was supposed to be short term not something to last forever, besides no such effort could contain a state so forever, it would fail eventualy and then we're headed back to the circumstances of the First Gulf War again.

SO Saddam was a threat and his removal was good for all.

And no staying outside while Iraq collapses is no solution. Imagine the Shia and the Sunni calling in Saudi and Iranian armies to back them up over who should be in charge, after all if we're not there then who's to stop them marching in to 'aid' their brethren and stop the others.
Meanwhile if Iraq collapses the Kurds go independant and so here come the Turkish Army as well. All thise independant armies all persuing different national strategies, and all out to fight different sections of Iraq....classic receipe for regional, ethnic and religious war over the region that contains the majority of the known reserves of oil.

So our people are there, having removed Saddam, trying to give the Iraqis the chance to get back on their feet. And yes some of our people won't be coming back save in a box, thats the price of being involved in the world and doing something instead of sitting at home and pretending everything is hunky dory.
At least by being involved we take responsebility for whats going on and for our own long term future. Passivity would be an abrogation of duty to ourselves.

Now Stu, war is not fighting, and its in fighting that people get killed. War is in the mind and its objective is to make the other do your will. Fighting is what the less than masters of war do when they can't get people to do their will by persuasion.
Fighting is the second best option, a sign of the failure of both sides to understand each other.
War by masters who understand each other well has a special name....its called peace.

i understand your point and it makes me realise lot's of things i hadn't though about but there's still a few things i don't get..

At what point does sending thousands of ill-equipt soldiers to fight a battle that had nothing to do with them become justifiable ?

I'm all up for breaking up a fight outside a pub or in the street, but i won't travel from essex to scotland to do so if that makes sense?

How many people so far have died during this, for want of a better saying, wild goose chase for the wmds - which is supposedly the reason they were sent to iraq in the first place ?
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There will always be equipment shortages, its in the nature of the military.

In this case however two things came together:-
1. a 'peace dividend' of the end of the Cold War gave cart blanche to the politicians to slash military funding, especialy in the area of logistics and supply, which is less noticable to the general public and media than numbers of tanks or troops etc.....
2. to maintain the fiction that we where not going to war with Iraq for as long as possible supplies where not ordered in time.

A third complaint might be the use of JIT (just in time) processess for military supply which is utterly incompatable with how a military foce must operate in modern warfare. You fight modern war with what you have NOW, not what you might get tomorrow.

Consider how ill equiped the current Iraqi army has been in its fight with the Al-Mahdi Army of Moqtadr al-Sadr, with a lack of basic provisions, maps, even water!

You might well travel to Essex to break up a fight if it stops that fight comming to your door.
Better Drake at Cadiz than Harold at Hastings, it is infintately better to burn the enemy in their harbour than in yours.

As for deaths, how many died under Saddam? Their still finding mass graves now, and Iraq has a mass death day to comemorate those murderd under Saddams regime.

As for WMD.....thats a long story, and it struck me at the time foolish to use this for a pretext, however under the terms of the CEASEFIRE agreement brokered by the UN after the first Gulf War the onus of proof was on Iraq to PROVE it had relinqueshed its WMD programs and dismantled them.

CEASEFIRE is of course not a legal end of war, and its not the UN that makes war legaly speaking but rather states that may or maynot be members of it, theres still just a ceasefire accord over the Korean War from the 1950s for example.

Time was running out, sanctions (I remember the term) where expected to be broken, the French and Russians where working to end them in the UNSC, and we had no idea how well they where working.
Surprisingly well as it turns out but thats hindsight.

We where faced with the possibility the sanctions would be legaly ended or just plain broken. Money would flow, arms bought Iraq rearmed and restarting is WMD programs (all the personnel where still there to do it). We'd be back to square one and the shear cost of the sanctions and no-fly zones we'd borne for 10 years would become a utter waste of time.