LiveWire

Several serious developments today.

First, Britain had asked for access to the kidnapped marines and sailors. That has been denied.

Britain does not know where sailors are held; says access denied

LONDON — British officials do not know where Iran is holding 15 sailors and marines captured in the Persian Gulf, and requests for access to them have been denied, the Foreign Office said Sunday…The Foreign Office said Sunday that British requests for access to the 15 Britons have been denied…U.S. News and World Report, citing a U.S. Army report out of Iraq, said the capture of the British soldiers was not the first time Iranians have taken Western forces by surprise in the border area.

According to the news magazine, American troops working with Iraqi border guards within Iraq were attacked by a much larger Iranian military unit in September. U.S. News said no Americans were hurt in the incident, but four Iraqi soldiers, an interpreter, and an Iraqi border policeman remain missing.

Sure sounds like more “Iraqi civil war” proof to me.

In the meantime, Blair convenes the UK’s “Cobra” team to address the issue.

The clutch of VIPs will gather in an operations room several floors below Downing Street as early as this afternoon to plot an escape from a military spat that now threatens to become an international incident…The response to the inquiry, which had been immediately patched through to Ministry of Defence headquarters in Whitehall, was to hold fire.

The order to show restraint has been observed throughout the forces and the British government in the 48 hours since, but it is unclear how long both sides will be able to maintain control…The smaller-scale precedent, the taking of six British marines and two sailors on the same waterway in June 2004, was a painful lesson. The personnel were only returned after they had been paraded blindfold on Iranian television and admitted entering Iranian waters illegally. Three years on, the government is still pressing Iran for the return of its boats and kit, including valuable radar equipment…

COBRA is an acronym for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, where its meetings are held. Tony Blair, senior ministers, police and security chiefs all take part. It is called after events such as 9/11, 7/7 and can evoke emergency powers such as suspending Parliament or restricting movement.

The UK’s Independent has a story about how we would have shot back, highly critical of the British apparently not doing so. Shooting back is nice. Hey, I have an idea. Let’s actually start doing that …in Baghdad, and at least in the general direction of the enemy–al-Sadr and that Iranian Death Squad of his. There’s also the consideration if we actually dispatched that freak and engaged Iran as we should have, the British marines wouldn’t have been taken hostage in the first place. Just a thought.

US troops ‘would have fought Iranian captors’

A senior American commander in the Gulf has said his men would have fired on the Iranian Republican Guard rather than let themselves be taken hostage.

In a dramatic illustration of the different postures adopted by British and US forces working together in Iraq, Lt-Cdr Erik Horner – who has been working alongside the task force to which the 15 captured Britons belonged – said he was “surprised” the British marines and sailors had not been more aggressive…”The unique US Navy rules of engagement say we not only have a right to self-defence but also an obligation to self-defence. They [the British] had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, ‘Why didn’t your guys defend themselves?'”

Yesterday, the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, said British rules of engagement were “very much de-escalatory, because we don’t want wars starting … Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were, in effect, able to be captured and taken away.”

It seems those easily removable velcro stick-on balls are available in Washington, DC and England!