Friday - April 06, 2007

The Bad News

Yesterday was a day of mixed blessings for our Brit friends and allies. The Iranians finally released the 15 hostages they had been holding for nearly a week but in southern Iraq two female British soldiers were killed when the vehicle they were riding in was hit by an explosive device almost certainly provided by Iran to Shiite insurgents in Iraq.

These EFP’s (explosively formed projectiles) are coming into Iraq from outside and Iran is the only country in the region known to use them. I don’t understand why Iran hasn’t been bombed back into the Stone Age by now. What are we waiting for? Hand me the Big Red Button™. I’ll gladly push it if no one else will and send the Mad Mullahs and Ahmawhackjob to greet Allah. It’s overdue.

Outrage As Two Female Soldiers Die In Basra
BASRA (TELEGRAPH-UK) - 1:22am BST 06/04/2007

Two women were among four soldiers killed in Basra yesterday in an unprecedented day for the Army in Iraq. The women, a nurse and a member of the Intelligence Corps, were in a party of four patrolling the southern Iraq city in the early hours.

The Warrior armoured vehicle in which they were travelling was torn apart by a “colossal” bomb. A fifth soldier was “very seriously injured” and is being treated in the military hospital in Basra.

Iraqis were pictured waving one of the soldiers’ battered helmets while children held aloft fragments of the shattered vehicle collected as trophies.

The nurse, from Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps, was the patrol’s medic. The men were from the 2Bn The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. A civilian interpreter was also killed. The patrol was returning to its base in Basra air station after providing protection for a “strike operation” that had seen British forces arrest a man said to be a senior member of the insurgency.

There have now been five female fatalities out of the 140 British dead in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. In a war with no front line in the traditional sense, the 18,000 women in the Armed Forces are increasingly finding themselves in the fighting as medics, signallers and in logistics crews.

Yesterday, Mr Blair contrasted rejoicing at the release of the sailors and Royal Marines by Iran with the “sober and ugly reality” of the killings in Iraq. The Prime Minister also appeared to link Iran to the attacks.

“There are elements at least of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming, terrorism in Iraq,” he said outside No 10. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Iran is playing a major role in fomenting the insurgency in southern Iraq by providing terrorists with bombs and advanced technical knowledge.

The Warrior armoured vehicle was ripped apart by a device known as an “explosively formed projectile”. The bombs are being used with increasing frequency in Iraq and have accounted for many American armoured vehicles and tanks.

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/06/2007 at 05:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Iran • Iraq •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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