rhino
30-04-2007, 11:11
Think this guy shoulsd be listened to:
How have we come to this? The released Navy captives whimpering about losing an iPod and unsightly insect bites.
The Defence Secretary Des Browne clinging to office as he gropes for a plausible explanation for the decision to allow the former hostages to sell their stories. Britannia now the laughing stock of the world.
General Sir Michael Rose, former head of the SAS, ex-commander of UN forces in Bosnia, and formerly in charge of standards in the Army as Adjutant General, believes that we have witnessed the most catastrophic collapse of our military ethos in recent history.
Scroll down for more...
General Sir Michael Rose says 'Blair should be called to account' for Iraq.
According to him, the Navy is no longer fit for modern warfare, the Army Generals have betrayed their own soldiers for the sake of their careers and - above all - politicians have cynically sapped the Armed Forces of their strength by imposing on them the politically-correct, human rightsorientated health and safety legislation of Brussels.
Blazing with moral outrage, Rose wants Tony Blair - before he leaves office - to be held to account for Iraq.
He claims British forces have not been humiliated by such a military debacle since they lost to a ragtag army of insurgents during the American War of Independence in the 1770s.
The Iraq war, he goes on, has broken the military chain of command because generals and chiefs are no longer trusted by their men. It has also disorientated soldiers and destroyed the trust between civilian society and its armed forces.
Rose believes that so damaged are our forces by Iraq and this government that they now must be entirely rebuilt - just as Britain rebuilt its shattered Army and Navy after the American War of Independence.
This, he argues, can be achieved only by getting rid of the top brass who kowtow to Whitehall, and distancing military decisions from politics, whether they emanate from Whitehall or Brussels.
In his new book, Washington's War, From Independence To Iraq, this military Cassandra makes an eloquent case for the urgent need to restore pride in Britain's armed forces before it is too late.
General Sir Michael Rose, 67, is a courteous, handsome man. We meet in Dorset, a county beloved of ex-servicemen.
The only outward sign of his exacting standards, as a former Commanding Officer of the SAS, is his, straight posture and his darkening brow as I arrive 30 seconds late for our meeting.
I guess that the Navy's wretched released captives would have been given a harder time if they had reported to General Rose.
"Take Nelson and the Royal Navy," he declares. "He said the great business of a naval officer was his duty to the King or Queen and that his own private wishes - painful though it may be - did not count.
"This Faye Turney (the female leading seaman held by the Iranians): first of all, she was smoking, that is what offended me. She's in uniform and she is smoking as the Iranians approach.
"What is going on? It may seem a small thing, but people who are about to go into battle don't look relaxed sitting in a boat as if they are on a Mediterranean cruise."
Should the sailors and marines have defended themselves and opened fire when approached by the Iranians, as some in the American military have argued? 'Nelson said that no captain could ever be criticised for laying his ship alongside the enemy and engaging him. We didn't quite get that here, did we?" says Rose.
"The overall system should have responded in some way," he says, referring to the mother ship, the heavily armed HMS Cornwall which was nearby when the hostages were taken.
He also criticises the ship's crew for not detecting the Iranian approach on their radar screens. "They were distinctly un-Nelsonic," he adds dryly. Once captured, the 15 sailors and marines displayed a woeful lack of military fibre, according to Rose. "The quality of the people didn't seem to be very high. They didn't seem to have got their minds round what they were saying when it was claimed they were arrested in Iranian waters." I ask if their relatively junior positions were a cause of this. "There were junior soldiers in World War II who resisted heroically, in far worse circumstances. Or in the Falkland Islands.
"What made young men in the Scots Guards or the Paras charge with bayonets in the middle of the night when they had run out of ammunition, against enemy machine guns? "They had a choice - just as Leading Seaman Turney did. "But they took the right choice. They had a pride in their regiment. And a lot of them died. But as Wellington said: 'To live in disgrace is the worst thing of all. To die glorious is something to be envied'." Rose says Turney's gender is an "irrelevance".
He is also unimpressed by the argument that the captives were in fear of their lives. "Isn't every soldier in fear of their life who goes out on patrol in Basra? Of course he is, but does he give up? No." As for the fact that the British hostages were blindfolded and handcuffed, he says: "After all that we have been doing to tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians over the past four years, how come it is the end of the world when it is done to us?"
The Iranian fiasco has provoked some fierce squabbling between the Army and the Navy. Rose throws more petrol on the flames. "You can say that the Navy aren't used to the complexities of the battlefield in the way that the Army are, as individuals. "They tend to fight all as one, as entities - on the ship, if the captain says go right, everyone has to go right."In the Army, by contrast, you have a thousand individuals all thinking their own thing. It's a different set of rules. Furthermore, the Navy haven't been to war since 1945." He says this explains why our sailors capitulated so humiliatingly when they came face to face with the enemy in Iran. "I am amazed that the Navy hasn't had a Board of Inquiry about what happened. Who put them in that situation? They should be held responsible.
"But then, they have made it impossible to do so by treating the returnees as heroes and innocents. Who put them in that situation? They should be held responsible. It is difficult to do once you have had a hero's return." Rose believes pressure from Downing Street helped cause the confusion and breakdown of command. "If this had been solely controlled by the military - in other words, if there had been no political interference - the soldiers would have been taken from the aircraft, straight into secure accommodation.
"There would have been an initial inquiry into what had happened: if there had been any blame attributed, negligence or failure to comply with standard operation procedures, then charges would have been brought." Rose's thoughts on the idea of the hostages facing possible charges are a far cry from the rapturous tabloid reception at the start of the week. "Yes, there should indeed have been charges, and the senior officers should have been asked how come they allowed this situation to occur.
"At best, these seamen would have been given a short weekend break, told not to talk to the Press and been back on their ships within 24 hours. That is the proper way to handle a situation like that." At the heart of the fiasco, he says, is a corruption of the military ethos and a loss of moral authority because of the war in Iraq. Rose opposed the Iraq war from the start, and says that he would have resigned rather than signed up to it, as General Sir Mike Jackson did when he was Chief of the General Staff.
He declines explicitly to criticise Jackson. "I don't know what position he was in, or what pressures he was under. All I know is that I would not have been prepared to sign up to that war in Iraq if I had been in his position. I would have resigned. That is all I can say."
"Iraq has undermined the military ethos. You trust troops to do the ultimate, but they trust you not to throw them into situations that are pointless and wasteful." Rose is also disturbed that reports from soldiers about the true situation in Iraq, and on the damage being wreaked by the human rights-led legislation imposed on the Armed Forces, have been quashed in the name of "maintaining troop morale".
"I have seen reports from young officers, really compelling stuff, and I ask what happened to them, and they say: 'Oh, it was binned.' Who by? 'The Brigadier.' Why? "Because he wanted promotion'."
"It is pathetic to say that these reports would have damaged morale. It is the soldiers, after all, who know what is going on. It is they who have been telling us the thing is a shambles.
The politicisation of the military, says Rose, is one of the most damaging developments of the Blair years. "In recent times, the generals simply haven't spoken out and the result is that I have never known such a confusion in the chain of command and an undermining of the trust one needs from one's men.
"That is why it was so heartening that General Dannatt did speak out.(Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the British Army, said in an interview with the Daily Mail that our presence in Iraq was exacerbating the situation and that the military covenant between society and the Army had broken down).
After the American War of Independence, the British Army was transformed from top to bottom and 25 years later it was in good enough shape to take on and beat Napoleon. Rose believes it is vital that we now retrain, re-motivate and, above all, renege on the damaging clause in the Treaty of Rome which submits the Armed Forces to civilian rules and jurisdiction. "The Army needs its own jurisdiction, administration, discipline, ethos, and these things have to be different from civilians. Because you can't just put people in khaki and give them a rifle and tell them to fight.
"There has to be a psychological preparation, developing of values which allow people in the end to make the ultimate sacrifice willingly. Right through history, these people had a sense of duty, of honor, of belief in what they were doing. That has now all been got rid of.
"The Commanding Officer used to be a feared and respected figure. Now, as soon as he makes some disciplinary judgment it can be overridden by civilians. "So the soldiers have become disorientated. The modern approach of society, with the emphasis on rights, has now been imported into the military - and with disastrous results."
General Rose attacks the "moral cowardice" of politicians - from former Conservative Defence Secretary Michael Portillo to the Blair Government - for the erosion of the military ethos as well as for paring our forces to the bone. "Politically, they needed to cosy up to Europe, and they were too busy selling the Army's assets, such as their married quarters, to pay for immediate crises," he says bitterly.
Worst of all has been the "slithering" of Tony Blair. Rose accuses him of being disingenuous about defence spending and of misleading Parliament about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. "If Blair had been a director of Enron (the American energy firm which spectacularly collapsed in 2001 after massive accountacy fraud), he would be doing 40 years," says Rose crisply. "Iraq has been such a serious setback to Britain's standing in the world, Blair should be held accountable in Parliament. He cannot just walk away from this in a few weeks' time."
On that note, Rose strides off into the spring sunshine, his affability restored. One would not wish to get on the wrong side of General Sir Michael Rose, especially if one were the Prime Minister.
Washington's War, by Michael Rose, is published by Weidenfeld and
How have we come to this? The released Navy captives whimpering about losing an iPod and unsightly insect bites.
The Defence Secretary Des Browne clinging to office as he gropes for a plausible explanation for the decision to allow the former hostages to sell their stories. Britannia now the laughing stock of the world.
General Sir Michael Rose, former head of the SAS, ex-commander of UN forces in Bosnia, and formerly in charge of standards in the Army as Adjutant General, believes that we have witnessed the most catastrophic collapse of our military ethos in recent history.
Scroll down for more...
General Sir Michael Rose says 'Blair should be called to account' for Iraq.
According to him, the Navy is no longer fit for modern warfare, the Army Generals have betrayed their own soldiers for the sake of their careers and - above all - politicians have cynically sapped the Armed Forces of their strength by imposing on them the politically-correct, human rightsorientated health and safety legislation of Brussels.
Blazing with moral outrage, Rose wants Tony Blair - before he leaves office - to be held to account for Iraq.
He claims British forces have not been humiliated by such a military debacle since they lost to a ragtag army of insurgents during the American War of Independence in the 1770s.
The Iraq war, he goes on, has broken the military chain of command because generals and chiefs are no longer trusted by their men. It has also disorientated soldiers and destroyed the trust between civilian society and its armed forces.
Rose believes that so damaged are our forces by Iraq and this government that they now must be entirely rebuilt - just as Britain rebuilt its shattered Army and Navy after the American War of Independence.
This, he argues, can be achieved only by getting rid of the top brass who kowtow to Whitehall, and distancing military decisions from politics, whether they emanate from Whitehall or Brussels.
In his new book, Washington's War, From Independence To Iraq, this military Cassandra makes an eloquent case for the urgent need to restore pride in Britain's armed forces before it is too late.
General Sir Michael Rose, 67, is a courteous, handsome man. We meet in Dorset, a county beloved of ex-servicemen.
The only outward sign of his exacting standards, as a former Commanding Officer of the SAS, is his, straight posture and his darkening brow as I arrive 30 seconds late for our meeting.
I guess that the Navy's wretched released captives would have been given a harder time if they had reported to General Rose.
"Take Nelson and the Royal Navy," he declares. "He said the great business of a naval officer was his duty to the King or Queen and that his own private wishes - painful though it may be - did not count.
"This Faye Turney (the female leading seaman held by the Iranians): first of all, she was smoking, that is what offended me. She's in uniform and she is smoking as the Iranians approach.
"What is going on? It may seem a small thing, but people who are about to go into battle don't look relaxed sitting in a boat as if they are on a Mediterranean cruise."
Should the sailors and marines have defended themselves and opened fire when approached by the Iranians, as some in the American military have argued? 'Nelson said that no captain could ever be criticised for laying his ship alongside the enemy and engaging him. We didn't quite get that here, did we?" says Rose.
"The overall system should have responded in some way," he says, referring to the mother ship, the heavily armed HMS Cornwall which was nearby when the hostages were taken.
He also criticises the ship's crew for not detecting the Iranian approach on their radar screens. "They were distinctly un-Nelsonic," he adds dryly. Once captured, the 15 sailors and marines displayed a woeful lack of military fibre, according to Rose. "The quality of the people didn't seem to be very high. They didn't seem to have got their minds round what they were saying when it was claimed they were arrested in Iranian waters." I ask if their relatively junior positions were a cause of this. "There were junior soldiers in World War II who resisted heroically, in far worse circumstances. Or in the Falkland Islands.
"What made young men in the Scots Guards or the Paras charge with bayonets in the middle of the night when they had run out of ammunition, against enemy machine guns? "They had a choice - just as Leading Seaman Turney did. "But they took the right choice. They had a pride in their regiment. And a lot of them died. But as Wellington said: 'To live in disgrace is the worst thing of all. To die glorious is something to be envied'." Rose says Turney's gender is an "irrelevance".
He is also unimpressed by the argument that the captives were in fear of their lives. "Isn't every soldier in fear of their life who goes out on patrol in Basra? Of course he is, but does he give up? No." As for the fact that the British hostages were blindfolded and handcuffed, he says: "After all that we have been doing to tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians over the past four years, how come it is the end of the world when it is done to us?"
The Iranian fiasco has provoked some fierce squabbling between the Army and the Navy. Rose throws more petrol on the flames. "You can say that the Navy aren't used to the complexities of the battlefield in the way that the Army are, as individuals. "They tend to fight all as one, as entities - on the ship, if the captain says go right, everyone has to go right."In the Army, by contrast, you have a thousand individuals all thinking their own thing. It's a different set of rules. Furthermore, the Navy haven't been to war since 1945." He says this explains why our sailors capitulated so humiliatingly when they came face to face with the enemy in Iran. "I am amazed that the Navy hasn't had a Board of Inquiry about what happened. Who put them in that situation? They should be held responsible.
"But then, they have made it impossible to do so by treating the returnees as heroes and innocents. Who put them in that situation? They should be held responsible. It is difficult to do once you have had a hero's return." Rose believes pressure from Downing Street helped cause the confusion and breakdown of command. "If this had been solely controlled by the military - in other words, if there had been no political interference - the soldiers would have been taken from the aircraft, straight into secure accommodation.
"There would have been an initial inquiry into what had happened: if there had been any blame attributed, negligence or failure to comply with standard operation procedures, then charges would have been brought." Rose's thoughts on the idea of the hostages facing possible charges are a far cry from the rapturous tabloid reception at the start of the week. "Yes, there should indeed have been charges, and the senior officers should have been asked how come they allowed this situation to occur.
"At best, these seamen would have been given a short weekend break, told not to talk to the Press and been back on their ships within 24 hours. That is the proper way to handle a situation like that." At the heart of the fiasco, he says, is a corruption of the military ethos and a loss of moral authority because of the war in Iraq. Rose opposed the Iraq war from the start, and says that he would have resigned rather than signed up to it, as General Sir Mike Jackson did when he was Chief of the General Staff.
He declines explicitly to criticise Jackson. "I don't know what position he was in, or what pressures he was under. All I know is that I would not have been prepared to sign up to that war in Iraq if I had been in his position. I would have resigned. That is all I can say."
"Iraq has undermined the military ethos. You trust troops to do the ultimate, but they trust you not to throw them into situations that are pointless and wasteful." Rose is also disturbed that reports from soldiers about the true situation in Iraq, and on the damage being wreaked by the human rights-led legislation imposed on the Armed Forces, have been quashed in the name of "maintaining troop morale".
"I have seen reports from young officers, really compelling stuff, and I ask what happened to them, and they say: 'Oh, it was binned.' Who by? 'The Brigadier.' Why? "Because he wanted promotion'."
"It is pathetic to say that these reports would have damaged morale. It is the soldiers, after all, who know what is going on. It is they who have been telling us the thing is a shambles.
The politicisation of the military, says Rose, is one of the most damaging developments of the Blair years. "In recent times, the generals simply haven't spoken out and the result is that I have never known such a confusion in the chain of command and an undermining of the trust one needs from one's men.
"That is why it was so heartening that General Dannatt did speak out.(Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the British Army, said in an interview with the Daily Mail that our presence in Iraq was exacerbating the situation and that the military covenant between society and the Army had broken down).
After the American War of Independence, the British Army was transformed from top to bottom and 25 years later it was in good enough shape to take on and beat Napoleon. Rose believes it is vital that we now retrain, re-motivate and, above all, renege on the damaging clause in the Treaty of Rome which submits the Armed Forces to civilian rules and jurisdiction. "The Army needs its own jurisdiction, administration, discipline, ethos, and these things have to be different from civilians. Because you can't just put people in khaki and give them a rifle and tell them to fight.
"There has to be a psychological preparation, developing of values which allow people in the end to make the ultimate sacrifice willingly. Right through history, these people had a sense of duty, of honor, of belief in what they were doing. That has now all been got rid of.
"The Commanding Officer used to be a feared and respected figure. Now, as soon as he makes some disciplinary judgment it can be overridden by civilians. "So the soldiers have become disorientated. The modern approach of society, with the emphasis on rights, has now been imported into the military - and with disastrous results."
General Rose attacks the "moral cowardice" of politicians - from former Conservative Defence Secretary Michael Portillo to the Blair Government - for the erosion of the military ethos as well as for paring our forces to the bone. "Politically, they needed to cosy up to Europe, and they were too busy selling the Army's assets, such as their married quarters, to pay for immediate crises," he says bitterly.
Worst of all has been the "slithering" of Tony Blair. Rose accuses him of being disingenuous about defence spending and of misleading Parliament about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. "If Blair had been a director of Enron (the American energy firm which spectacularly collapsed in 2001 after massive accountacy fraud), he would be doing 40 years," says Rose crisply. "Iraq has been such a serious setback to Britain's standing in the world, Blair should be held accountable in Parliament. He cannot just walk away from this in a few weeks' time."
On that note, Rose strides off into the spring sunshine, his affability restored. One would not wish to get on the wrong side of General Sir Michael Rose, especially if one were the Prime Minister.
Washington's War, by Michael Rose, is published by Weidenfeld and