Tory MP: British troops ‘vulnerable’ from Muslim women
According to the Daily Mail, so it must be true, a British officer on visit to a hospital with troops injured in Afghanistan and Iraq was “surrounded and heckled by three young women in the unprovoked verbal attack”. It must have been really traumatising for the poor soul. I remember telling my brother the war was immoral when he was in the army (he wasn’t asked to go to Iraq) but don’t remember him bursting into tears.
Anyway, the Mail quotes Patrick Mercer MP as saying: “This incident demonstrates that our troops and their welfare staff are vulnerable.” Ahhh yes, the same MP who freely used the words “black bastard” and said he frequently came across non-white soldiers who used their race as a cover for excuses. I was under the mistaken impression he thought our soldiers were made of sterner stuff.
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Filed in: Humour, Party politics
Muslim women can reduce grown men to puddles of woe like no other species on earth. Just ask my mother
Sunny, I think the point is that the incident illustrates the low security at the hospital. I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that he was reduced to tears by it.
well i think i do worry about the ‘threat’ to soldiers and i think that threat comes from having a WAR – to state the obvious.
Let’s get the soldiers out it’s turning into Vietnam for Christs’ sake.
illustrates the low security at the hospital
I’m not sure how this is a security issue?
It does raise the wider point about the disgraceful way in which specialist military hospitals have been closed down and soldiers deposited on the NHS instead. This is particularly a problem when it comes to counselling, as most civilian psychologists do not understand anything about the horrors that soldiers face; they cannot.
good point Rumbold – which points the wider problem of using soldiers to fight your war and then dump them – if they’re still alive – on a system that has no way of understanding what they’ve been through.
Disgusting. Much good it does giving over your life to the nation-state.
It is not the fault of the soldier who carries out orders and then suffers post traumatic stress disorder as a result of seeing horrors most people are ill-equipped to deal with.
I’d prefer to see Bush, Cheney and Blair burst into spontaneous, remorseful water works, but alas, that will never ever happen.
yes actually i feel really sorry for the soldiers because they’re the ones who have to bear the brunt of it and then when they come back , is the nation grateful? No of course it isn’t. Do they look after them? of course they don’t. did they have much choice about joinin the army in the first place? probably not.
I thought that “stick and stones will break my bones etc” was a core course at Sandhurst?
Katy, I think it’s quite offensive that the Mail are flagging this as a security issue. The implication presumably being that three Muslim women in traditional dress have probably got bombs under there (‘Does my bomb look big in this?’)
I don’t really think haranguing squaddies is particularly helpful as an anti-war strategy, but I do think the idea of a fearsome Sergeant Major being barracked by three ladies in hijabs is pretty funny.
the idea of a fearsome Sergeant Major being barracked by three ladies in hijabs is pretty funny.
it is indeed, chuckle!
ally – No, regardless of ones opinion of the war, soldiers are people whose job compels them to go to war with whomever the government requires them to. Once they have taken the ‘Queen’s Shilling’, they have no option but to obey.
To leave them open to being harrangued by any person, of any sex and any religious persuasion, regardless of their manner of dress, when they are being treated in hospital (I am not sure whether the soldier in question was a patient or a visitor), is, to say the least, innapropriate.
There was no suggestion in the article that these ladies were posing a physical threat per se, but that they were in the position to do so if that had been their intention.
This is not the first story of its kind, although it is the first with the “Oh look the squaddies are scared of a GIRL!!” angle. Given that someone was done for threatening to knife a soldier about half a mile from Selly Oak, praps it’s not all that crazy.
Hangon… who was ‘barracked’ by the women, the injured soldiers or the visiting officer.
The officer deserves it. The injured soldiers should be protected from abuse like any other patient being verbaly abused should be.
“The officer deserves it.”
Remember that the next time you get verbally abused by a complete stranger for no good reason. This gentleman did nothing to warrant this behaviour.
“I was under the mistaken impression he thought our soldiers were made of sterner stuff.”
Believe it or not they are Human even if they do work in the armed forces.
Lynne Jones MP comes out of this worse than any of the other protagonists.
Inders – Oh right, he deserved to be verbally abused by complete strangers for visiting injured colleagues in hospital.
Well hang me, draw me, and quarter me.
Has Patrick Mercer joined your Melanie Philips list Sunny?
Excellent points Sonia, Sid and Chairwoman.
We berate our soldiers when they behave in what we see as an uncivilized manner (which of course they will do, having been trained to kill), then laugh at them when they display human emotion.
http://www.web-books.com/classics/poetry/anthology/Kipling/Tommy.htm
They did WHAT?
Has Patrick Mercer joined your Melanie Philips list Sunny?
My list is rapidly expanding. I’m out to make bigger enemies now
This is about security. It doesnt say anything about the soldier bursting into tears. And the reference is to security.
Why is this top of the pile on PP given the headlines tonight.
What should we be covering in your view?
He he.
What should we be covering in your view?
A bit late but I think you should have covered Tony Blair’s (SAW, may Allah be pleased with him) plans to reform the way Islam is taught in universities…
I await the Shahih Blair Ahadiths with great anticipation….
Heh, I’ll file that under ‘damned if we do, damned if don’t’. We don’t cover it and someone will say we should, we do and we get accusations of being obsessed with Islam!
I’ll refer my right honourable friend to comments made sometime ago by Sunny that we follow our own agenda here at PP not the media’s, not Blair’s etc. Well that is the lofty ideal…
Muzumbar, you taking the ****?
:\
I’ll sign any petition to stop bullying. This was just that.
you taking the ****?
Of course not. Tony (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has explicitly said that he is in communion with God. What more proof do you need that he is the Messiah?
That speech was the most appalling pi-jaw. Again.
Sunny,
=>”I’m not sure how this is a security issue?”
There are concerns amongst the British government and military about British military personnel being targetted by jihadists right here in the UK. Also, apparently there was a plot in Birmingham (last year ?) which involved British jihadists wanting to kidnap and torture a member of the armed forces.
The officer deserves it, he’s representing the army. The army is not beyond criticism.
I subscribe to the Platonian theory that the dogs of war should be caged and poked with a stick occasionaly. Only let out when we need them to defend us by bombing the schmuck out of a small country of coloured people, which tends to be the only reason they exist.
Ally – I didn’t think of that interpretation – I mean, that the women were a security threat because they were Muslim. I thought it was that three women who weren’t connected to the hospital were able to walk in without being stopped. If that is what the Daily Mail meant then it’s ridiculous.
Did anyone else report this? A very scanty story as presented by the Mail.
If the women were there in order to harass wounded military personnel and their visitors, then that probably is a security issue, and low conduct to boot.
If they were there, in a public area, on personal business and a chance encounter grew heated, another matter.
The soldier in question dismissed it as a trivial matter(if the source is to be trusted in anything). This has all the indications of a non-story.
inders,
Would you care to expand on your Platonian theory? it sounds thrillingly sophisticated.
Don – You are a card