in fairness to alan, blaming the soldiers is short-sighted. They do what they are ordered to do and the real culprits are those that deploy them. the fact remains that there is a history of using armed force for unjustifiable reasons - iraq being simply the most recent, interspersed with some obviously good deeds, and there is a lot of hypocrisy at the highest level. Over the last 2 weeks, for instance, the British Government , with no sense of irony, has complained about Iranian intervention in Iraq by helping to train local militias attacking British forces, totally ignoring the fact that the Iranians and Southern Iraqis are closely related and the Iranians have far more legitimate claims to be active in that area than us, or the fact that Britain has a disgraceful record for interfering with Iranian affairs and ids largely despised and distrusted in Iran as a result. I'm surprised that people with military connections are not complaining loudly about their army friends being deployed in such a manner and being killed in numbers as a result. There are almost 100 British soldiers dead, needlessly, in Iraq now in support of an illegal campaign which should have been dealt with by the UN. If you really do support the army so strongly, then camapign to get them out of there.

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