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Saturday, April 7, 2007 - 2:30pm As Expected, British Hostages Speak of Forced Confessions The media has been giving the captured British soldiers a hard time for the statements they made while in Iran about their ordeal. Now that they are in a free country able to speak freely, the truth has come out. The Brits were blindfolded, threatened with death, lied to, isolated, and forced into making bogus statements on camera. Of course, if you know anything about the animals in the Iranian government, you would know this already.
It's disappointing that the media made little mention of the obvious coercion in their statements. Granted, the soldiers could have refused to say anything other than name, rank, and serial number, but when you have a gun to your head, you do whatever you must to survive. The media, sitting in their cushy offices, decided to jump all over the Brits for caving to Iranian demands. However, they would likely have done the same under similar circumstances.
A commenter pointed out that the waters the British were captured in were disputed and not recognized by Iran as international waters. However, that is hardly the point. Iran easily could've turned the lightly armed British sailors around and back into other waters, but instead decided to hold them hostage for two weeks.
None of this is to say the British and American governments treat their prisoners well. As I have documented over and over on this blog, the CIA has been allowed to torture prisoners thanks to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others. If you're going to protest that treatment though, as the Iranians do, it helps if you don't do it yourself.
One frightening aspect of this conflict is that the British could have easily gone down shooting, even though they likely would've all been killed. They were about to captured by a hostile nation in what they considered to be international waters. That would be all that was needed for both sides to declare full-scale war against each other. Fifteen dead Brits and a number of dead Iranians would've escalated us into World War III.
If Iran is at war with the British, they are at war with the United States as well. That would also bring Syria, Hezbollah, and Israel into the mix. It is scary how close that came to reality.
With these countries patrolling the same waters in the Persian Gulf, how long do we really think we can avoid a shootout and another war as a result?
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