Dr Reid ...... "Bring 'em on"

The Sunday Times said last week about the deployment of 3rd Para to Afghanistan ..

Lt Col Stuart Tootal, the CO of 3 Para, the troops who will lead the UK battlegroup, said last week that army chiefs had promised him his men need not be afraid of facing courts martial if they took a tough line with anyone who pointed a gun in their direction.

That it is going to be difficult is also not in doubt and no-one, not even the MoD for once, is trying to play that down. Apparently, Tootal’s men have been warned that they could sustain losses on a par with the Falklands where 3 Para lost 23 dead and 50 wounded taking Mount Longden. It’s a tough job but, as the old cliché goes, somebody’s got to do it and quite frankly a combination of the UK special forces already on the ground and the British paras who are joining them seems to me to be about the best you could get anywhere in the world, so long of course as they get the right number of helicopters and the right equipment to back them up.

One interesting aspect of the deployment – possibly sparked by the current dire shortage of serviceable transport helicopters - is the presence of three C130 Hercules aircraft.

Nosemonkey, Charlie Whitaker Jamie K and Frozen Yoghurt have picked up on Dr. Reid and his cry of "let us match savagery with savagery" on Radio 4's Today programme the other day.

" ....we cannot continually have an assymetric, uneven battlefield for our troops where we are facing an enemy unconstrained by any legality, any morality, any international convention and at the same time subject our troops to a level of scrutiny, accountability, media intrusion, questioning and every conceivable opportunity to criticise. So I say, in that kind of world, where we're facing that kind of enemy, let us be very slow to condemn our troops, our forces, and very quick to support them."

Yet earlier in the interview as FY points out Reid said ...

"There will be blemishes, there will be abuses, I have no doubt that occur. But the difference will be this, Jim: When abuses took place in the past, when these sorts of things by the Iraqi government or others took place under Saddam Hussein they were covered up, now they'll be exposed. The perpetrators were promoted. Now they will be prosecuted."

So how does our revered tough talking Mister of Defence (Oh how he must yearn for the days of John Profumo when he was called the Minister of War) reconcile these two positions?

Well for a start they are going to make sure that no-one is going to be toting a Handycam or digital camera of any sort .... after all Aegis are still investigating that "trophy video" and the NOW today are piling it on... and the Sunday Times has tales of drug crazed troops ... and tales of mass corruption of US taxpayers funds are exposed ... not to mention Abu Ghraib pics and videos still unseen by the public..

Perhaps Dr. John Reid would be happy to swap Northern Ireland with the sun tanned South African ? After all Politics is an "assymetric, uneven battlefield".