Liam Fox: outspoken military chiefs are putting lives at risk
Military commanders who have spoken out against the ability to continue operations in Libya are putting lives at risk, Liam Fox said today.
By Thomas Harding, and Andy Bloxham
1:19PM BST 27 Jun 2011
293 Comments
Admirals and Air Marshals who, in the last week have voiced concerns over the sustainability of their forces to carry on attacking Libya, were giving strength and hope to Col Gaddafi’s regime, the Defence Secretary suggested.
In a private speech leaked to The Daily Telegraph last week, Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon Bryant said RAF morale was “fragile” and questioned whether Air Force operations could continue beyond September without cuts elsewhere.
His remarks came a few days after Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord, also questioned whether his forces could sustain the Libya campaign after severe cuts in the defence review.
But in a speech on major reforms to be introduced at the Ministry of Defence, that will include a purge of generals, Dr Fox gave a severe warning to senior officers.
“We must be very careful, those of us who have authority in defence, in discussing the sustainability of our mission. People’s lives are at stake. There can be only one message that goes out to Libya that is we have the military capability, political resolve and legal authority to the through what we started.”
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He then added: “We will continue our mission until our mission succeeds and Col Gaddafi must get no other signal than that.”
His words follow the rebuke to commanders by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who last week following the Telegraph’s report on Air Chief Marshal Bryant, said “you do the fighting, I’ll do the talking”.
Earlier, Dr Fox warned that high-ranking members of the Armed Forces including generals, admirals and air marshals are facing the sack because the Government wants to reduce military bureacracy by cutting "the star count".
Dr Fox said he wanted to see "new career structures" and "better streamlined management" in the military because over-complicated decision-making had "bedevilled" the UK's defence for many years.
Dr Fox told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "There is a very strong case for reducing the star count in the Armed Forces to create space for those coming up the ranks."
He also fired the latest salvo in a bitter public exchange of views between senior politicians and military chiefs, which has seen leading figures in the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and Army all question Britain’s ability to conduct wars in Libya and Afghanistan with a diminishing budget.
He said: “In a war you have got to be careful of the messaging you give to the other side.
“There is a time and a place for anyone in the Armed Forces to give ministers a message and they have a much greater chance of success in delivering it in the appropriate manner.”
His comments came hours ahead of an official review due today, which will report that the “bloated and dysfunctional” Ministry of Defence leaves ministers “in the dark” about key decisions.
Three years ago research showed that admirals outnumbered warships in the Royal Navy.
In the new report, Lord Levene’s defence reform unit will call for a sweeping overhaul of the structure and management of the MoD, saying that military chiefs must be made accountable for their own budgets.
In a speech, Dr Fox will say that Lord Levene has found that he leads a “department with overly bureaucratic management structures, dominated by committees that led to indecisiveness and a lack of responsibility”.
The unit is particularly critical of the Defence Board, the MoD’s top decision-making body, which includes senior officials and the heads of the three Armed Forces, but no politicians.
“A bloated top-level defence board without ministerial membership allowed strategic decision to drift, unable to reconcile ambition with resources,” Dr Fox will say, adding that the board has left “budget holders without the levers needed to deliver and ministers in the dark”.
In response, the individual heads of the Navy, Army and Royal Air Force will lose their seats on the board, but the Chief of the Defence Staff will remain.
Under current practice, the heads of the three services follow relatively narrow career paths, with the Army almost always led by a former infantry commander and the RAF by a former fast jet pilot.
Under the Levene changes, officers with experience from outside their service’s core activity could compete for the top jobs. That could eventually allow a Royal Marine to become head of one of the services for the first time.
Dr Fox will confirm a report in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday that the defence budget still faces a multibillion-pound deficit that could force him to make more cuts in the Forces.
***
Showing 25 of 293 comments
Israel in Libya
26 minutes ago
This Government can not be trusted on it's core responsibility to ensure that Britain has as best a defense capability as financial resources will allow. The Cameron Clegg Administration is either utterly incompetent or it is willfully attempting to destroy Britain's Armed Forces at the request of foreign hostile power, Saudi Arabia being a likely candidate. The vandal scrapping of the new build Nimrod MRA4 aircraft made no economic sense, since the aircraft had already been paid for in the large part and the only characters who would have taken an action like that, are idiots who know nothing about defense matters or nothing about basic economics or nothing about either or folks who are actively seeking to destroy Britain's defense capability.
Nimrod cuts leave rescue missions all at sea 04.02.11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
marxbrother
42 minutes agoRecommended by
1 person Here's a suggestion to stop all this nonsense from ever happening again. No more vanity wars.
1. All political leaders must send one military-age member of their family to the front line in every conflict. They are to be put at the same risk as other front-line troops. After all we are all in this together and I doubt we would be so gung-ho if our own families were at risk rather than just sending other people in to fight.
2. All political leaders who join or initiate a military intervention must have a war crimes trial to decide whether they are guilty or innocent. This I am sure would have stopped Iraq in its tracks and would now stop Libya from overstepping the UN resolution that was fulfilled a long time ago but action continues because we will not a accept a ceasefire.
3. A referendum of the people should be held within 21 days of an action. If the people do not support it, it cannot continue for more than a further set period (to allow withdrawal). Further referendums every two months on the same subject. Wars change, opinions change over time.
Israel in Libya
17 minutes agoF8ck off, I know what the NKVD did in Katyn. You leftist scum.
Katyn Forest Massacre Movie Trailer
http://youtu.be/XUhBB3FgslI
marxbrother
52 minutes agoRecommended by
1 person I don't believe Fox or any others of our leaders.
The military are probably right and now the government will waste even more of our money saving face by making sure, no matter how much it costs, that we can continue this immoral war and prove them wrong. Even at the risk of bankrupting ourselves.
Everything I hear is "Gaddafi is more isolated, his henchmen are leaving - even the football henchmen (ho ho)" etc etc yet from where I am am standing, it is clear he has grass roots support and is in a strong position against our cowardly air attacks. We refuse a ceasefire, yet a ceasefire would achieve the UN resolution. Clearly then we are no longer interested in the UN resolution, there can be little doubt of that. Nor are the rebels, and why not? After all, they have the worlds most powerful, completely free of charge, airforce.
Gaddafi will not crumble like Cameron, Hague or Fox would (or Clegg\Cable\Millipede) in that position. He has no choice now but to fight on to win, and you know he might just do it. America lost Vietnam, it's not inconceivable that Gaddafi will outlast our campaign, defeat the rebels (whoever they are) and take back control, with the west humbled.
China and Russia will get the oil and we will receive retribution by terrorism funded by the vast wealth of the restored Libyan state.
Can no-one else see this coming?
Why on earth don't decent people go into politics to stop us getting into this mess, rather than the gung-ho idiots that come out of Eton?
J.P. Craig-Weston
40 minutes agoAs I commented below what Cameron is actually doing is effectively arming and supporting people like Roshonara Choudhry against the Libya's legally constituted government and even if these, so called, freedom fighters/terrorists are successful the outcome will still a complete disaster.
“My enemies enemy is my friend,” is all very well, but with friends like these who needs enemies?
Israel in Libya
10 minutes ago" Libya's legally constituted government ", go and F8ck off would you, so was Hitler's Government too if one wants to take that line of argument, you pile of sh-one-t.
Israel in Libya
Today 08:54 AMRecommended by
2 peopleDr Fox apparently threw a user off his Facebook page because they raised the issue that Britain deploying armed forces to Afghanistan, a foreign country, to fight Islamic extremists seems lacking in logic if the tasked aim of HM armed forces is defend Britain's legitimate interests, when at the same time the UK Government has been bending over backwards pandering to Islamic extremists in the UK. Dr Fox seems to be applying the same modus operandi to Britain's senior military officers, if one is prepared to ask awkward but legitimate questions, one is kicked off the premises. This is a total gangster government, they are destroying UK armed forces conventional military capability and leaving a British nuclear retaliatory strike as pretty much the only military roadblock to stop a nuclear attack on the UK as nuclear weapons and long range missile technology proliferate and fall in to the hands of the sort of characters who conduct political action as if they were living in the 7th century and believe they are on a mission from God and may actually want to bring about a nuclear exchange as they would feel it would put them on a fast track to paradise in the afterlife complete with attendant 72 virgins and other assorted benefits in kind.
neilmarshall
Yesterday 11:19 PMRecommended by
3 peopleWhat an extraordinary state of affairs that the Defence Secretary sees his most senior officers - the real experts in miltary strategy - as the enemy. I thought when we changed governments that the progressive dumbing down of the defence post - with the semi-illiterate Bob Ainsworth as the nadir under Labour - might stop. Sadly, we appear to have an even dimmer and less intellectually capable incumbent in Liam Fox. For those of us who care about the defence of our nation, how long are we going to accept this reduction in our capability to that of a banana republic? It's time to bang heads....and not those of the Defence Chiefs
Hector_Ing
Yesterday 09:53 PMRecommended by
7 peopleDear Dr Fox,
Possibly the worst aspect of the facile drivel that you have been dishing out over the past few days is your repellent presumption that anyone with more than half a dozen simultaneously firing brain cells will take you seriously.
You are treating the voters as complete idiots, Dr Fox, and you are making a name for yourself.
No doubt you feel under intense pressure to behave in this way, but you would do well to ponder upon the privileged lifestyle that you enjoy at the pleasure of the complete idiots.
Streeb
Yesterday 08:21 PMRecommended by
8 peopleArmy chiefs putting lives at risk, surely that's the Governments job what with its vaity war, and collateral damage ocassioned by its implmentation of a no fly zone.
How dare the chiefs query the butchery?Only a properly elected Government should be trusted to decide on mega death/kill. And where would we find one of these?
Israel in Libya
46 minutes agoYou are talking garbage. There are legitimate and proper reasons for aligning with the Libyan opposition to take Gaddafi down. Gaddafi had the military capability to crush the rebellion, if it did not receive outside help. In the aftermath of a failure of the rebellion, it is near certain that Gaddafi would have had the rebel leadership arrested, imprisoned and eliminated, ( that is killed ), that would have created an opposition to Gaddafi leadership deficit that either the Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaeda or a homegrown Libyan Islamic extremist organization would have attempted to fill and likely would have been successful in doing so. There is no butchery going on in Libya on the part of NATO but there likely would have been Srebrenica scale massacres in Benghazi, Misrata and Tobruk had these cities fallen to Gaddafi's mercenaries. Senior military officers have not been questioning the political aspect of the War in Libya, only the ability of UK Armed Forces to carry it out it's military activities in Libya, in a situation where the UK Government has severely cut back on equipment provision, for example, Nimrod MRA4 scrapped and the Harriers taken out of service.
J.P. Craig-Weston
7 minutes agoWhat a load of complete and utter drivel, have you really paid any attention to this conflict or it's antecedents at all? It doesn't seem articularly likely to me or to many other people that there would have been the kind of massacres that you suggest anyway. Just more propaganda and hysteria to distract from the plain fact that Cameron has made yet another unbelievably poor decision in intervening in Libya and that morally and only barely legally, (I'm pretty much convinced that there would already also be adequate and sufficient grounds for issuing an ICC
warrant against Cameron as well,) these attacks don't have a leg to stand on.
This is above and before everything else simply a completely stupid and entirely pointless militery action.
emmiem
Yesterday 08:11 PMRecommended by
6 people'“We will continue our mission until our mission succeeds and
Col Gaddafi must get no other signal than that.”'
What is their mission? The world was told the mission was to impose a no fly zone over the country despite the vague wording in the UN resolutions. Did I miss another resolution from the UN saying we must beat the crap out of civilians in Tripoli?
So can someone explain why NATO forces are bombing universities and civilians? Perhaps the big mouth of Liam Fox will volunteer an explanation.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/i...
And who exactly are these rebels?
Not quite what mainstream media pap has led us to believe evidently.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
The pictures in the links are very graphic.
'ROME (AFP) – Italy called for a suspension of hostilities in Libya on
Wednesday in the latest sign of dissent within NATO as the civilian
death toll mounts and Moamer Kadhafi shows no signs of quitting power.'
At least the Italians are beginning to see this 'help' for what it really is and Germany had the common sense to not participate in the invasion at all. The warmonger Cameron will have no such decency nor can we ever hope to learn the truth of the real agenda from him even as his henchmen take their revenge on the Admirals and Air Marshals.
Want to see some terrorists Heir to Blair ConMoron? Look in the mirror and feel the disgust.
TinCanFerry
Yesterday 07:32 PMLest we forget.
This government was charged with clearing the debts run up under the last administration. One of the ways to do this is to cut out waste wherever it is government funded.
If there is waste in any department it should be reduced; it is in all our interests. If the MoD is wasting money then the Taxpayer suffers, but so does the frontline soldier that lacks the best available equipment.
The top brass and senior civil servants do not suffer.
They have a vested interest in keeping the status quo, Turkeys~Christmas.
eborr
Yesterday 07:27 PMRecommended by
6 peopleLet's just take second to look at the man who prepared these proposals, Lord Levene, usually described as the Chairman of Lloyds, a disinterested party you might think but no, he is a director of General Dynamics that well known supplier of military capability to North African regimes.
Perhaps the generals are asking too many questions about why GD seems to get selected for so many army projects.
damien
Yesterday 10:03 PMRecommended by
1 person He is also the man who delivered the system that gave MOD the £22 lightbulb.
bnarpalvr
Yesterday 07:08 PM
This is so typical of this bunch of socialists blame somebody else for their incompetence & lies!
Liam Fox: outspoken military chiefs are putting lives at risk
Military commanders who have spoken out against the ability to continue operations in Libya are putting lives at risk, Liam Fox said today.
400
227
TelegraphPlayer-8601427Link to this video By Thomas Harding, and Andy Bloxham
1:19PM BST 27 Jun 2011
293 Comments
Admirals and Air Marshals who, in the last week have voiced concerns over the sustainability of their forces to carry on attacking Libya, were giving strength and hope to Col Gaddafi’s regime, the Defence Secretary suggested.
In a private speech leaked to The Daily Telegraph last week, Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon Bryant said RAF morale was “fragile” and questioned whether Air Force operations could continue beyond September without cuts elsewhere.
His remarks came a few days after Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord, also questioned whether his forces could sustain the Libya campaign after severe cuts in the defence review.
But in a speech on major reforms to be introduced at the Ministry of Defence, that will include a purge of generals, Dr Fox gave a severe warning to senior officers.
“We must be very careful, those of us who have authority in defence, in discussing the sustainability of our mission. People’s lives are at stake. There can be only one message that goes out to Libya that is we have the military capability, political resolve and legal authority to the through what we started.”
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27 Jun 2011
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27 Jun 2011
Cream of officers bail out of RAF
27 Jun 2011
Liam Fox: killing Gaddafi is not our policy
27 Jun 2011
Related Links
You might like:David Cameron tells defence chiefs to stop criticising Libya mission21 Jun 2011(Telegraph News)David Cameron "sidelines" top military chiefs after Afghanistan row24 Jun 2011(Telegraph News)Top military chiefs "sidelinds" after Afghanistan row24 Jun 2011(Telegraph News)
From the WebFORM THE WEB:OPEC ready to call emergency meeting if needed28 Jun 2011(MarketWatch.com)Potentially Dangerous Places For US Tourists17 May 2011(CNBC)Niki Taylor Pregnant with Fourth Child19 May 2011(Fashion Etc.)[what's this]He then added: “We will continue our mission until our mission succeeds and Col Gaddafi must get no other signal than that.”
His words follow the rebuke to commanders by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who last week following the Telegraph’s report on Air Chief Marshal Bryant, said “you do the fighting, I’ll do the talking”.
Earlier, Dr Fox warned that high-ranking members of the Armed Forces including generals, admirals and air marshals are facing the sack because the Government wants to reduce military bureacracy by cutting "the star count".
Dr Fox said he wanted to see "new career structures" and "better streamlined management" in the military because over-complicated decision-making had "bedevilled" the UK's defence for many years.
Dr Fox told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "There is a very strong case for reducing the star count in the Armed Forces to create space for those coming up the ranks."
He also fired the latest salvo in a bitter public exchange of views between senior politicians and military chiefs, which has seen leading figures in the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and Army all question Britain’s ability to conduct wars in Libya and Afghanistan with a diminishing budget.
He said: “In a war you have got to be careful of the messaging you give to the other side.
“There is a time and a place for anyone in the Armed Forces to give ministers a message and they have a much greater chance of success in delivering it in the appropriate manner.”
His comments came hours ahead of an official review due today, which will report that the “bloated and dysfunctional” Ministry of Defence leaves ministers “in the dark” about key decisions.
Three years ago research showed that admirals outnumbered warships in the Royal Navy.
In the new report, Lord Levene’s defence reform unit will call for a sweeping overhaul of the structure and management of the MoD, saying that military chiefs must be made accountable for their own budgets.
In a speech, Dr Fox will say that Lord Levene has found that he leads a “department with overly bureaucratic management structures, dominated by committees that led to indecisiveness and a lack of responsibility”.
The unit is particularly critical of the Defence Board, the MoD’s top decision-making body, which includes senior officials and the heads of the three Armed Forces, but no politicians.
“A bloated top-level defence board without ministerial membership allowed strategic decision to drift, unable to reconcile ambition with resources,” Dr Fox will say, adding that the board has left “budget holders without the levers needed to deliver and ministers in the dark”.
In response, the individual heads of the Navy, Army and Royal Air Force will lose their seats on the board, but the Chief of the Defence Staff will remain.
Under current practice, the heads of the three services follow relatively narrow career paths, with the Army almost always led by a former infantry commander and the RAF by a former fast jet pilot.
Under the Levene changes, officers with experience from outside their service’s core activity could compete for the top jobs. That could eventually allow a Royal Marine to become head of one of the services for the first time.
Dr Fox will confirm a report in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday that the defence budget still faces a multibillion-pound deficit that could force him to make more cuts in the Forces.
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Israel in Libya
26 minutes agoThis Government can not be trusted on it's core responsibility to ensure that Britain has as best a defense capability as financial resources will allow. The Cameron Clegg Administration is either utterly incompetent or it is willfully attempting to destroy Britain's Armed Forces at the request of foreign hostile power, Saudi Arabia being a likely candidate. The vandal scrapping of the new build Nimrod MRA4 aircraft made no economic sense, since the aircraft had already been paid for in the large part and the only characters who would have taken an action like that, are idiots who know nothing about defense matters or nothing about basic economics or nothing about either or folks who are actively seeking to destroy Britain's defense capability.
Nimrod cuts leave rescue missions all at sea 04.02.11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... Report Recommend
marxbrother
42 minutes agoRecommended by
1 person Here's a suggestion to stop all this nonsense from ever happening again. No more vanity wars.
1. All political leaders must send one military-age member of their family to the front line in every conflict. They are to be put at the same risk as other front-line troops. After all we are all in this together and I doubt we would be so gung-ho if our own families were at risk rather than just sending other people in to fight.
2. All political leaders who join or initiate a military intervention must have a war crimes trial to decide whether they are guilty or innocent. This I am sure would have stopped Iraq in its tracks and would now stop Libya from overstepping the UN resolution that was fulfilled a long time ago but action continues because we will not a accept a ceasefire.
3. A referendum of the people should be held within 21 days of an action. If the people do not support it, it cannot continue for more than a further set period (to allow withdrawal). Further referendums every two months on the same subject. Wars change, opinions change over time. Report Recommend
Israel in Libya
17 minutes agoF8ck off, I know what the NKVD did in Katyn. You leftist scum.
Katyn Forest Massacre Movie Trailer
http://youtu.be/XUhBB3FgslI Report Recommend
marxbrother
52 minutes agoRecommended by
1 person I don't believe Fox or any others of our leaders.
The military are probably right and now the government will waste even more of our money saving face by making sure, no matter how much it costs, that we can continue this immoral war and prove them wrong. Even at the risk of bankrupting ourselves.
Everything I hear is "Gaddafi is more isolated, his henchmen are leaving - even the football henchmen (ho ho)" etc etc yet from where I am am standing, it is clear he has grass roots support and is in a strong position against our cowardly air attacks. We refuse a ceasefire, yet a ceasefire would achieve the UN resolution. Clearly then we are no longer interested in the UN resolution, there can be little doubt of that. Nor are the rebels, and why not? After all, they have the worlds most powerful, completely free of charge, airforce.
Gaddafi will not crumble like Cameron, Hague or Fox would (or Clegg\Cable\Millipede) in that position. He has no choice now but to fight on to win, and you know he might just do it. America lost Vietnam, it's not inconceivable that Gaddafi will outlast our campaign, defeat the rebels (whoever they are) and take back control, with the west humbled.
China and Russia will get the oil and we will receive retribution by terrorism funded by the vast wealth of the restored Libyan state.
Can no-one else see this coming?
Why on earth don't decent people go into politics to stop us getting into this mess, rather than the gung-ho idiots that come out of Eton? Report Recommend
J.P. Craig-Weston
40 minutes agoAs I commented below what Cameron is actually doing is effectively arming and supporting people like Roshonara Choudhry against the Libya's legally constituted government and even if these, so called, freedom fighters/terrorists are successful the outcome will still a complete disaster.
“My enemies enemy is my friend,” is all very well, but with friends like these who needs enemies? Report Recommend
Israel in Libya
10 minutes ago" Libya's legally constituted government ", go and F8ck off would you, so was Hitler's Government too if one wants to take that line of argument, you pile of sh-one-t. Report Recommend
Israel in Libya
Today 08:54 AMRecommended by
2 peopleDr Fox apparently threw a user off his Facebook page because they raised the issue that Britain deploying armed forces to Afghanistan, a foreign country, to fight Islamic extremists seems lacking in logic if the tasked aim of HM armed forces is defend Britain's legitimate interests, when at the same time the UK Government has been bending over backwards pandering to Islamic extremists in the UK. Dr Fox seems to be applying the same modus operandi to Britain's senior military officers, if one is prepared to ask awkward but legitimate questions, one is kicked off the premises. This is a total gangster government, they are destroying UK armed forces conventional military capability and leaving a British nuclear retaliatory strike as pretty much the only military roadblock to stop a nuclear attack on the UK as nuclear weapons and long range missile technology proliferate and fall in to the hands of the sort of characters who conduct political action as if they were living in the 7th century and believe they are on a mission from God and may actually want to bring about a nuclear exchange as they would feel it would put them on a fast track to paradise in the afterlife complete with attendant 72 virgins and other assorted benefits in kind. Report Recommend
neilmarshall
Yesterday 11:19 PMRecommended by
3 peopleWhat an extraordinary state of affairs that the Defence Secretary sees his most senior officers - the real experts in miltary strategy - as the enemy. I thought when we changed governments that the progressive dumbing down of the defence post - with the semi-illiterate Bob Ainsworth as the nadir under Labour - might stop. Sadly, we appear to have an even dimmer and less intellectually capable incumbent in Liam Fox. For those of us who care about the defence of our nation, how long are we going to accept this reduction in our capability to that of a banana republic? It's time to bang heads....and not those of the Defence Chiefs. Report Recommend
Hector_Ing
Yesterday 09:53 PMRecommended by
7 peopleDear Dr Fox,
Possibly the worst aspect of the facile drivel that you have been dishing out over the past few days is your repellent presumption that anyone with more than half a dozen simultaneously firing brain cells will take you seriously.
You are treating the voters as complete idiots, Dr Fox, and you are making a name for yourself.
No doubt you feel under intense pressure to behave in this way, but you would do well to ponder upon the privileged lifestyle that you enjoy at the pleasure of the complete idiots. Report Recommend
Streeb
Yesterday 08:21 PMRecommended by
8 peopleArmy chiefs putting lives at risk, surely that's the Governments job what with its vaity war, and collateral damage ocassioned by its implmentation of a no fly zone.
How dare the chiefs query the butchery?Only a properly elected Government should be trusted to decide on mega death/kill. And where would we find one of these? Report Recommend
Israel in Libya
46 minutes agoYou are talking garbage. There are legitimate and proper reasons for aligning with the Libyan opposition to take Gaddafi down. Gaddafi had the military capability to crush the rebellion, if it did not receive outside help. In the aftermath of a failure of the rebellion, it is near certain that Gaddafi would have had the rebel leadership arrested, imprisoned and eliminated, ( that is killed ), that would have created an opposition to Gaddafi leadership deficit that either the Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaeda or a homegrown Libyan Islamic extremist organization would have attempted to fill and likely would have been successful in doing so. There is no butchery going on in Libya on the part of NATO but there likely would have been Srebrenica scale massacres in Benghazi, Misrata and Tobruk had these cities fallen to Gaddafi's mercenaries. Senior military officers have not been questioning the political aspect of the War in Libya, only the ability of UK Armed Forces to carry it out it's military activities in Libya, in a situation where the UK Government has severely cut back on equipment provision, for example, Nimrod MRA4 scrapped and the Harriers taken out of service. Report Recommend
J.P. Craig-Weston
7 minutes agoWhat a load of complete and utter drivel, have you really paid any attention to this conflict or it's antecedents at all? It doesn't seem articularly likely to me or to many other people that there would have been the kind of massacres that you suggest anyway. Just more propaganda and hysteria to distract from the plain fact that Cameron has made yet another unbelievably poor decision in intervening in Libya and that morally and only barely legally, (I'm pretty much convinced that there would already also be adequate and sufficient grounds for issuing an ICC
warrant against Cameron as well,) these attacks don't have a leg to stand on.
This is above and before everything else simply a completely stupid and entirely pointless militery action. Report Recommend
emmiem
Yesterday 08:11 PMRecommended by
6 people'“We will continue our mission until our mission succeeds and
Col Gaddafi must get no other signal than that.”'
What is their mission? The world was told the mission was to impose a no fly zone over the country despite the vague wording in the UN resolutions. Did I miss another resolution from the UN saying we must beat the crap out of civilians in Tripoli?
So can someone explain why NATO forces are bombing universities and civilians? Perhaps the big mouth of Liam Fox will volunteer an explanation.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/i...
And who exactly are these rebels?
Not quite what mainstream media pap has led us to believe evidently.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
The pictures in the links are very graphic.
'ROME (AFP) – Italy called for a suspension of hostilities in Libya on
Wednesday in the latest sign of dissent within NATO as the civilian
death toll mounts and Moamer Kadhafi shows no signs of quitting power.'
At least the Italians are beginning to see this 'help' for what it really is and Germany had the common sense to not participate in the invasion at all. The warmonger Cameron will have no such decency nor can we ever hope to learn the truth of the real agenda from him even as his henchmen take their revenge on the Admirals and Air Marshals.
Want to see some terrorists Heir to Blair ConMoron? Look in the mirror and feel the disgust.
Report Recommend
TinCanFerry
Yesterday 07:32 PMLest we forget.
This government was charged with clearing the debts run up under the last administration. One of the ways to do this is to cut out waste wherever it is government funded.
If there is waste in any department it should be reduced; it is in all our interests. If the MoD is wasting money then the Taxpayer suffers, but so does the frontline soldier that lacks the best available equipment.
The top brass and senior civil servants do not suffer.
They have a vested interest in keeping the status quo, Turkeys~Christmas. Report Recommend
eborr
Yesterday 07:27 PMRecommended by
6 peopleLet's just take second to look at the man who prepared these proposals, Lord Levene, usually described as the Chairman of Lloyds, a disinterested party you might think but no, he is a director of General Dynamics that well known supplier of military capability to North African regimes.
Perhaps the generals are asking too many questions about why GD seems to get selected for so many army projects. Report Recommend
damien
Yesterday 10:03 PMRecommended by
1 person He is also the man who delivered the system that gave MOD the £22 lightbulb. Report Recommend
bnarpalvr
Yesterday 07:08 PM
This is so typical of this bunch of socialists blame somebody else for their incompetence & lies!
"Military commanders who have spoken out against the ability to continue
operations in Libya are putting lives at risk, the Defence Secretary said"
At last somebody high up the payscale comes out & tells the truth and you accuse them of putting our soldiers lives at risk. Well it's simple you and your lot are the guilty ones.
You lot are the ones keeping our troops so badly under equipped.
You are the enemy.
astute1
Yesterday 07:02 PMRecommended by
1 person No that's why he's a politician.
thamesquay
Yesterday 06:56 PMRegarding the previous post from chris_xxxx perhaps we should throw ourselves into the arms of the yanks and ask for some "stricken from their active register" ships of their dormant fleets. We did receive some clapped out destroyers during World War II from the yanks and they stitched us up by their demanding us to agree with "Lend Lease" terms. Perhaps the yanks may have a few destroyers, cruisers, small aircraft carriers and transport ships lying about at anchor which could be used to shore up the Royal Navy for the "black hole" years whilst our fleets are being re-built? My mention of small aircraft carriers from the yanks would be their LHD class of ships. They carry rotary winged aircraft and could readily be adapted for Harriers and the vertical take-off and landing F-35's aircraft models. This time around we could make some better arrangements for payment instead of our 60 years nightmare of paying our commitments made for the Lend Lease programmes.
I'm sure that for a lot less money these vessels could be procured and pressed into service with a minimum of bother and expense. If you can save a couple of bob whilst providing floating platforms in order to conduct combat and support operations then you've accomplished a great deal to enhance the defence structure of the nation. If these ingrate politicians would stop their nattering about generals and admirals' statements it would help. They then need to pursue policies and programmes such as I've suggested above so we can once again sail a credible fleet into harm's way with the firepower to fight her way to victory.
TinCanFerry
Yesterday 07:38 PMHistory tells us that any equipment bought from the Americans cost us an arm a leg and a few islands.
Marshall plan and Lease Lend refer.
james01
Yesterday 06:53 PMRecommended by
6 peopleLiam Fox: outspoken military chiefs are putting lives at risk.
How?
Mr Fox, don't you realise the enemy already know these things?
Instead of trying to put your Military Leaders down, why don't you listen to them? They are the experts in this field NOT YOU!!
The bottom line is
"What do you know about troop numbers in the engagement of a mob of fanatics to sustain and maintain the upper hand?
You are the Secretary of State for Defence.
For once in your life, think like a seasoned soldier or is that beyond you because you wear the blinkers of a bog standard Politican?
the_great_santini
Yesterday 06:46 PMRecommended by
6 peopleBrilliant.
A nasty little right-wing man, responsible for massive. dangerous cuts in the armed forces services, has a temerity to tell the commanders of the armed forces services that THEY need to keep quite or they're risking lives!
You couldn't make it up!
Fox, you and all the other sycophants to the rich and shameless, do some real work, and start forcing your rich fat cat pals to start paying taxes in this country.
Maybe then you'll more money to spend on defence.
bnarpalvr
Yesterday 07:03 PMRecommended by
1 person There is NO WAY this shite is right wing!
bnarpalvr
Yesterday 07:11 PM From Liam Halligans column.
"
During April and May, this fiscal year, the Government borrowed £27.4bn..., up from £25.9bn during the same months in 2010. That’s right, we’re borrowing more – despite all the Treasury’s tough talk.These borrowing rises happened despite higher tax receipts in April and May – up around 8pc on last year.
SOCIALISTS.
AND STILL CAMERON GIVES (other peoples) MONEY AWAY!!!!!!
wolfe
Yesterday 06:45 PM Recommended by 8 people
Fact: The current Govt have put our troops lives at risk by committing our already overs-stretched Armed Forces to operations in Libya without the resources to do the job. They have destroyed morale and given hope to the Taliban by constant talk of early withdrawal from Afghanistan. We had to hand Helmand over to the US because our army wasn't big enough to hold gains there bought with the blood and sacrifice of our soldiers. What a HYPOCRITE Liam Fox is - unbelievable!!!
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