Mr. Bean?
Those Iranians shouldnt be watching Monty Python for their torture techniques.
"I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction."
"Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!"
"Put him in the comfy chair!"
Only one cup of coffee is the real torture.
Real python member Terry Jones weighs in British Hostage crises: "And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are."
Seaman Batchelor
You would think he'd be used to taunting by now.
I was in Navy ROTC for a year with a guy named Br/ooks Ensign. He kind of had a Major Major personality, too.
"That's it, I'm switching sides"
Does that make you gay or straight, now? I can't keep track.
No way, he's more Johnny English. Or Blackadder the First.
You mean they're all both played by the same actor? Oh sure, a wonderful, magical actor!
Althouse isn't alone in this, but it's pretty sad the way the Brits get ridiculed by the public - especially the American public - after what seems to have been honorable service to their (and our) country.
To say he "cried himself to sleep after his Iranian captors likened him to the comedy character Mr Bean" is a bit like saying he cried himself to sleep after the sun went down. One thing followed the other, but a lot of other things happened, too.
Oh, come on, pf. I admit that way of putting it is bad, but I'm not the only one who thinks they were pretty quick to make propaganda films and chum up with Ahmadinnerjacket. Who I love. But just saying.
11: One thing followed the other, but a lot of other things happened, too.
Did Seaman Batchelor indicate what the other things were? I'm getting the "Mr. Bean" reference secondhand and I can't tell what the larger context is.
I agree that you are far from the only one - Althouse makes two, and of course there are many others. If this were World War II and those Brits were led by Churchill against Hitler, I might be less sympathetic to soldiers caught in a tough spot.
But this is 2007, and these folks were trolling dangerous waters so that their leader could blindly follow W's ambition to ... well, to do what exactly?
I wouldn't willingingly make the sacrifices they have made, and I don't think I - or Althouse or FL - have standing to ridicule them for not being willing to sacrifice even more.
Yeah, pretty much. What good purpose would getting heroic about insisting that their ship had been in Iraqi waters have served?
I don't understand anything about the sailor-hostage crisis. Pretty much everyone even peripherally involved came out looking like a dickhead, and they're all lying.
It's impossible not to seem like an ass when criticizing these guys, but they don't seem to have done much for the greater glory of the British Navy.
They weren't heroes, but they weren't in a position where heroism would have been useful to anyone (probably harmful -- if they'd gone down in a blaze of gunfire, what are the odds that there's your casus belli?). I can't see saying anything rude about anyone because they're not a hero -- I'm certainly not one.
15. Boat, not ship. The RN sailors and Royal Marines were not in a position to defend themselves, which should lead to a court martial of their leaders.
Weren't they subjected to a mock execution? Link in 13 confirms what I thought I read... It probably doesn't count as torture these days since it doesn't leave marks and goodness knows we've managed to redefine "not torture" to mean "plausibly deniable", but it certainly's a lot more than just some Bean-taunting.
And it would be nice if we had the moral standing to criticize this. Washington fuckers.
20: Oh, that's right -- they were in some dinky little Zodiac looking thing, weren't they.
Aaaaand, on the other hand, the Iranian diplomat the US released from Iraq (not in a trade, oh no) claims to have been tortured, and the International Red Cross observed many wounds on his body consistent with that account, as I recall from an NPR report this morning.
This is probably more Machiavellian than really makes sense, but I was almost wondering if this was a plot to make us look bad: "Look at us 'violate' the Geneva Conventions -- threatening your soldiers, exhibiting them in a humiliating manner, taking their uniforms away [that's not allowed, right? I think it isn't.] And then you can have them home safe. Are you going to complain about our misbehavior? Because you'll look pretty damn silly if you do."
23, 24 I think what the Iranians really wanted in trade was the five Revolutionary guards previously captured in Irbil.
Yes, I admit the material in the link at 13 is worse than what I'd previously read, so my criticism has to be tempered.
I agree, TLL, that the Iranians who seized the British sailors were most likely going the tit-for-tat route, but the one argument I've been convinced by coming out of this whole hullaballoo is that there were factions within the government not best pleased with having been pushed to a brink this way.
28 is one of (at least) two reasons this looks bad for the Iranian regime, right? Now they look more like an internally incoherent government with a tendency for needless bellicosity, which is what they don't need internationally. I think I cribbed this from Drum.
28. I have read similar things. Some hotheads took action that could have ended much worse. I am afraid we will see more, not less of this especially if a rapprochment with the Iranians is in the offing.
looks bad for the Iranian regime
For what audience? Which country that has any influence here doesn't have other overriding concerns or commitments? I haven't figured out why this situation matters at all, except maybe as a "you kidnap ours we kidnap yours" demonstration.
I've forgotten who else was making the argument, but Drum wasn't the first.
The audience is those people---often working at cross-purposes to those in power---who really want to believe that the Great Bargain will work.
31: for the audience of marginal-case nations deciding how much effort to exert in countering the bombquest?
29. Which by the way, whatever your politics, it is a bad idea for the Speaker of the House to go on foreign policy junkets.
The audience is those people---often working at cross-purposes to those in power---who really want to believe that the Great Bargain will work.
In the administration? I'll buy that. (If only because I'm resigned to stupid reasons driving executive decision-making.)
it is a bad idea for the Speaker of the House to go on foreign policy junkets
Grr. Unless the crazies are the ones in the executive branch, and you want to present a more rational face to the world, and give them some reason to hold out for a couple of years until you get more power.
34: it is a bad idea for the Speaker of the House to go on foreign policy junkets.
That's a really different case. Is there any real doubt abroad about which branch of government is really in charge of various functions? There's a big difference between "different factions disagree politically" and "we can't control our own military."
36. All politics aside, I completely disagree. It is both unconstitutional, and bad diplomacy. "Ignore the President for two more years, and maybe we'll elect somebody else" doesn't really work for me.
37. I agree there is a huge difference. I don't think Speaker Pelosi's trip was treasonous, or whatever is being spouted, or that various Congresscritters shouldn't go on fact finding missions. Just that the Speaker is a symbolic post, and has the potential to give confusing signals about who is in charge.
But with a lame duck president at 28% popularity, isn't "ignore our president and maybe we'll elect someone better in two years" our effective position vis-a-vis the world anyway? I mean, he could do something insane and unilateral, and nobody should force the Democrats' hands by doing something deliberately provocative, but the executive isn't looking so feisty these days to any reasonable observer.
And of course it's neither unprecedented, nor particularly unconventional.
Wait, it's okay for Congresspeople to do it, so long as they aren't the speaker? Or am I badly misreading your objection?
I don't think anyone would have thought that Pelosi was undermining anything if she hadn't worn a headscarf at a mosque. This is just outrage in search of a justification.
Following up on 32, here's a version from Steve Clemons, pitched sort of bizarrely to Iranian governmental readers.
I think Pelosi should do everything she can to undercut and sabotage Bush's toxic foreign policy. There's recent precedent for it, there are excellent arguments justifying doing so in this particular case, and I doubt that the legal arguments against it are worth a hill of beans.
There's a general common-sense justification for unity behind the President during difficult times, but these aren't absolute laws, and Bush has systematically thrown away pretty much every reasonable argument for supporting him.
45 is dead-on, but in fact, I haven't seen anyone persuasively contradict Pelosi's contention that her trip in no way undercut Bush policy. I will acknowledge that Bush's Middle East policy is so incoherent that plausible arguments can be made on both sides of this, but I am curious what Bush policy TLL believes that Pelosi undermined?
17 gets it exactly right. I would only add that whatever anybody did, neither Britain nor the United States is currently in a shooting war with either Iran or Syria. There are evidently those for whom this is a bad outcome, but since I'm not one of them I'm inclined to give everyone involved in both incidents a pass at the moment.
It's not unconstitutional and it's great diplomacy. Bush wouldn't be half as bad if he were to actually embrace his calling in life as the Bad Cop and let other, Good Cops, do their work. It's great for the US as well, as it helps us do what must be done; keep the taint of the Bush Administration from staining the world's opinion of the US as a whole as much as is possible. By holding out reminders of what US foreign policy conducted by non-morons is like, Pelosi keeps that legacy alive for the next president.
It was both a right and a useful thing to have done. To the extent that it signals that Bush isn't in 110% charge of US policy, that's a feature, not a bug. It also has the merit of being true; Congress has a major role to play in the formulation of US foreign policy, both traditionally and in the letter of the Constitution. It's a favorite fantasy of Republicans that it is not so, but that's why 'Iran-Contra' is considered a scandal rather than a normal exercise of executive foreign policy discretion.
Hell, Iran Contra is scarcely considered a scandal these days. How many of the principals are back in the White House?
Based on the link in 16, it looks like the Iranians actually did many of the things Terry Jones mocked them for not doing. Mock executions suck. Like others, I withdraw any criticism of the soldiers or attempts to exculpate the captors.
How on the gods' green Earth could one find much to criticize about the soldiers' behavior in captivity? Whether it was right to sell their stories after they got home being another thing entirely, Jesus, if it'd been me I'd have shat myself every five minutes for the duration. Inspecting boats during an unpopular war near a contested boundary with a fairly bellicose neighboring nation run by a guy painted in the media as a crazy dude with a funny name? Yeah, I think I'd have been cooperating just as hard as I could to keep anything really terrible from happening to me, anyone I was with, anyone back home or anyone in whose care I found myself for the time being. Even if it were nothing but tea and cookies the whole time I think I'd probably (a) say "please" and "thank you" as often as possible and (b) want to go home really really fucking bad.
Jesus, if it'd been me I'd have shat myself every five minutes for the duration.
Amen. My first thought, at the "crying myself to sleep" bit, was "Fuck. I'd be crying myself to sleep, too." But of course I wouldn't have told anyone afterwards 'cause I'm hard like that.
The "I was kidnapped by Iranians and all I got was this lousy suit" stories are still hilarious, though.