Tony Blair met the 100th British soldier killed in Iraq during his pre-Christmas visit to the country, it emerged today, as all parties paid tribute to Corporal Gordon Pritchard at prime ministers' questions.
The 31-year-old father of three was killed yesterday, dying of his injuries after his Land Rover was hit by a roadside bomb.
Cpl Pritchard had met Mr Blair on December 22 last year, when the PM visited the Shaibah logistics base, near Basra airport in southern Iraq.
Don't know the guy but he was doing his duty as he saw fit, left a widow and children, and, presuming you are honoring him, it's a bit cold to refer to him as the "dead man."
I am afraid you missed the point. The soldier is dead and his children are fatherless but the man who sent him to war is very much alive, standing on the left in the picture.Originally Posted by Bob
Sorry, but I still think it's cold how you refer to the guy as a dead man and to use his photo to apparently make your anti-war statement against Blair. Neither he nor his family deserve that.
War enthusiasts always try to hide behind "support the troops" and "honour the fallen".
If you win you don't talk much about honour, then you talk about how brilliant your military is. "Honour" is what they dust off when losing a war, or when we have been dragged into a war that wasn't needed.
What is honourable about sending people to war over scary Weapons of Mass Destruction that didn't exist, and to fight against locals who don't want them?
The best way of honouring the fallen is to make Tony Blair and the other shameless spinners who misled us into this quagmire accountable for what they have done.
Guess this thread is our own PM.....hehe. I do appreciate we've kept the tone non-personal.
Don't equate my comments with support for the war. In my opinion, it was a horrible strategic mistake, a foray into a quagmire that intelligent men would have opposed from the beginning.
Yet, that being said, I honor the hell out of the men and women serving there and the additional sacrifice made by their families at home.
I likely agree with any protest you make against the war and the ignorant politicians that led us there; however, you won't change my mind that your post above is disrespectful as hell to the soldier you show and the family he left behind.
Bob,
Bob said:
Guess this thread is our own PM.....hehe.
Did you mean "your" rather than "our". Your spelling and choice of words don't really look like UK English to me.
Not ignorant - deceitful, lying, arrogant, self-righteous, self-serving, etc, but anything but ignorant.
I don't think "dead man" is cold. It is frank, maybe blunt. What is it with the English language and death? "Famous person X dies" it says in the newspapers. Dies? When they wrote that famous person X was dead already.
Passed away, expired, left... . Call it what you want. The picture of Tony Blair and the... ahem... late soldier is galling. I know that smirk on the prime minister's face. It says "what a lovely photo opportunity with the lads in uniform". Now that particular lad is no longer among us. He is d e a d .
I respect Blair for his skills but if he had been a CEO in a private company he would have been fired after a bummer like Iraq.
I'm from the US, Northstar, and my reference to "our" was just friendly comment with Silom as only he and I were having the discussion at the time.
Knowing a couple of families who have lost loved ones in the Iraq tragedy, I reacted to part of the posting that I felt would be offensive to them. I now realize that was not intended by Silom so I'll move on.
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