Ballymurphy Inquest

Sonic67

And yet you have only constantly condemned British soldiers from the comfort of your armchair.
Then I shall look forward to your balanced posting in future.

Pacifico

and Justice shouldn't be selective either - if you are going to reopen old wounds then you have to look at all the killings rather than only those carried out by the State

Trollslayer

Or you could look at the crimes committed by 'freedom fighters' e.g. robbing banks, extortion etc.
Oh and selling drugs.

Sonic67

The reason you only hear of British army atrocities is because they are the only ones now reported on.

If all were being investigated you'd hear atrocities on both sides, far more from the IRA and would go some way to explaining why it was what it was. If your mate had been shot, tortured or blown up or you'd found kids in that way, you'd be a little less fair the next day.

I saw atrocities in Bosnia. There was a guy who tortured with a chainsaw to "stand out." Torture was so normal he had to up his game. A mate was shot at by a tank and lost his leg.

Maimed soldier bitter over MoD double standard

Kids were killed as they were Muslim.

I saw a woman and child kicked out of a house and the roof burned.

We were meant to be neutral. How neutral would you have stayed?

Trollslayer

Even though I am a civilian I have seen a few severe PTSD cases.
The only thing I could do was be there for them.

Sonic67

I know a civilian paramedic. She has a black sense of humour as her job involves dealing with the aftermath of car crashes.

She makes jokes and comments in a sick or black way but it's her way of dealing with it and she is with others who do the same.

Others won't understand it but then they shouldn't. Better they never know.

Pacifico

phil t

The soldiers, not being in a war environment, will have had to adhered to the rules of engagement and minimum necessary force.

If they operate within the rules, then what they did was lawful.

Much has been made of who fired upon whom first, as this changes the requirements of roe.

The inquests are to try and tease out what happened.

At the end of the day, allegedly the Ira killed 1700 and the British Army 300. All these demands for justice seem a little one sided.

BobbyMac

I’m away out for the rest of the day so will respond more in depth tomorrow

There’s a lot of conflation at play here

The inquest into Ballymurphy isn’t about 2Para engaging with the IRA it’s about ordinary civilians going about their business being targeted solely because they lived in a nationalist community

Sonic67

Just be more of the same. I can't wait.
Nope. As it's decades ago and just one group,  it's about a witch hunt.

In Iraq, the Iraqi's went out and bought satellite dishes after Saddam went. If one guy had tortured or humiliated an Iraqi, all the satellite news channels covered it.

Which then meant my patrol would now involve wound up locals who might shoot at me, brick me, have a riot or whatever else.

Our weeks of building bridges and gathering low level intelligence was now lost.

For you it's just something to gripe about. For me, it might have meant I died.

So I don't support any kind of abuse or torture. It made everyone else's job a lot harder.

But I'm also aware no one wants to spend their time abusing anyone or killing someone who is innocent. It's not what you join the army for. But you can be driven to do things when you are exposed to such things every day. You can be driven to it.

And nothing is solved by a witch hunt decades later. You do it at the time in a court, when all the witnesses are there, the evidence is fresh and it can deter others.

We have soldiers afraid to fire in Afghanistan because they thought they'd be prosecuted. We are massively under recruited as people know the government won't support you.

We have civilians in the 21st century criticising decisions made in a split second out of a six month tour from decades ago.