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- Ajajadude, on 10/11/2007, -9/+60As long as Germany doesn't get that evil twinkle in it's eye, the world might still be ok.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+201 British Royal Marine = 18 Iranian soldiers
- Nighttime, on 10/11/2007, -2/+20FTA: The enduring nature and scale of current operations continues to stretch people". Gen Dannatt warns the army had to "augment" 2,500 troops from other units for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to bring up the total force to the 13,000 needed there. This remained "far higher than we ever assumed", he says.
How many people are in their military? 13,000 doesn't seem like a huge number to me. A country of over 60 million people can't manage a military presence of 13k? - andy3109, on 10/11/2007, -1/+17Please don't ever become president.
- rick2k, on 10/11/2007, -0/+15hardly secret document.. it was more like press release
- powatom, on 10/11/2007, -3/+15Perhaps if the government didn't force us into a ***** war - people would actually sign up for the military.
To all those blaming 'socialism' - grow up. A large military isn't nearly as necessary as it was in the days before MAD and long-range cruise missiles. Why send in troops when we can just sit at sea and bomb the ***** out of the country? The only reason the troops are stretched thin now is because we went to war with absolutely no ***** plan other than 'to win'. The Taliban in Afghanistan, and the official Iraqi army were defeated incredibly quickly. The fact that we stayed there and tried to force a system of government which neither nation could handle at the time, has caused both the resurgence of the Taliban, and the massive influx of insurgents in Iraq. The lesson should have been learnt by now - don't go to war if you don't know what to do after it. No nation can go from dictatorship to democracy overnight - and it certainly can't be forced. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -11/+22not surprising, most of them have ended up dead, maimed, or just psychologically messed up after that evil piece of ***** blair decided to send them to iraq. would be interesting to see who would come to help us (UK) if some other country got that hungry look. i doubt the US has many troops left to spare either...
- icyfire111, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9Well, its kinda ironic that it was Britain who actually created Iraq which was a failed state to begin with. Iraq is actually only a country on map and not in reality. The colonial British randomly drew lines without regards to ethnic boundaries when they left in the 1920s and 30s (kinda like how the British and other European powers screwed up all of Africa and Africa is paying dearly today with innumerable wars and bloodshed). I love how no one holds the colonial European powers responsible for all the wars going on today since it really is their fault for the most part.
- cymbol, on 10/11/2007, -0/+81. Recuperation as a result of combat
2. Recruitment vs. Retirement
3. Maintaining operations in Britain: intel, clerical, logistic, command, etc.
4. Maintaining military operations around the world
The US military is stretched thin as well, with Bush dipping deep into the Reserves in order to maintain a presence of 120k soldiers or so in Iraq, and that's with over 1 million in its membership.
The total population of Britain, on the other hand, is about 20% of that in the US. - biohazd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8The US has plenty of troops left because all of the work in Iraq is done by contractors that are massively over charging you (yay for cost-plus!).
- blacklist, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7No wonder they are nearly out of troops. They have less troops than Mexico. I randomly pulled troop numbers from a few countries.
8 Iran 545,000
9 Turkey 514,850
18 Brazil 287,000
24 Eritrea 202,000
23 Colombia 207,000
27 Mexico 192,770
28 United Kingdom 187,970
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_active_troops#_note-UK
Britain has about 1/3 the military capacity of Iran - shackleton1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Active troops by proportion of population:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_troops_per_thousand_citizens
Both US and UK are "weaker" than... well... a lot of countries. But of course, the reality is that military isn't just about number of active troops. - shackleton1, on 10/11/2007, -4/+11There are not 20 million muslims in the UK. I have no idea where you get your information.
- loganhid, on 10/11/2007, -4/+11Secret document? - this has been out in the open since yesterday and in many news channels here in the UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/20/ntroops120.xml - tehxen3, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Number of troops != military capacity. UK has a technologically advanced army which is still among top 5 armies by military budget and that's what matters.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9Thank you, Tony Blair! Oh wait - you're out of office now. So your stupid decisions aren't your problem anymore. Thanks for leaving Britain defenseless. Who are you going to screw over in your next job?
On the positive side, Napolean is NOT going to invade, and Wellington doesn't have to do Waterloo over again, but the French still don't bathe nearly enough. And garlic. Let's not talk about garlic. - meatmcguffin, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7England != UK. Why is it so hard?!
edit : if someone replies with 'that's what she said', i will set fire to your shoes - ccL1, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9Now is the best time for Argentina to militarily reclaim the Falkland Islands.
- toetagger, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Bush will institute the draft. Any body who doesn't believe Iran is
next is delusional. Iran is now asking for oil payments in money
that is not dollars. Saddam tried this. - Crimsoneer, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9Oh yes, it was massively stupid. Now we don't have the troops we need to...to...oh, wait. We don't need troops. My bad.
- foofightrs777, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Please, won't this "Clinton gutted the armed forces" meme die.
# 1988:2,138,213
# 1989:2,130,229
# 1990:2,046,144
# 1991:1,986,259
# 1992:1,807,177
# 1993:1,705,103
# 1994:1,610,490
# 1995:1,518,224
# 1996:1,471,722
# 1997:1,438,562
# 1998:1,406,830
# 1998:1,385,703
# 2000:1,384,338
Bush reduced the active personel by a bit over 400,000 in his FOUR years. Clinton reduced it close to the same, though slightly less over, EIGHT years. At the time, with the complete collapse of the USSR just about everyone agreed this was a good move. Now, the question is, if this was such a bad policy decision, in which both parties had a hand, why didn't Bush II immediately bump our numbers back up to acceptable levels? After all, following 9/11 he basically had a blank check to do whatever he wanted to.
Yeah, blame Clinton for every problem we face today, brilliant.
PS: and yes, there are about 100,000 additional private contractors (mercenaries) in Iraq on top of our armed forces. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5MOD responds to press reports regarding UK troop levels
21 Jul 07
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/DefencePolicyAndBusiness/ModRespondsToPressReportsRegardingUkTroopLevels.htm - icyfire111, on 10/11/2007, -4/+9yea, that's what they thought in 1938
- kuzotz, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Well the US is now using National Guardsmen. They receive almost no combat training and get their training from real life combat itself. They are just sent to Iraq with no idea how to cope with the effects of combat. It is ridiculous and its called a back door draft, and its been going on for awhile. Some people get sent on more than 8 deployments now, and some people never come back until like 3 years later.
Anyway its crazy, and right now we can't even shift our military's regiments normally allowing for the ones that were active to rest until the next deployment.
I keep telling other Americans this ***** but they are too busy being self centered or making money or watching tv that they don't even know the reality of things, and don't understand that we can't be paranoid everyone hates us lets stop pissing off countries and lets start seeing the root cause of why they are pissed at us. - armo, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6actually defence spending has increased under our not-so-socialist labour government. However under the right-wing conservatives it was cut from 35bn in 1985 to 25bn in 1997 and labour were (perhaps foolishly) quite content to have an approximately inflationary rise
- kuzotz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5that is what she said.
- theoallardyce, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Bush and Blair and now Gordon seem to think we can just invade countries at the drop of a hat and stay there as long as we like. I dont think they fully understand the consequences: deployed forces cost billions of dollars a month to maintain. Just to fuel up aircraft and keep them going in sandy conditions costs phenomenal amounts of money, manpower and risk to life and depreciates this military equipment. Man-portable missiles used against pickup-trucks cost around £70,000 each - we're firing these things off every day. Even a round from a tank or artillery costs over a grand - thats £1000+ per shot
George Bush, Tony Blair, Gorden Brown and everyone else who has pushed for this war is literally grinding our military into the ground, destroying our equipment, putting lives at risk and costing us so much money we are risking everything for an investment that is failing badly. - MrTulip, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4hey this time we made sure we'd have the wunderwaffen ready BEFORE we start ze next worldwar. nukes? lol.
- Crimsoneer, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4A "secret" document ey? Well, thank god somebody got hold of that..
- zebbie, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Given the fact the Iraqi resistance fighters dont have the Luftwaffe I think we will be ok over here. God help anyone actually in Iraq tho.
- hplasm, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Is that your shoes I smell...
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5At present, there's an estimated 1.6 million Muslims in the UK, with approximately 50% being British born, making Muslims the largest religious minority in Britain.
http://www.britishembassy.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1101390902975 - acl123, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I'm sorry for you and your family fermi. Your opinions are disgusting.
- seadeus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4While I may lack the diplomacy and compassion of fermi, I don't think there is any doubt we would help the U.K. In an emergency troops are not the only option; we have long range bombers that can really ruin your day, submarines, and plenty of missiles. Plus, anything that causes use to spend money helps are corrupt elite so they would be eager to have us (not them) fight in a war as long as we had a popular victim to be helping making it an easy sell to the public. The U.K. is well supported here, even if your last PM had a boy crush on Bush, so I think you can be assured you would get the backing from us. It's a win-win for the decision makers.
- Tenlow, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Dont forget, here we have the draft so there's always more troops.
Maybe england should start a foreign legion. - hplasm, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5You may need troops to fight of Fermi and the Bush Stormtroopers...
- CapEnt, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4They can build some too, in a blink of a eye...
- KielKilla, on 10/11/2007, -3/+7I fear America more then Germany.
@PickledJesus You do know nukes won't only blow Germany up. Everyone would ***** team up on you. - blackjack75, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4You know we have a 200k "army" in Switzerland too (used to be 400k a decade ago) .. but seriously should anyone attack we'd just get on our military bikes and run to the mountains. The army here is mainly a big organisation that allows you to visit other regions and learn to smoke pot and drink beer.
Remember iraq was supposedly the fourth army in the world (for those who remember the 1991 propaganda). - CharlesP2009, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5The British survived years of attacks from the Nazi's in WWII, they'll survive this.
- chochazel, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5So there's the United Kingdom, with all its history, contribution to human understanding, to science, to economics, to engineering, to popular culture and to a million other fields of human endeavour... and in the same space you've produced... Delaware. This is supposed to be an insult? To whom? I'm no patriot but:
a) there's a richness of history, culture and learning in the UK that is clearly greater than the space involved
b) reducing the importance of a country to the space it takes up is inane - how much do you know about the administration of the Antarctic territories etc.
c) what's your point? We've all heard of Delaware, and manage not to confuse it with other States, as well as knowing the difference between Virginia and West Virginia.
d) What is England + UK? One is the subset of the other, why is that hard to understand?
e) not knowing something is fine. It's your pride in languishing in your own ignorance that makes you an idiot. - TexMurphy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Sean Langan reported about the British lack of troops in these documentaries. Moreover British Ministry Of Defense tried to stop him from broadcasting this documentary. If your care about whats going on in Afghanistan you should watch this, theres no gore just eye opining.
.
Fighting The Taleban. Part 1 of 5 2007
Part 1. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qhjP-VQcyoU
.
You can than all this mess to Bush and the Neocons.... - kuzotz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4a draft in the US would cause riots of unbelievable circumstances.
- meatmcguffin, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I'm coming for you......
- NuWeb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3The UK dont need troops,
US spends cash on Luxurys for Army.
UK spends cash on training and equipment, PROPER MEN.
---
Anyway, Who cares, If all goes wrong.... We got the Nuke. - GreyICE, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Yeah, its slightly over a million people in the armed services, but it can still only field ~500,000 troops, and probably less than 100,000 of those would actually be decently suited to fight professional soldiers. 18 months of service only goes so far.
- VitriolAndAngst, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3"We almost have no capability to respond to the unexpected..."
Neocon translation; Mission accomplished. - zebbie, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3The UK does have a small hobbyists collection of thermonuclear weapons though so from a purely defensive standpoint we didnt need too big an army till we voted in genocidal nutters like bLiar.
Sad for the troops out there that the newspapers have given the Iraqi resistance the nod that if they just keep going a bit longer the UK will have to form some sort of volksturm to send or leave altogether. - Osjpr, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Is it just me or did upwards of 40 people digg that comment by Ajajadude? Are there really that many 80-90 year olds on digg???
Evil doesn't twinkle in the eyes, morons. - martalli, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Don't forget about India. Millions of people died during the Partition, and the British were woefully unable to stem the tide of violence at the time.
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