I'm with Jon Snow. There was no reason to place others at risk in order to give special protection to Prince Harry. Nor is it legitimate for there to be a collusive arrangement involving parts of the media to keep the public in the dark, in order that these media organisations can profit later on by selling more special 'royal' pictures and news stories.

As far as I am concerned, Harry has now gone up a couple of notches in my estimation of him.
Although I thought that he was nothing more than a waste of space, I will now give him full marks in achieving what he wanted to do all along, his persistence has actually paid off.

Lev, you certainly have a very low opinion of the British squaddie, I'm sure that you'll be surprised to know that the British forces don't send daft boys to fight their wars, even if you think that they are supervised by hairy arsed squaddies or otherwise.

Harry is no more a hero than any others serving in that theatre, the only reason that he's in the limelight is because of who he is, and this is not meant to be a bad reflection on the others.

This of course is the fault of the media. They are the ones highlighting his army career.
I'm sure that Harry would love nothing better than to finish his deployment in Afghanistan and return home with his unit.
Unfortunately because of the media coverage that won't happen now.

The only thing that makes Harry more of a hero than all the rest of the men is the fact that he had the option to bottle out and didn't take it. The media was asked to keep it quiet to keep everyone safer, not just Harry.

Ask any squaddie; they think they're just blokes out there doing their job. Harry is no different. As a civilian, however, I think they're all heroes. (Whether the war is legal, justified or whatever. The army does not make that decision).

The Laird wrote:

Oh? How do you come to that conclusion?


Simply because it is UN sanctioned and it is a NATO operation.

Oh i see, so it suits the US and UK to have UN backing when they want it but rub the nose of the UN when they oppose it.

Oh aye and because its a NATO operation, so thats makes it all right then.

I hear Chemical Ali is being put to death for war crimes..............what a laugh!

The biggest war crimminal can be found at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC, just sitting there looking glaiket!

Don't get me wrong, Harry has been in there 'doing his bit' but should he or any of 'our troops' be there in the first place?

Simply because it is UN sanctioned and it is a NATO operation.

Oh i see, so it suits the US and UK to have UN backing when they want it but rub the nose of the UN when they oppose it.

Oh aye and because its a NATO operation, so thats makes it all right then.

I hear Chemical Ali is being put to death for war crimes..............what a laugh!

The biggest war crimminal can be found at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC, just sitting there looking glaiket!

Don't get me wrong, Harry has been in there 'doing his bit' but should he or any of 'our troops' be there in the first place?

The point i was making is that unlike Iraq this war is deemed legal.whether we like it or not our troops are in there and i don`t imagine any of them want to be there,but they get on with the job without too much fuss.

Who is a war criminal or not is normally decided by the winning side so there is not much chance of Dubya being taken to task,though i tend to agree with you on that

Oh, my Giddy aunt.

I'm presently watching BBC live from RAF Brize Norton, where PRINCE HARRY WILL SOON BE LANDING!

"First of all he'll get off the plane and walk across the tarmac, just like any other flight. He'll go into the terminal building and collect his baggage. Then he'll be met by his family..."

I think I'll write into the BBC explaining what colour of socks I'm wearing and how I chose them. It might make the news at six at this rate.

It's enough to make you weep...

dws wrote:
Oh, my Giddy aunt.

I'm presently watching BBC live from RAF Brize Norton, where PRINCE HARRY WILL SOON BE LANDING!

Your choice of TV viewing is somewhat disturbing, dws.

have you not got a copy of the recent Hearts v Rangers match to watch Much more interesting.

The Laird wrote:
have you not got a copy of the recent Hearts v Rangers match to watch Much more interesting.

It would certainly be less disturbing than having to watch Harry's plane land.....but I'm unlikely to watch either

TLJ wrote:
dws wrote:
Oh, my Giddy aunt.

I'm presently watching BBC live from RAF Brize Norton, where PRINCE HARRY WILL SOON BE LANDING!

Your choice of TV viewing is somewhat disturbing, dws.

I was under the impression that I was watching the news headlines on BBC1. What do I get? Some balloon on an RAF airstrip telling me how someone gets aff a plane and collects his baggage!
Cut to an ex-desert rat to ask what will be going through Prince Harry's mind at the moment.
Then onto some woman whose point escapes me to inform us on Royal protocol.

Ach, jist geeza flag, will ye? Ah'll staun here n wave it...

dws wrote:


Ach, jist geeza flag, will ye? Ah'll staun here n wave it...

You asked. Scotsgait delivers.

GIRUY!!

It was for this opportunity to acquire reams of juicy copy that the BBC saw fit not to report the news, as Jon Williams explains here:

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/02/n...ackout.html#c6747254
http://tinyurl.com/2cdmk2

The whole episode makes me feel queasy.

Cry 'God for Harry, England and St George'

In their acclaim for this new Prince Hal, the media have once again made themselves the useful idiots of disastrous military adventurism

By George Galloway

01/03/08 "The Guardian" -- - As the peerless John Pilger put it, the invasion of Iraq would have been impossible without the supine connivance of the British media. The BBC was as much a part of operations as the Black Watch.

Five years on and a further instance of the kind of collusion that embeds journalism in the sewer of state spin. Peter Wilby says the media were "suckered", but that's a charitable view.

The case for the media keeping mum about Prince Harry's deployment to Afghanistan is straightforward enough - protecting not only his security but that of those around him. If that were all there was to it, then there would be little to consider, except the extraordinary double standard of the British media, which means that some people's safety and privacy is deemed worthy of protection and others' not.

But a moment's thought should puncture the gushing, sentimental story of the media and the MoD uniting in the national interest - reporters and royalty, prince and paparazzi standing together against a common foe.

At the very least, news of this collusion has made life very difficult for reporters, especially conscientious ones, in the BBC and other news organisations. Many people across the world already believed the BBC to be complicit in the British government's crimes of war. Now the corporation has acknowledged that it colluded with the state to suppress and manipulate the news.

How will that improve the standing of British correspondents abroad? Or their safety.

But collusion certainly didn't end there. The media is ever a hungry beast, and it was inconceivable that it would fast for three months without the promise of bacchanalian orgy at the end of it.

And so the flipside of 10 weeks of radio silence is wall-to-wall Harry, as the pin-up of the armed forces, one of the lads, full of derring-do, a British hero on Afghanistan's plains straight out of Tennyson or Kipling.

For a military adventure which, now, even the US's senior intelligence officer concedes is staring into the abyss, this could not have come at a better time.

Over the last few months, I've asked at public meetings, on my radio show and on walkabouts, why people think we are in Afghanistan, what would define the "victory" which would allow us to withdraw with laurels. Our ambassador in Kabul - a double-barrel who might also have walked out of 19th-century page - says we are going to be there for 30 or 40 years.

Other countries, wisely, are none too phlegmatic about that prospect. Condoleezza Rice's last visit to Europe was part of the US's effort to put pressure on other Nato counties to commit more troops to the Afghan quagmire.

Then comes the scoop of the young prince forsaking Boujis, despatched to that place beyond the Khyber pass by his sovereign grandmother, and enduring hardship with cheerful Tommy. There were naturally a few touches to bring it into this century - instead of fixing bayonets, we're informed he helped bring down air strikes with a handheld computer, which could easily pass for a video game; no Latin motto on his cap, instead a psychotic, dehumanised epigram that could have come from Travis in Taxi Driver: "We do bad things to bad people."

All sections of the establishment have gained from this superbly well-executed piece of theatre (incidentally, I'm not doubting Harry's personal bravery, it's just that that is not the issue): the army has a star; the BBC and Fleet Street appear to have a heart; and the royal family have a newfound source of capital at just the time that the circus that is the Diana inquest heaps more and more ordure in their direction. Out with the images of partying in a Nazi uniform, in with the young warrior who lost his mother when young but who has now grown up.

So the greatest collusion of all by the media is in perpetuating the myths of this war and in helping to craft the perfect recruitment poster.

It's better than Kitchener's "Your country needs you." Skilfully and chillingly, it speaks to this century and through the most modern media.

It is going to play an enduring role in prolonging this futile adventure, and perhaps starting others, in a country which British armies have three times before staggered out of in defeat, leaving so many of their number behind. No one, not even Alexander the Great has successfully occupied Afghanistan; and Harry, whatever you think about him, is certainly no Alexander the Great.

Brilliant! Scunnert, thank you for posting that piece by George Galloway. The way he name drops from history and literature, Galloway obviously expects his audience to be well-read. I love it! But, I wonder how well-read his audience is, actually. Does the average person in the US or UK read Tennyson or Kipling anymore or are their works confined to the study of English Literature majors around the world?

Personally, I think both sides of the Harry in Afghanistan thing should cut the kid some slack, he's being manipulated on all sides and it didn't take reading George Galloway's editorial to see it. I feel sorry for Prince Harry for a variety of reasons difficult to articulate, but mostly because he seems so vulnerable, still, even while being hailed a hero by some and severely mocked by others.