Intensely Relaxed About Youths With Guns

A Conservative MP has warned that any attempt to prosecute British paratroopers for recruiting for the IRA would have dire consequences for the war on terror or, as Daveybloke has recently re-branded it, the war on not helping the Iraqi and Afghan governments with their security. Patrick Mercer, a former army officer and sometime Ireland correspondent, said that "the Taliban and al-Qaida are all too aware of the restriction on troops in the individual countries they come from", which doubtless explains the massive casualty rates among occupying troops as compared to the liberated populations. Mercer is worried that, if officers get no protection from the law when their men happen to kill the wrong people, "their soldierly instincts will be severely curtailed". This, of course, would result in a fatal and unmilitary emphasis on intelligence and planning rather than instinct, whereupon all our great victories from Basra to Helmand would be fatally undermined.