Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Britain Threatened

An Iraqi militant group threatened to kill 1 of 5 British hostages in 10 days if Britain does not withdraw its troops in Iraq. One of the hostages has been held captive for over 170 days and feels "forgotten."
Although violence in has significantly decreased over the past two years, do you think that it will continue to decrease?
Do you think that Britain will withdraw all or some troops?
Do you think that Britain did actually "forget" about the hostages? Why or why not?

For more info check out:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0439309120071205?sp=true

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought Britain had already withdrawn from Iraq...

Shieva said...

apparently not?!! check out the link for more info

benji said...

I know that the article said that violence is at the lowest point it's been in two years, but I'm not sure if that's completely honest. The casualty figures, which I'm guessing is all reuters is using to qualify this claim, haven't shown a consistent negative trend. April, May and June of 2007 all had over 100 U.S. casualties, which is way higher than the norm. It makes more sense to me that as more troops are thrown into the Iraqi deathtrap, more are goning to die. How can anyone claim that adding more soldiers to a war will equal less casualties? Come on.

Here's where I got my information from:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Anonymous said...

i think that if Britain does listen to the terrorist and withdraws their troops, they will be proving the successful capabilities of terrorism. the only way to prove that terrorism is beatable is to not negotiate with them. one hostage's death is worth sending the message to terrorists that they will not win with the tactics that they are currently using.

Anonymous said...

I disagree with the opinion that Britain should not yield to terrorists' demands just to make a statement of its stance. Although it's true that terrorists should be given that power, I don't think a government should have the right to determine that a person should die for the "greater good." Just imagine if you were in the same position.. what would you want the government to do?

Anonymous said...

Britain has already announced its plans to witdraw half its troops by next spring, and to continue to steadily withdraw after that. However, this decision was most likely made because of the mounting pressure put on the British government by the people, and not because of any terrorist threats.