Originally Posted by Donkey

Wow some people have their head frimly placed up their arse....

I still love how the US moved a Navy force of 10,000 (2 air craft carrier groups) and are doing manuvers in the area (practicing attacking enemy ships)...

I also love how they say it is just coincidence and they are not flexing muscle....

So Monty with your logic anyone that is taken against their will, is what a guest????

-edit


Captives on TV
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17827481/

Ok the British soldiers trespassed...The Iranian government defy the world with its nuclear intentions...I say they wanna play like that, well use your imagination.....

I can see you and P80 obviously went to the Bulldogg school of English comprehension which I can only assume is an off shoot of the Fox school of journalism and the McDonalds university of burgerology.

Can I suggest you take it upon yourself to find a dictionary and get a definition for the term hostage and what you will see is that they by definition are not hostages any more than anyone that has been arrested is a hostage by international law they may be being illegally held by Iran I am not disputing that and some time in the future they may become hostages but right now they are only being held by Iranian forces.

As I said earlier if you are going to continually attack the media for scaremongering, bias and over sensationalising everything then at least show enough clarity of thought not to emulate them with every post.

MontyB is right. They are not Hostages, at least not yet. That is of course subject to change.

The difference between a hostage and a prisoner is that a hostage is held as collateral in exchange for something else. For example money, freedom of self or others, political demands, etc. One wouldn't call inmates in a State Prison hostages would you? Of course not.

In this case, Iran has not made any demands for the Royal Marines release yet. Therefore the UK Marines are only prisoners.

Inmates in a state prison are there legally having been arrested, charged and convicted of a crime. The soldiers in question were not. They were taken captive in international waters by a country that there are no open hostilities with at this time.

Demands for their release need not be explicit nor public to meet the definition of being hostages.

Originally Posted by bulldogg

Inmates in a state prison are there legally having been arrested, charged and convicted of a crime. The soldiers in question were not. They were taken captive in international waters by a country that there are no open hostilities with at this time.

Nothing in what you say meets the definition of a hostage, spin it anyway you like but currently they are only detained or as the British have stated "taken captive".

Demands for their release need not be explicit nor public to meet the definition of being hostages.

Maybe not but there has to be demands to meet the requirement of the term hostage and until there is hostage doesn't apply but keep twisting things I am sure a scenario can be created to fit the story, you don't work for Fox do you?

Just because YOU have not heard the demands does not mean there are none, come on this is Logic 101.

They now have demanded and decide to back away from releasing the woman...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17827481/

Originally Posted by bulldogg

Just because YOU have not heard the demands does not mean there are none, come on this is Logic 101.

And just because you imagine there are doesn't make it so either, logic would dictate that the UK/US are looking for reasons to justify an attack this almost gives them those reasons and any Iranian demands would add weight to the justifications therefore logic 101 would dictate that any demands would be released for maximum effect.

Originally Posted by Donkey

They now have demanded and decide to back away from releasing the woman...

Its an interesting twist but I am not sure that an admission of guilt would be enough to make them hostages, I base this off an argument New Zealand had with Israel a couple of years ago when we caught a couple of "agents" operating with fake New Zealand passports and part of their release conditions were an apology and an admission of guilt from the Israeli government and I honestly don't recall anyone insinuating that we were holding them hostage over it.

If for example Iran suddenly decided that they wanted UN sanctions dropped, prisoners released or 40 tons of weapons grade Uranium per captive then yes I would agree that they are hostages.

On a more topic related note though there seems to be a lot of inconsistencies with the stories both sides are pushing in this argument seriously if they were 3km inside Iraqi waters (and I suspect they were in Iraqi waters not International waters) then why didn't the British frigate do something, 3km is a lot of water to cover to get back to the relative safety of your own border especially when the thing you are running from can blow you out of the water from a much longer range. Makes you wonder what the RoE are for these vessels.

the only language the mullahs of Iran understand is that of FORCE.

If for example Iran suddenly decided that they wanted UN sanctions dropped, prisoners released or 40 tons of weapons grade Uranium per captive then yes I would agree that they are hostages.

That can only depend on intent. Currently the Iranian government still did not fully disclosed any information of their position on this incident and therefore we can only assume. Nevertheless, this is very surprising and it somewhat suggests that the Iranians decided to adopt a more aggressive policy in confronting with the UK/US.

Its only surprising if one never suspects the worse in a regime.

As for the demands and maximum effect. I'd argue that a thinking enemy would realise that public demands would not be as effective as those delivered in private. Public posturing would back the UK into non-compliance (we dont make deals with terrorists et al) as the public support required in a democracy would vascilate and work against the demands being met.