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Tory MP calls for more helicopters to evade bomb attacks

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Published Date: 06 July 2009
AN ARMED forces expert last night called for more helicopters to be deployed to Afghanistan to curb the growing number of UK troop deaths from attacks on armoured vehicles.
Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, a former infantry regiment commanding officer and chairman of Westminster's counter-terrorism sub-committee, told The Scotsman that recent deaths of soldiers in armoured vehicles proved the case for greater use of air transport to evade Taleban attacks.

Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond were killed last week when their armoured Viking track vehicle was blown up by a bomb in Afghanistan's Helmand province.

The Viking vehicles are due to be replaced next year by more than 100 larger and more heavily armoured tracked vehicles to be known as Warthogs.

"The answer is not bigger armoured vehicles but more helicopters," said Mr Mercer.

But Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth has defended the level of protection given to British troops in Afghanistan.

In the aftermath of the Viking attacks, he said: "If you ask anyone in Afghanistan, they say our forces there are better equipped than they have ever been."





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  • Last Updated: 05 July 2009 11:48 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Conservative Party
 
1

For Scotlands Future,

Vote for the SNP 06/07/2009 00:30:25
The Taliban will just use bigger bombs for bigger vehicles.

Helicopters and planes - to get the troops out and back home.
2

Jack R,

Nottinghamshire, UK 06/07/2009 13:01:55
Patrick Mercer’s call for more helicopters is mostly about adverse publicity for the government because he knows that Britain's national debt will reach £1.4 trillion after plans to borrow another £700 billion over the next five years. He also knows that helicopters cost up to £29.3 million each and cost £34,000 an hour to run.

He knows that 100,000 Soviet troops backed up by helicopters were forced out of the graveyard for foreign armies. Sir Jock Stirrup called Afghanistan a "mediaeval" state lacking even basic government structures with an endemic culture of corruption. Major Miller, serves in the Defence Intelligence Staff described the British presence in Helmand as an "unmitigated disaster", hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money had been wasted he said but Mercer seemingly is not concerned with the hopeless reality of the Afghan war and thinks that the answer is more helicopters. Major Miller said the chief "effect" of the British presence in Helmand has been to transform Helmand into the opium centre of the world.

Mercer will tell us that our boys suffer and die to keep us safe here at home, but he also said, what I believe to be the real truth. "They died to give the people of Afghanistan freedom", they fight and give their young lives for a "mediaeval" Islamic country with an endemic culture of corruption, a country where the support for the Taliban has a threefold increase compared with 2008. Apparently, that old drumbeater Mercer would have our boys continue to fight in that graveyard for foreign armies, but the never ending heartache of relatives, the ruined young lives of amputees, the mental illness caused by the horror of war that made young men old before their time will not have to be endured by Colonel Blimp.

Perhaps, he will write yet another book about war, death and destruction, and if it is about the Afghan war I suggest it be called The pawns of Afghanistan. Bring them home now, home to their families that need and want
3

Jack R,

Nottinghamshire, UK 06/07/2009 13:20:07
Sorry, I was distracted.

Bring them home now, home to their families that need and want them much more than the people of Islamic Afghanistan.
4

danbob,

06/07/2009 15:51:11
2# Good post Jack. Most straight thinking people know it will end in defeat. The more that die the harder it will be to swallow the bitter pill.

 

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