Excellent article/blog in the Torygraph:
British humiliation becomes disgrace
...........Servicemen and women should be held to a higher standard than civilians, though listening to the six of the 15 who spoke on their return it was hard to believe these were military personnel...
So what should be done about this debacle? First, Tony Blair should step in now and direct that monies any of the 15 receive from newspapers as a result of their "ordeal" should be donated to the Royal Navy Benevolent Trust. Second, a naval Board of Inquiry - leading to possible courts martial for the captain of HMS Cornwall and other senior officers - should be held into the circumstances surrounding the seizing of the two RIBs by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard....
Why is Britain training officers who seem to think that their number one priority is to do nothing that could risk the lives of personnel? Why did they not have the most basic appreciation of how their briefings and apologies in front of nautical charts would be used for propaganda purposes? Why did many of the 15 - with Lt Carman front and centre - believe it was appropriate to greet the news of their release with giddy excitement, grins, waves, back-slapping and grovelling gratitude to President Ahmadinejad ?...
I've re-watched the return press conference (in which Carman, Air, Massey, Batchelor, Tindell and Sperry spoke). Note how Air and Carman refer to LS Turney as "Faye" (Carman: "Faye is a young mother and a wife"; Air: "Being in an Islamic country, Faye was subjected to different rules than we were.") To me, that betrays a lot. Officers should refer to sailors by their rank and surname. To do otherwise is an insult to their professional status. But then look at the MoD website in which Air and Carman are listed as "Chris" and "Felix" - this slack ethos comes from the top. Any sense of a command structure appears to have broken down. Carman stated: "We all at one time or another made a conscious decision to make a controlled release of non-operational information."....
The 15 personnel are not those most at fault here. They were serving their country and trying to do their best and were badly let down by those who trained, briefed and tasked them......
In the meantime, those of us who are proud to have served in the Royal Navy and HMS Cornwall can only shake our heads in disbelief and sadness.