Not their finest hour

There are reports out of Kuwait that a bunch of Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to British troops conducting exercises. Apparently they tried to surrender to the 16 Air Assault Brigade, who described the Iraqis as follows:

"The Paras are a tough, battle-hardened lot but were moved by the plight of the Iraqis. There was nothing they could do other than send them back.

"They were a motley bunch and you could barely describe them as soldiers - they were poorly equipped and didn't even have proper boots. Their physical condition was dreadful and they had obviously not had a square meal for ages. No one has ever known a group of so-called soldiers surrender before a shot has been fired in anger."

If this is indeed true (and the British Ministry of Defense denies it), then it's absolutely outrageous. With the publicity that this story has received, those Iraqi soldiers are very likely dead by now, murdered by Saddam's henchmen if they made it back alive in the first place. And their families will have been targeted too. I don't care whether the war has officially started or not, sending these men back was just plain wrong. In fact, it's so wrong that I'm having trouble believing the story in the first place.

Of course, it could also be a propaganda exercise designed to undermine morale further within the Iraqi armed forces.