{"id":574,"date":"2006-03-12T15:08:36","date_gmt":"2006-03-12T14:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2006\/03\/12\/sas_man_quits_over_us_tactics"},"modified":"2025-10-10T21:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T20:56:09","slug":"sas_man_quits_over_us_tactics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2006\/03\/12\/sas_man_quits_over_us_tactics","title":{"rendered":"SAS man quits over US tactics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2006\/03\/12\/nsas12.xml&amp;sSheet=\/news\/2006\/03\/12\/ixhome.html\">The Sunday Telegraph reports<\/a> that a long-standing member of the SAS (Special Air Service, an &eacute;lite British armed service) has quit because he is no longer willing to serve alongside US forces because of their attitudes and methods:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nHe said he had witnessed &quot;dozens of illegal acts&quot; by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as &quot;untermenschen&quot; &#8211; the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Actually, the term is older than Nazism; it probably originates with the philosopher <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nietzsche\">Friedrich Nietzsche<\/a>, who also coined its opposite <em>&Uuml;bermensch<\/em>, though for different purposes too complex to go into here.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nMr Griffin, 28, who spent two years with the SAS, said the American military&#39;s &quot;gung-ho and trigger happy mentality&quot; and tactics had completely undermined any chance of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population. He added that many innocent civilians were arrested in night-time raids and interrogated by American soldiers, imprisoned in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, or handed over to the Iraqi authorities and &quot;most probably&quot; tortured.<br \/>\nMr Griffin eventually told SAS commanders at Hereford that he could not take part in a war which he regarded as &quot;illegal&quot;.<br \/>\nHe added that he now believed that the Prime Minister and the Government had repeatedly &quot;lied&quot; over the war&#39;s conduct.<br \/>\n&quot;<strong>I did not join the British Army to conduct American foreign policy<\/strong>,&quot; he said. He expected to be labelled a coward and to face a court martial and imprisonment after making what &quot;the most difficult decision of my life&quot; last March.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Sunday Telegraph reports that a long-standing member of the SAS (Special Air Service, an &eacute;lite British armed service) has quit because he is no longer willing to serve alongside US forces because of&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war_in_iraq_afghanistan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-9g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42541,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions\/42541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}