Set against the 3,000 plus American dead in Iraq, reported British casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan appear remarkably ‘light’ - to all except the families and comrades of the fallen.

But anyone tempted to think that we can afford to carry on with Blair’s pathetic no-win, do-it-on-the-cheap, ‘wars’ must consider three rarely understood points:

1) Given that Britain has only some 7,000 soldiers in Iraq, while the USA has 134,000, our casualty rate is in fact very similar to theirs. If we had 134,000 soldiers out there (unlikely, of course, because our castrated army doesn’t even have that many soldiers) then our death toll at present would be in the region of 2,500.

Bearing in mind that our troops are in a supposedly ‘peaceful’ Shi’ite sector, rather than tied down in the Sunni triangle, the comparative figures suggest that our boys (and girls) are suffering the consequences of inferior kit, tin can Landrovers and all.

2) Both the American and British death rates mask a hidden horror. Massive improvements in battlefield first aid techniques, casualty evacuation speed and the technologies of hospital treatment mean that the death rate for wounded service personnel has fallen dramatically.

During the Korean war (the last one where large numbers of GIs and Squaddies were in it together) the death rate was roughly one dead for every ten wounded. In Iraq this has dropped to ‘just’ one in twenty.

Overall, of course, this is very good news. But the hidden side effect is the corresponding jump in the number of survivors who are terribly maimed or disfigured, for life. “The legless, the armless, the blind, the insane” of this war are being shipped home in far larger numbers than the figures for bodybags would suggest.

Is it too much to hope that a small band of these betrayed and forgotten victims of Blair’s deceit and arrogance will make it their business to hobble around him and haunt every photo opportunity of Labour’s next General Election campaign?

3) Winter will soon be over in Afghanistan. When it is the reorganised Taliban will step up their attacks on our under-funded, under-manned and ill-equipped garrisons in that God-foresaken barren wilderness. Our casualties there will inevitably go through the roof.

If they had wiped out heroin production it might be worth it. If they were killing Islamic fanatics faster than they are being recruited over there, and if at the same time the networks of Islamic advance in Britain were being dismantled, it might be worth it.

But those things are not happening. Our boys are being sent to die or be maimed in futile no-win ‘wars’ against a politico-religious imperialism whose takeover of our homeland is still being encouraged by our own ruling elite, and part-funded by them with our tax money.

Bring our boys home. Now!

http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=1301