Thatcher and the Falklands...

[Robches]

turanhosting wrote:

> There were still peace negotiations going on until the Belgrano
> was sunk, full scale war was not a certainty until then.



Except that the Argentines tried to launch a carrier strike the day before the Belgrano was sunk, that's how much they thought of these peace negotiations. They were never going to work, because any solution acceptable to Britain was unacceptable to Argentina, and vice versa.

[Robches]

turanhosting wrote:

> So why did Senator Alexander Haig, a veteran of the Vietnam war
> consider it worth carrying on with the peace negotiations if
> they were so futile? 'Jaw-Jaw is always better than War-War' as
> one well-known wartime PM put it.

Who knows? I doubt the Argentines told him they were planning a carrier strike on our task force.

[RoddersUK]

You amaze me Mutley, I find myself agreeing with you.

[Sam Slater]

Mutley? That takes me back.

Say hello to Dibble for me.

[Robches]

turanhosting wrote:

> No carrier strike actually took place, yet more speculation
> rather than analysis of historical events there. You can't
> explain why somebody as well-respected as Alexander Haig was
> prepared to broker a peace treaty when nobody in the UK
> governement was prepared to try the same.

Look into the history, even good old Wikipedia reports it. The Argentine navy was all ready to launch an air strike from their carrier, but couldn't get the wind over deck needed to launch fully bombed up Skyhawks. The Argentines don't have any problem over this, it's only the British who are beating themselves up.

As for Haig, I'm not sure he was that well respected. He was the Secretary of State, and yes he was trying to put together some sort of peace deal, but in reality it wasn't going to happen. The Argentines crossed the line when they invaded the Falklands, they would not back down, and neither would Britain, this was only going to be settled by force of arms.

[max_tranmere]

I've been away for nearly a week. A lot of interesting comments there. One thing I would say is that if the war was happening now, or at anytime in the last 20 years, every minute detail of it would be shown on TV, analysed, scrutinised by a panel of (armchair) 'experts' thousands of miles away who would pass judgement, and so on. At least we were spared that - unlike during the Gulf War and the Iraq War.

[andy at handiwork]

The relative isolation of the Falkland Islands, and the almost total control of the embedded media by the MoD, would ensure that if it occurred now we would almost certainly not be seeing every detail of it shown on tv.