"Certainly not all historians, and maybe not even most historians, and we certainly do have examples above of historians who don't say this."

OK I take it that Dave is talking about historians who have made the study of the First World War their speciality - YES or NO?

As you do have examples of historians who don't say this Dave would you care to name them. I can only think of one Niall Ferguson who said it was a mistake for Great Britain on economic grounds - only thing is that this hypothesis of his is based on the erroneous assumption that after a German victory in the west in Belgium and France that everything would go back to the way it was before hostilities.

Now then GUEST DAVE as you'll take the word of Harry Patch above anything else here is what Harry said about killing the enemy - note the change at the end:

Shooting to kill

I never knew Bob [Harry's friend and gunner] to use that [Lewis] gun to kill. If he used that gun at all, it was about two feet off the ground and he would wound them in the legs. He wouldn't kill them if he could help it.

[A German soldier] came to me with a rifle and a fixed bayonet. He had no ammunition, otherwise he could have shot us. He came towards us. I had to bring him down. First of all, I shot him in the right shoulder. He dropped the rifle and the bayonet. He came on. His idea, I suppose, was to kick the gun if he could into the mud, so making it useless. But anyway, he came on and for our own safety, I had to bring him down. I couldn't kill him. He was a man I didn't know. I didn't know his language. I couldn't talk to him. I shot him above the ankle, above the knee. He said something to me in German. God knows what it was. But for him the war was over.

He would be picked up by a stretcher bearer. He would have his wounds treated. He would be put into a prisoner-of-war camp. At the end of the war, he would go back to his family. Now, six weeks after that, a fellow countryman of his pulled the lever of the gun that fired the rocket that killed my three mates, and wounded me. If I had met that German soldier after my three mates had been killed, I'D HAVE NO TROUBLE AT ALL IN KILLING HIM."

You take the word of Harry Patch, yet you discount the words of others who were there and fought for a far, far longer time than Harry Patch - some saw service in France in the infantry for the entire duration of the war - perhaps that is because what they say does not matched your blinkered and biased view of the conflict, borne I would suspect from the 1960s anti-war portrayal and presentation of it that was made to order for an agenda all of its own.

Gnome if the British Government of the day saw that to act the way they did was in our nations best interest and on examining the facts and the appraisal of what they saw as being the likely outcomes I have no problem in stating them - no speculation on my part. So who is it that has changed the subject? What bluster?

Sorry Guest Dave - nobody had to invent the 45 minute claim the Iraqis were armed by the Soviets and went on to make domestic copies of Soviet weapons. Fact: To arm a GRAD Rocket, Artillery Shell, Bomb or a SCUD missile with any Chemical/Biological Agent from the time the order is given to the time that weapon is ready to be used IS 45 minutes.