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This has to be one of the most ludicrous pieces of "journalism" I have ever read.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...diers-killed--imagined-Dominic-Sandbrook.html
Apologies if SEB!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...diers-killed--imagined-Dominic-Sandbrook.html
Apologies if SEB!
Prince Harry captured. 600 of our soldiers killed. In this terrifying plausible account, DOMINIC SANDBROOK imagines the day the Argies retook the Falklands
By Dominic Sandbrook
The date is July 27, 2012, and in London the Olympic Games are about to begin. For months, the British people have been looking forward to the jamboree of patriotic enthusiasm.
But now that the day is here, the mood feels heavy with gloom. The crowds are thin, the drizzle pours down. The Union Flags hang forlornly in the dull breeze.
Even the nation's new Prime Minister, the blinking, stammering Ed Miliband, cuts a remarkably limp figure, a melancholy leader for a nation sunk in misery.
Several thousand miles away, across the cold seas of the South Atlantic, the atmosphere could hardly be more different. For in the capital of the Islas Malvinas, the archipelago formerly known as the Falkland Islands, an Argentine victory parade is underway.
Though victory in the Second Falklands War was secured only a few weeks ago, the islands' conquerors have already been busy.
At the tiny airport that serves Puerto Argentino — formerly Port Stanley — a gigantic mural commemorates the soldiers from the mainland who lost their lives.
Beside the old Anglican cathedral, draped with a massive blue-and-white flag, the statue of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner gazes impassively out to sea.
For the Iron Lady, as her adoring country-men call her, the war was a turning point, securing her place in South American history for all time.
But for Britain, battered by months of economic austerity, it was a tempest that swept away the Coalition government and destroyed any lingering illusions that the United Kingdom was still a serious power.
As the Argentine troops parade triumphantly down Avenida Leopoldo Galtieri, a few miserable islanders stand and watch. Many have already booked their flights back to Britain, sick of the Spanish road signs and posters of Diego Maradona.
The tragic irony, of course, is that we should have seen it coming.
When in December 2011, the South American trading bloc Mercosur (comprising Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) voted to ban boats flying the Falklands flag from docking in their ports, many people shrugged their shoulders.
But a few brave souls warned that this was merely the latest shot in a diplomatic campaign that, if left unchecked, could turn into outright war.
As far back as February 2010, Mrs Kirchner had begun sabre-rattling over Britain's supposedly 'illegal' oil drilling off the Falklands. With her own economy sunk in crisis and oil experts predicting a windfall beneath the Atlantic, the Argentine president was playing a long game.
Meanwhile, military experts warned the Coalition that its projected cuts would make defending the islands simply impossible.
Under the terms of the Strategic Defence and Security Review, the government had committed itself to scrapping the Harrier Jump Jets and decommissioning the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, effectively hobbling its capacity to strike back against an Argentine invasion.
In October 2010, Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward, the architect of victory in the South Atlantic in 1982, warned that a surprise attack would be 'highly likely to succeed'.
Thanks to the swingeing cuts, he insisted, the Argentines could take the islands 'with barely a shot being fired'.
But to their eternal shame, the Coalition ignored his warnings. And they even ignored an even more aggressive bout of sabre-rattling from Mrs Kirchner, who declared the following summer that Britain was merely a 'crude colonial power in decline'.
All this, however, was merely a taste of what was to come.
For as 2011 neared its end, the Argentine president was keeping a close eye on events in Europe.
Heartened by the freezing of relations between Britain and its Continental partners, Mrs Kirchner calculated that the rest of the European Union would never back Britain's claims to the disputed islands.
Indeed, discreet signals from Paris indicated that President Nicolas Sarkozy would look kindly on an Argentine invasion, since it would bring David Cameron to heel. Over Christmas and New Year, Argentina's military chiefs drew up their plans.
The islands, they told their president, were protected only by 1,000 British soldiers, four Typhoon fighter jets, a warship, and, from time to time, a nuclear submarine.
'Thanks to the cuts, there is little chance that the British would muster an adequate response to the liberation of the Malvinas,' wrote her principal military adviser. 'What is more, the international position has never been more favourable. If we strike now, we will enjoy the support of our neighbours as well as the muted encouragement of Great Britain's European rivals.'
What appealed to Mrs Kirchner was the fact that the spring of 2012 would mark the 30th anniversary of the first Falklands War, in which Margaret Thatcher's intrepid British task force had retaken the islands.
Indeed, some reports suggest that it was her outrage at Meryl Streep's triumph at the Oscars for the Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady that made up the Argentine president's mind.
As the weeks progressed, Argentine intelligence kept a close eye on events in Britain. Behind the scenes, they reported, the Coalition was increasingly divided.
And with Britain's economy plunging back into recession, Vince Cable quitting the Cabinet and the anti-capitalist Occupy movement spreading to city centres across the country, the South Americans knew the time was right.
Late on April 2, 2012, the anniversary of their first invasion, Argentine Special Forces landed on a deserted beach south of Port Stanley. By the early hours of the following morning, they had stormed the nearby British barracks and were heading for Government House.
Argentinian leader Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (right) would have a statue on the islands
Argentinian leader Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (right) would have a statue on the islands
In London, the reaction was bedlam. In a packed House of Commons, David Cameron promised he would stop at nothing 'to get our islands back'.
But already cracks were forming. On the streets of London, anarchist protesters chanted 'Give Them Back!'
And on the floor of the Commons, Labour's Ed Miliband told MPs that Britain should not fire a single shot without the approval of the United Nations.
By the middle of April, Mr Cameron had given his approval to the formation of a task force to retake the Falklands. But already it was obvious that it would be a far more desperate undertaking than it had been under Mrs Thatcher.
Without Harrier jump jets or aircraft carriers, the Prime Minister's naval chiefs explained, the mission would be hazardous to say the least.
....
