DAR AL HARB - U.K./U.S.A.: GIVE ME THE 'BRUTE FORCE' OF AN AMERICAN SOLDIER THAN THAT OF A BRITISH ONE THAT CRIED BECAUSE HE WAS CALLED MR. BEAN ! ! !

Details of sailors' capture embarrasses 'Old Brits'
By ROBERT BARR

LONDON — The spectacle of Royal Navy sailors and marines "confessing" on Iranian television and returning home to sell their stories to the tabloids has Britain wondering what's happened to a military once famous for bravery, valor and toughness.

It all seemed a far cry from the Battle of Trafalgar when Lord Nelson's vastly outnumbered fleet sank combined French and Spanish forces, or even 25 years ago when a naval task force crushed Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands.

"They were distinctly un-Nelsonic," reired Gen. Michael Rose, former commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, said in an interview published today in the Daily Mail.

Nelson "said the great business of a naval officer was his duty to the king or queen and that his own private wishes — painful though it may be — did not count," Rose said.

Some of the detainees explained upon their return that they had confessed to sailing into Iranian waters under the pressure of solitary confinement and threats of lengthy imprisonment.

It was hardly what the nation expected from the British soldier, and the embarrassment was heightened by even less decorous details that emerged.

Royal Navy Operator Maintainer Arthur Batchelor, who sold his account to the Daily Mirror newspaper, complained that his captors called him "Mr. Bean" after a character on a British TV comedy series.

Recalling the moments after the crew was captured, Batchelor said: "A guard kept flicking my neck with his index finger and thumb. I thought the worst."

Britain has prided itself on the performance of its force in Iraq, and commentators often boast of the troops' professionalism and sensitivity in contrast to the supposed brute force of trigger-happy Americans.

Criticism from across the Atlantic has therefore been particularly galling.

"Everything about the British reaction revealed a civilization in decline," said U.S. talk show host Dennis Prager in a commentary on the conservative Human Events Web site.

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the British had let down the Western alliance in its confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program.

Tehran, he told the British Broadcasting Corp., had been testing British and European reaction — and "there was not much of a reaction at all."

Indeed, Britain's saber never rattled throughout the crisis — it relied instead on diplomatic channels and eventually suffered the humiliation of being told by the Iranian president that the sailors were being returned "as a gift."

Not like the days of Empire.

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1) Details of sailors' capture embarrasses 'Old Brits'