Browse content similar to 03/12/2015. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
Hello it's Thursday, it's 9.15, I'm Victoria Derbyshire, | :00:09. | :00:11. | |
This morning; British warplanes have carried out airstrikes in Syria, | :00:12. | :00:19. | |
four tornado jets have each dropped three massive 500lb Paveway bombs | :00:20. | :00:26. | |
The strikes started within hours of that vote by MPs. | :00:27. | :00:41. | |
The ayes to the right 397, the noes to the left, 223, so the ayes have | :00:42. | :00:48. | |
it, the ayes have it. Throughout the programme we'll get | :00:49. | :00:51. | |
reaction from you, the military and people in Syria and | :00:52. | :00:54. | |
from some of the politicians who I'm Angela, SNP and I voted against | :00:55. | :01:08. | |
because I didn't believe we'd had enough answers to the questions. I'm | :01:09. | :01:13. | |
James, Conservative MP for Kingston and Surbiton, I voted in favour of | :01:14. | :01:22. | |
the air strikes, Daesh operate in Iraq and in Syria, we are extending | :01:23. | :01:29. | |
into Syria, that is the sensible thing to do. | :01:30. | :01:34. | |
Also on the programme, Oscar Pistorius was guilty | :01:35. | :01:37. | |
of murder for shooting his girlfriends Reeva Steenkamp. | :01:38. | :01:39. | |
A South African appeal court has ruled in the last half hour that | :01:40. | :01:43. | |
a previous conviction of manslaughter should be overturned. | :01:44. | :01:45. | |
We'll bring you the details and reaction. | :01:46. | :01:51. | |
Guilty of murder with the defendant having had intent. | :01:52. | :01:57. | |
Plus, we'll bring you reaction to the news that at least 14 people | :01:58. | :02:00. | |
have been killed in yet another mass shooting at a health centre | :02:01. | :02:05. | |
There was the shooter in a building. They went into a room and locked the | :02:06. | :02:24. | |
Hello, welcome to the programme, we're on BBC 2 and the BBC News | :02:25. | :02:36. | |
Throughout the programme we'll keep you right across events in Syria | :02:37. | :02:42. | |
and we want your reaction to that vote and military action. | :02:43. | :02:47. | |
Do get in touch in the usual ways and we'll read | :02:48. | :02:51. | |
Plus, we'll keep you up to date with events | :02:52. | :02:58. | |
in Switzerland where police have arrested two Fifa offiicials as part | :02:59. | :03:02. | |
of an investigation into corruption in the world governing body. | :03:03. | :03:07. | |
And of course you can watch the programme online wherever you | :03:08. | :03:10. | |
are via the bbc news app or our website bbc.co.uk/victoria | :03:11. | :03:15. | |
and you can also subscribe to all our features on the news app, | :03:16. | :03:18. | |
by going to add topics and searching Victoria Derbyshire. | :03:19. | :03:22. | |
Within hours of that vote by MPs, RAF jets carried out | :03:23. | :03:26. | |
Four planes were involved, each armed with three massive 500lb | :03:27. | :03:32. | |
397 MPs voted for Britain to extend air strikes in Syria, 223 voted | :03:33. | :03:39. | |
Do we go after the terrorists in their Heartlands from where they are | :03:40. | :03:57. | |
plotting to kill British people or sit back and wait for them to attack | :03:58. | :04:05. | |
us? Public opinion is moving increasingly against what I believe | :04:06. | :04:09. | |
to be an ill-thought out rush to war. We are being asked to intervene | :04:10. | :04:15. | |
in a bloody Civil War of huge complexity. We are being asked to do | :04:16. | :04:19. | |
it without an exit strategy and no reasonable means of saying we are | :04:20. | :04:24. | |
going to make a difference. Daesh are the fascists of our time and I | :04:25. | :04:29. | |
believe there is still dignity in uniting with our allies in common | :04:30. | :04:34. | |
cause against a common enemy in defence of our human commandality. | :04:35. | :04:41. | |
When I go through the lobby... It will be for the refugees and it will | :04:42. | :04:47. | |
be for the security in Twickenham. Most of the factions which are | :04:48. | :04:53. | |
extremely locally based have no interest whatsoever in being drawn | :04:54. | :04:58. | |
into battles against groups which basically share their sectarian | :04:59. | :05:03. | |
agenda hundreds of miles away in areas in which they are unfamiliar. | :05:04. | :05:09. | |
Mr Speaker, instead of having dodgy dossiers, we now have bogus | :05:10. | :05:15. | |
battalions of moderate fighters. Our French allies have explicitly | :05:16. | :05:21. | |
asked us for such support, and I invite the House to consider how | :05:22. | :05:27. | |
we'd feel and what we'd say, if what took place in Paris happened in | :05:28. | :05:32. | |
London, if we'd asked France for support and France had refused. As a | :05:33. | :05:40. | |
Muslim woman, I'll stand with people of all faiths. We are justified in | :05:41. | :05:47. | |
taking action to destroy Isis, they are a threat and won't rest until | :05:48. | :05:50. | |
they have decitied us and everything we stand for. Mr Speaker, to join | :05:51. | :05:54. | |
the already ongoing bombing campaign in the skies over Syria will only | :05:55. | :06:00. | |
compound human suffering. Military intervention without credible | :06:01. | :06:00. | |
peace-building plans will only make intervention without credible | :06:01. | :06:05. | |
the situation worse, just as it did in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. | :06:06. | :06:10. | |
Socialist and Trade Unionists and others joined the national brigade | :06:11. | :06:15. | |
in the '30s to fight against Franco. It's why this sbiesh House stood up | :06:16. | :06:21. | |
against Hitler and Mussolini. It's why our party's always stood up | :06:22. | :06:27. | |
against the denial of human rights and for justice and my view, Mr | :06:28. | :06:32. | |
Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time | :06:33. | :06:40. | |
for us to do our bit in Syria and that is why I ask my colleagues to | :06:41. | :06:42. | |
vote for this motion tonight. THE SPEAKER: The ayes to the right, | :06:43. | :07:03. | |
397, the noes to the left, 323. THE SPEAKER: The ayes to the right, | :07:04. | :07:11. | |
397, the noes to the left, 323, so the ayes have it, the ayes have it. | :07:12. | :07:13. | |
Unlock. It was emotional, it was thoughtful, | :07:14. | :07:16. | |
it was passionate, it was nuanced. I watched BBC Parliament yesterday, | :07:17. | :07:29. | |
some of the speeches were brilliant, some were not. | :07:30. | :07:30. | |
For the new intake of MPs, those who were elected to Parliament | :07:31. | :07:33. | |
just seven months ago, none surely could have imagined | :07:34. | :07:36. | |
they'd be voting on what could turn out to be the most important | :07:37. | :07:39. | |
We've brought together some of those politicians elected | :07:40. | :07:44. | |
in back in May, three who voted for extending air strikes to Syria. | :07:45. | :07:47. | |
Alex Chalk, Gavin Robinson and James Berry voted | :07:48. | :07:53. | |
for airstrikes, Two who voted against, Clive Lewis from Labour, | :07:54. | :07:58. | |
As you can see, only Angela is here this morn, Clive and Louise pulled | :07:59. | :08:10. | |
out at the last minute. Let me ask you then, seven months into this | :08:11. | :08:13. | |
job, did any of you ever think you would be making a decision of this | :08:14. | :08:17. | |
magnitude at this stage in your political career? | :08:18. | :08:22. | |
I think in an ideal world you would never have to make decisions like | :08:23. | :08:25. | |
the one we had to make last night. But the situation in Syria is far | :08:26. | :08:30. | |
from ideal and the situation that we find ourselves in at home and abroad | :08:31. | :08:34. | |
is far from ideal, so when the decision comes, we can't shirk it. | :08:35. | :08:38. | |
We can't set aside the important decisions of national security just | :08:39. | :08:40. | |
because we are new to Parliament. There is a heavy burden on our | :08:41. | :08:45. | |
shoulders and last night not only the majority of young and new MPs, | :08:46. | :08:48. | |
but the majority of MPs, made the right decision. Can I just add to | :08:49. | :08:53. | |
that, one thing I think is good is that it's Parliament that's making | :08:54. | :08:55. | |
this decision because it's the new convention. It used to be the Prime | :08:56. | :09:00. | |
Minister acting under his powers, now there is that say for Parliament | :09:01. | :09:04. | |
and our democracy's for it. Although it wasn't that long ago that David | :09:05. | :09:07. | |
Cameron took the decision to use drones to kill two British Jihadists | :09:08. | :09:13. | |
in Syria without Parliament giving its say-so, but I broadly take your | :09:14. | :09:17. | |
point. Angela, in terms of you making your decision, you are just | :09:18. | :09:21. | |
seven months into the job, what was that like for you? This is always | :09:22. | :09:27. | |
going to be a difficult decision, irrespective of how long you are in | :09:28. | :09:30. | |
the job. It will be at the forefront of your mind, the constituents and | :09:31. | :09:38. | |
who you represent And the far-reaching impact this has. Nobody | :09:39. | :09:41. | |
could forget that point or undermine the importance of that. | :09:42. | :09:46. | |
What about you, James? Nothing can prepare you for having to take a | :09:47. | :09:50. | |
decision as grave as sending our troops into battle. As an MP, there | :09:51. | :09:58. | |
are lots of things that have to do, I had to speak at a funeral of a | :09:59. | :10:03. | |
14-year-old girl ran over in my constituency. You have to listen to | :10:04. | :10:07. | |
the arguments, not to take a decision lightly and go with your | :10:08. | :10:12. | |
conscience and that's what I did. Nothing prepared you, but did you | :10:13. | :10:17. | |
feel equipped to make that decision? I did, we had briefings from senior | :10:18. | :10:21. | |
members of the military and the Cabinet and the RAF and we had all | :10:22. | :10:24. | |
the information that I think we possibly could have had to make that | :10:25. | :10:29. | |
decision. When you went to bed last night, were you nervous about the | :10:30. | :10:33. | |
decision you'd reached or, did you sleep soundly? I didn't sleep | :10:34. | :10:38. | |
soundly. I obviously voted against air strikes and felt really strongly | :10:39. | :10:42. | |
that having spoken at great length, there are thousands of pieces of | :10:43. | :10:45. | |
correspondence from constituents who didn't want us to take part in air | :10:46. | :10:50. | |
strikes. So despite having taken the right decision for them, I don't | :10:51. | :10:55. | |
rest easy with the decision that's been made because I have to think of | :10:56. | :10:59. | |
people living in Syria and living with the consequences. Did you sleep | :11:00. | :11:09. | |
soundly? Yesterday was a more difficult position than last night. | :11:10. | :11:13. | |
In the run-up to the vote and the considerations that were made, there | :11:14. | :11:16. | |
were quite a number of MPs last night who made their decision after | :11:17. | :11:20. | |
the final speech with Hilary Benn, a speech that I think will be historic | :11:21. | :11:27. | |
and recognised as such a significant contribution to Parliamentary life. | :11:28. | :11:31. | |
Interestingly, the Shadow Foreign Secretary closing the debate and | :11:32. | :11:36. | |
speaking for air strikes in obviously direct opposition to his | :11:37. | :11:40. | |
leader earlier in the day? Yes. At the start he was complimentary | :11:41. | :11:43. | |
towards his leader as well and recognised there was a burden on | :11:44. | :11:47. | |
members of his own party. We can't get away from the fact that there | :11:48. | :11:51. | |
was a huge burden on people of whatever decision they took at the | :11:52. | :11:56. | |
end. A huge burden yesterday. Whilst there was not a sense of relief, I | :11:57. | :12:01. | |
was pleased the vote had been taken and indeed comfortable with the | :12:02. | :12:05. | |
outcome. Alex, I think you made up your mind finally just on Tuesday, | :12:06. | :12:09. | |
the day before the vote. What was going through your mind until then? | :12:10. | :12:15. | |
Well, I started from a position of I think probably a healthy scepticism. | :12:16. | :12:18. | |
Every time you are being asked to commit British forces, I think | :12:19. | :12:22. | |
you've got to make sure the case is absolutely made and initially my | :12:23. | :12:26. | |
concern was look, it's an idealogy as well as an army, can you achieve | :12:27. | :12:30. | |
anything from 35,000 feet. Because of the briefings we got, I asked for | :12:31. | :12:35. | |
one with Theresa May in person and I said, these the things I need your | :12:36. | :12:39. | |
assistance on, can you persuade me. By the end of it, the case had been | :12:40. | :12:43. | |
made and I reached my decision with a clear conscience. Yes. I made my | :12:44. | :12:48. | |
decision over the weekend, had briefings like the one that Alex | :12:49. | :12:52. | |
mentioned and, to me, it was a very clear decision, one I reached with | :12:53. | :12:56. | |
heavy heart, it was a grave decision, but it was quite clear hi | :12:57. | :13:02. | |
the right one. I know there were MPs who, as Gavin says, weren't | :13:03. | :13:07. | |
convinced by Hilary Benn's fantastic speech yesterday, one of the best | :13:08. | :13:12. | |
I've heard in my life. There were Labour MPs in tears in that speech, | :13:13. | :13:17. | |
listening to it, because a number of Labour MPs have come under an | :13:18. | :13:22. | |
unbelievable amount of pressure, being threatened with deselection, | :13:23. | :13:26. | |
having marches and nobody can prepare you for that. We would have | :13:27. | :13:32. | |
liked to have talked to Louise and Clive who agreed to come on the | :13:33. | :13:35. | |
programme yesterday to ask to put some of those points to them, but | :13:36. | :13:39. | |
maybe we'll get to talk to a Labour MP at some point throughout the | :13:40. | :13:45. | |
programme this morning. Angela, air strikes have now taken | :13:46. | :13:50. | |
place, British involvement in Syria has happened. Four jets, each armed | :13:51. | :13:54. | |
with three huge bombs, they have returned to Cyprus without the | :13:55. | :14:01. | |
bombs. Britain is bombing IS targets in Syria? For me, the reason I voted | :14:02. | :14:06. | |
against it is because I'm not convinced that any further air | :14:07. | :14:09. | |
strikes will make the Belindaest bit of difference at this stage. There | :14:10. | :14:13. | |
are already ten countries in Syria. What difference does the UK | :14:14. | :14:18. | |
contribute and how will that help Syria, I'm not persuaded. It's a | :14:19. | :14:22. | |
fair question and we'll ask the gentlemen who voted for the air | :14:23. | :14:26. | |
strikes, but those bombs, we are told, have targeted oil fields | :14:27. | :14:32. | |
controlled by IS, that is one of the ways they are funded. Is that not a | :14:33. | :14:37. | |
good thing to take those out? The arguments coming through yesterday | :14:38. | :14:40. | |
were about getting to the source, where is their funding and weaponry | :14:41. | :14:45. | |
coming from and we in the SNP agree that action has to be taken against | :14:46. | :14:50. | |
Daesh, we are not sitting back saying no action has to be taken, | :14:51. | :14:54. | |
but I'm not persuaded this is the right action and I would like to see | :14:55. | :14:57. | |
more action taken but in the right way. Your reaction, three men here | :14:58. | :15:04. | |
who voted for air strikes, they have begun, British jets are involved, | :15:05. | :15:09. | |
how do you react to that? It's unhelpful to talk about bombing | :15:10. | :15:12. | |
Syria. How would you describe it then? We are attacking Daesh and we | :15:13. | :15:17. | |
can't lose that focus. It's smack ticks though isn't it? It's not. | :15:18. | :15:21. | |
Irrespective of where they are and how they are going to harm us or the | :15:22. | :15:24. | |
people in the countries in which they operate, they are a target. -- | :15:25. | :15:34. | |
semantics. I have sympathy for the people horrifically oppressed, | :15:35. | :15:39. | |
similarly for those in Iraq. 74 attacks alone by Daesh in the UK, we | :15:40. | :15:42. | |
have to recognise the enemy is there, not the Syrian people, not | :15:43. | :15:46. | |
the country of Syria, but the borders and we need to hunt them | :15:47. | :15:50. | |
down. The reality is though that the | :15:51. | :15:52. | |
Syrian people will have to live with it, that is where they live. Two | :15:53. | :15:58. | |
million children are out of school right now. How does air strikes in | :15:59. | :16:03. | |
Syria prevent young people from guaranteeing a future. Daesh will | :16:04. | :16:10. | |
not encourage them to live in a tolerant, multi-Kellth cultural | :16:11. | :16:13. | |
pacifist society. Daesh will not provide a good future for the | :16:14. | :16:18. | |
children of Syria. Every day we allow them to dig in, gain oil | :16:19. | :16:24. | |
wealth. More gay people thrown off buildings, more people brutalised | :16:25. | :16:26. | |
and killed and more children out of schools. We have to step up, not | :16:27. | :16:31. | |
particularly when they just inspire offences but they commission | :16:32. | :16:32. | |
atrocities in Britain. I absolutely agree with you about | :16:33. | :16:42. | |
the innocent people who will be affected but the decision taken last | :16:43. | :16:45. | |
night will impact on their lives as well. None of us underestimate the | :16:46. | :16:50. | |
decision but I know a lot of SNP MPs and a number of the more left-wing | :16:51. | :16:53. | |
Labour MPs voted against air strikes in Daesh in Iraq in November 2014. I | :16:54. | :16:59. | |
can completely understand the intellectual case for someone who | :17:00. | :17:03. | |
voted against that voting against bombing Daesh in Syria as well, but | :17:04. | :17:07. | |
for us to recognise a border which Daesh themselves do not recognise, | :17:08. | :17:12. | |
they operate across both countries, for us to stop our air strikes at | :17:13. | :17:17. | |
the border which diets themselves do not recognise, to me, makes no | :17:18. | :17:22. | |
sense. I want to read messages from people having this conversation | :17:23. | :17:25. | |
around the country, but a quick question, what is the Exeter | :17:26. | :17:32. | |
strategy? I think Exeter strategy puts this into the confines of going | :17:33. | :17:37. | |
after a country where you go to a place and keep. Daesh does not | :17:38. | :17:42. | |
recognise borders. What we need to do is reduce their capacity, reduce | :17:43. | :17:45. | |
the impact they will have here and in the UK and abroad. Reduce the | :17:46. | :17:51. | |
impact they are having on people. What will success looked like? Less | :17:52. | :17:57. | |
capability, less in fact, reduced threat in this country and to | :17:58. | :18:02. | |
release the Rheims -- release a loose around the necks of the people | :18:03. | :18:12. | |
suffering in strict -- in Syria. One viewer says, I watched the debate | :18:13. | :18:17. | |
and felt sick when the MPs clapped. We are meant to feel safer now? As | :18:18. | :18:24. | |
for the people in Syria, I could weep for them. One on Twitter says, | :18:25. | :18:28. | |
not in my name. From Robert, this is a disgraceful vote, a rush to war, a | :18:29. | :18:35. | |
sad day for us all. An e-mail from Lewis, this is ridiculous, not only | :18:36. | :18:38. | |
to the majority of the public despise it but David Cameron is | :18:39. | :18:43. | |
scaring people into voting by using the phrase terrorist sympathiser. It | :18:44. | :18:48. | |
is manipulative. Alison says, I am an SNP supporter, but I am | :18:49. | :18:53. | |
disappointed by their attitude toward Syria, don't they understand | :18:54. | :18:56. | |
we are a target? Thank you for those. | :18:57. | :18:59. | |
You can find a list of how your MPs vote on the BBC News website. | :19:00. | :19:03. | |
Throughout the progrmame we'll bring you the | :19:04. | :19:05. | |
We'll bring you reaction from the military, from Syrians | :19:06. | :19:10. | |
living in this country and in Syria, and we'll bring you the latest live | :19:11. | :19:13. | |
And more on the dramatic judgment overturning Oscar Pistorius' | :19:14. | :19:24. | |
manslaughter conviction and replacing it with murder. | :19:25. | :19:29. | |
Britain has carried out its first air strikes in Syria, | :19:30. | :19:34. | |
just hours after MPs voted in favour of military action. | :19:35. | :19:52. | |
Jets set off from their bases in Scotland and Cyprus, | :19:53. | :19:54. | |
targeting so-called Islamic State targets in the east of the country. | :19:55. | :19:57. | |
The jets dropped 500lb laser-guided bombs on oil fields | :19:58. | :19:59. | |
The Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said | :20:00. | :20:01. | |
I can confirm that four British Tornadoes were in action after the | :20:02. | :20:07. | |
vote last night, attacking oilfields in eastern Syria, the oilfields from | :20:08. | :20:11. | |
which the Daesh terrorists derive a huge part of their revenue. | :20:12. | :20:22. | |
The Government won the vote with more than 170 -- with a majority of | :20:23. | :20:31. | |
more than 170. More than 60 Labour MPs backed | :20:32. | :20:32. | |
the Government in last night's Commons vote, including Shadow | :20:33. | :20:34. | |
Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn. It is time for us to do our bit in | :20:35. | :20:40. | |
Syria, which is why ask my colleagues to vote for this motion | :20:41. | :20:42. | |
to light. -- tonight. 14 people have been killed | :20:43. | :20:47. | |
in a mass shooting at The attackers, Wimbledon and a man | :20:48. | :20:58. | |
in their 20s, were shot dead by police. It is the deadliest attack | :20:59. | :21:02. | |
in the US since a school shooting in in 2012. | :21:03. | :21:10. | |
In the past hour, Oscar Pistorius has been found | :21:11. | :21:12. | |
guilty of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013. | :21:13. | :21:14. | |
The decision by South Africa's Supreme Court overturns a previous | :21:15. | :21:16. | |
The judge said he had fired the fatal shots with criminal intent. | :21:17. | :21:23. | |
Guilty of murder with the accused having had criminal intent in the | :21:24. | :21:29. | |
form of dolus eventualis. The methods referred back to the trial | :21:30. | :21:34. | |
court to consider an appropriate in terms of the -- in light of the | :21:35. | :21:37. | |
judgment. Let's catch up with all | :21:38. | :21:38. | |
the sport now. It's | :21:39. | :21:43. | |
a phrase we often find ourselves saying and today there have been | :21:44. | :21:46. | |
further arrests made for bribery. Swiss Authorities suspect two | :21:47. | :21:51. | |
high-ranking Fifa officials may have accepted millions of dollars | :21:52. | :21:54. | |
of bribes. They were arrested in dawn raids | :21:55. | :21:57. | |
at a Swiss hotel in Zurich. That's where we will find sports | :21:58. | :22:11. | |
news correspondent Richard Conway On May 7th Fifa officials were | :22:12. | :22:14. | |
arrested in the very same hotel in Zurich on corruption charges, | :22:15. | :22:20. | |
but the body will have more fingers On the field of play, | :22:21. | :22:23. | |
there was a fantastic result for Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool | :22:24. | :22:26. | |
in the League Cup last night. A 6-1 away win over Southampton, | :22:27. | :22:28. | |
put them into the semi-final and set A trip to Wembley in February | :22:29. | :22:31. | |
would be just the thing to really Their fans will be dreaming | :22:32. | :22:36. | |
of an all-Merseyside final with Everton drawn with Manchester City | :22:37. | :22:39. | |
in the other semi. So we'll see how that pans out, | :22:40. | :22:41. | |
it's shaping up nicely. We'll take a look as well at | :22:42. | :22:44. | |
Great Britain's Hockey team who are flying high at the | :22:45. | :22:47. | |
World League Final in India. Lots of reaction to the fact that | :22:48. | :23:01. | |
British jets have been dropping bombs in Syria. We will take you to | :23:02. | :23:05. | |
RAF Lossiemouth now. Look at these pictures, we can see a plane, I'm | :23:06. | :23:09. | |
told this is a transporter plane, taking off and heading for the | :23:10. | :23:11. | |
British RAF base in Cyprus. On its way to the RAF base in Cyprus | :23:12. | :23:53. | |
from RAF Lossiemouth, it will be joining the various other Tornado | :23:54. | :24:00. | |
and Typhoon jets which are based in Cyprus. More Tornados heading out to | :24:01. | :24:06. | |
eastern Syria overnight after the vote by MPs in the House of Commons. | :24:07. | :24:19. | |
They are back there this morning. We will leave those pictures then | :24:20. | :24:21. | |
up. That transporter plane on its way to | :24:22. | :24:23. | |
the RAF base in Cyprus. So, the talking about whether to | :24:24. | :24:26. | |
take military action is over. The first British air strikes | :24:27. | :24:28. | |
against targets in Syria have begun. Just hours after MPs voted to extend | :24:29. | :24:31. | |
the war against so-called IS by 397 votes to 223, four Tornados | :24:32. | :24:36. | |
loaded with bombs took off from Our world affairs correspondent | :24:37. | :24:51. | |
Richard Galpin is there. We have also seen a number of jets taking | :24:52. | :24:55. | |
off from Lossiemouth in Scotland and East Anglia. Our correspondent Craig | :24:56. | :25:01. | |
Anderson is that Lossiemouth, Alex Dunlop is at RAF Marham. I think we | :25:02. | :25:03. | |
can talk to all of them right now. Let's start with you in Lossiemouth, | :25:04. | :25:12. | |
if we make. We have just seen the transporter plane taking off for | :25:13. | :25:19. | |
Cyprus. What would it be giving? -- what will it be doing? | :25:20. | :25:25. | |
We saw buses arriving, it will be taking engineers, ground staff and | :25:26. | :25:32. | |
maintenance supplies to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, to service the planes | :25:33. | :25:35. | |
that left here this morning. We saw a total of six Typhoon warplanes | :25:36. | :25:40. | |
heading off as well as one Tornado from here at RAF Lossiemouth, | :25:41. | :25:44. | |
Lossiemouth being one of the main bases in the UK for the Typhoon. The | :25:45. | :25:48. | |
tycoon is one of the most advanced warplanes anywhere in the world, it | :25:49. | :25:54. | |
carries an array of precision guided bombs and missiles, as well as very | :25:55. | :25:57. | |
sophisticated surveillance and reconnaissance equipment on board. | :25:58. | :26:04. | |
As well as single-seat aircraft. They will be joining the Tornados, | :26:05. | :26:09. | |
slightly older, not quite as fast as the Typhoons but still very, very | :26:10. | :26:14. | |
capable, and of course the air strikes against Syria may have | :26:15. | :26:18. | |
started but the air strikes against Iraq will continue, and these planes | :26:19. | :26:28. | |
will be doubling the compliment of British warplanes currently based at | :26:29. | :26:31. | |
RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Let's go to Cyprus, then, Richard | :26:32. | :26:35. | |
Galpin, world affairs correspondent, talk through which jets have left | :26:36. | :26:39. | |
there, what they have done and what has happened since they returned? | :26:40. | :26:46. | |
Yes, there were four Tornados which were based here, which took off last | :26:47. | :26:50. | |
night. As understanding is it was very soon after the vote in | :26:51. | :26:54. | |
parliament, perhaps within an hour. They had obviously been pre-fight | :26:55. | :26:58. | |
targets, they knew beforehand what they would hit. Essentially what we | :26:59. | :27:03. | |
understand if they hit an oilfield under control of Isis militants in | :27:04. | :27:09. | |
the east of Syria, an area called Omar, apparently, and they hit six | :27:10. | :27:14. | |
targets in that oil fields, apparently, according to Michael | :27:15. | :27:17. | |
Fallon, Defence Secretary, heating the wellheads. He said the mission | :27:18. | :27:21. | |
was successful but they are still assessing the damage so we should | :27:22. | :27:24. | |
perhaps he later in the day exactly what they managed to achieve. But | :27:25. | :27:29. | |
clearly the significance of this is trying to take out the sources of | :27:30. | :27:43. | |
revenue which Isis has, and the oilfields, several of them, are very | :27:44. | :27:45. | |
important. They bring millions of dollars in revenue to the militants, | :27:46. | :27:48. | |
so very significant revenue streams. It is only recently, actually, over | :27:49. | :27:50. | |
the last few weeks or months, that any of the coalition partners led by | :27:51. | :27:53. | |
the United States have started attacking the oilfields or the | :27:54. | :27:57. | |
tankers taking the oil to the markets, which, in a way, is | :27:58. | :28:01. | |
strange, given how much money they have been bringing to the militants | :28:02. | :28:05. | |
to enable them to operate. But certainly the Americans and also the | :28:06. | :28:11. | |
Russians have been bombing them over the last few weeks. | :28:12. | :28:16. | |
Four Tornados each carrying three massive ?500-macro bombs, the jets | :28:17. | :28:20. | |
returning without the bombs. Do we know how many oilfields, how much | :28:21. | :28:24. | |
damage has been caused by those bonds? -- three massive 500 pounds | :28:25. | :28:31. | |
bombs. My understanding is it was one | :28:32. | :28:38. | |
oilfields, but I maybe wrong. Within that, they hit six different | :28:39. | :28:42. | |
targets, the wellheads, so basically it. Then being able to get the flow | :28:43. | :28:47. | |
of oil and being able to sell it on into the market, as I was saying. | :28:48. | :28:51. | |
But at the moment we are waiting for the information to find out about | :28:52. | :28:54. | |
how successful that targeting has been. | :28:55. | :28:58. | |
OK, thank you, Richard Galpin in Cyprus. | :28:59. | :29:01. | |
Let's come back to Britain, Alex Dunlop is at RAF mark. What has been | :29:02. | :29:12. | |
happening there? Hopefully will be able to hear me | :29:13. | :29:15. | |
over the din of another plane taking off, it has been very busy in the | :29:16. | :29:18. | |
last ten minutes. Just before 9am this morning we saw one Tornado | :29:19. | :29:20. | |
rolling down RAF Marham's long runway, taking off into the rather | :29:21. | :29:23. | |
leaden sky above me. It was followed ten minutes later by another GR | :29:24. | :29:31. | |
four, both safely en route to that base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Once | :29:32. | :29:37. | |
they are there they will join eight RAF Marham Tornados which are | :29:38. | :29:40. | |
already based on the Mediterranean island. They have been there for the | :29:41. | :29:46. | |
last 15 months also, patrolling the skies over Iraq, carrying out | :29:47. | :29:51. | |
reconnaissance sorties and also as strikes up to 400 air strikes, and | :29:52. | :29:56. | |
as Craig said it would double the RAF strike aircraft contingent from | :29:57. | :30:04. | |
eight to 16. You can probably hear another RAF Tornado taking off | :30:05. | :30:07. | |
behind me, I hope you can hear me. It is a very old hairpin, about 40 | :30:08. | :30:13. | |
years old. That said, it is bristling with technology, both in | :30:14. | :30:16. | |
the cockpit and under the Fuser large,. It is a very valuable, | :30:17. | :30:24. | |
proven asset, it has seen action in both golf pause, Afghanistan, Libya, | :30:25. | :30:32. | |
back to Iraq and now, as of last night, back over Syria. | :30:33. | :30:36. | |
Thank you very much, Alex Dunlop at RAF locking, Craig Anderson at RAF | :30:37. | :30:40. | |
Lossiemouth and Richard Galpin at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. | :30:41. | :30:48. | |
We'll speak to Lyse Doucet. I spoke to her earlier, she was explaining | :30:49. | :30:55. | |
how President Assad's government's responded to Britain's decision to | :30:56. | :31:01. | |
end the conflict in Syria. President Assad has been absolutely scathing | :31:02. | :31:06. | |
in his criticism of the West's engagement here. Before the British | :31:07. | :31:09. | |
vote, he dismissed the air campaign in saying it hasn't stopped the | :31:10. | :31:14. | |
advance of Islamic state. Now this morning, the state news agency has | :31:15. | :31:18. | |
accused the Prime Minister, David Cameron, of lying, saying they are | :31:19. | :31:24. | |
jumping over, as they put it, international legitimacy in not | :31:25. | :31:27. | |
doing like Russia did in seeking formal permission from the Syrian | :31:28. | :31:31. | |
government to start bombing in Syrian air space. This is what the | :31:32. | :31:35. | |
government's been saying here for some time, that if you would like | :31:36. | :31:38. | |
this campaign to succeed, you have to have one command and at the | :31:39. | :31:43. | |
centre of that command has to be Syrian government forces. In | :31:44. | :31:46. | |
military sense, that makes absolute sense when you go to war, better to | :31:47. | :31:52. | |
have one command with one goal but that's unthinkable for Britain and | :31:53. | :31:55. | |
its allies and for Syrian opposition groups to fight alongside the man | :31:56. | :32:05. | |
they see as the main enemy enemy. It's a reminder of how complex and | :32:06. | :32:09. | |
bloody this battlefield is that Britain is now engaging in. | :32:10. | :32:15. | |
You have been talking to citizens in Damascus, what do they say about yet | :32:16. | :32:20. | |
more bombs being dropped in parts of their country? Remember that this is | :32:21. | :32:26. | |
a country with an absolutely devastating war that is now going | :32:27. | :32:33. | |
into its fifth year that large swathes of this country were | :32:34. | :32:38. | |
absolutely ravaged. Five miles from where I'm standing in the relative | :32:39. | :32:58. | |
centre, but five miles away are neighbourhoods that are totally | :32:59. | :33:02. | |
empty. We asked people what they thought of the possible British air | :33:03. | :33:07. | |
strikes, most didn't register that Britain would become involved but of | :33:08. | :33:10. | |
course they welcome any action against the Islamic state, but | :33:11. | :33:13. | |
that's just one part of a very messy and very bloody war that is going to | :33:14. | :33:17. | |
take a very long time to end. So what they want to know most of all, | :33:18. | :33:22. | |
is that this is going to be an action that will eventually bring | :33:23. | :33:26. | |
this war to an end, not intensify it and make it even worse. | :33:27. | :33:33. | |
Let me bring you this news to do with Oscar Pistorius. | :33:34. | :33:37. | |
An Appeal Court in South-Africa has ruled that the conviction of Oscar | :33:38. | :33:40. | |
Pistorius for culpable homicide should be replaced with murder. | :33:41. | :33:50. | |
Mr Oscar Pistorius will have to go back to court. The Pistorius family | :33:51. | :33:56. | |
say, we have taken note of the judgment that's been handed down by | :33:57. | :34:00. | |
the Supreme Court of Appeal, the legal team will study the finding | :34:01. | :34:05. | |
and we'll be guided by them. We won't comment further at this stage. | :34:06. | :34:08. | |
Alongside the debate about whether to bomb so-called Islamic | :34:09. | :34:12. | |
state yesterday ran one of slightly less importance - | :34:13. | :34:15. | |
There are at least five names for the group - Islamic State, IS, Isis, | :34:16. | :34:20. | |
Until now, David Cameron has insisted on calling the group Isil | :34:21. | :34:26. | |
and criticised those, the BBC included, calling it anything else. | :34:27. | :34:30. | |
But as he urged MPs to back air strikes in Syria yesterday, | :34:31. | :34:34. | |
Mr Cameron changed his mind, saying they should be referred to as Daesh. | :34:35. | :34:43. | |
America's leading the world in the fight to degrade and ultimately | :34:44. | :35:13. | |
destroy the group known as Isil. Isil hasn't come from nowhere, it's | :35:14. | :35:16. | |
not funded by nobody, it doesn't sell its oil to nobody, it doesn't | :35:17. | :35:19. | |
receive its arms from nowhere. Intelligence by MI6 and other | :35:20. | :35:45. | |
agencies has convinced him that some of the attacks are being directed by | :35:46. | :35:51. | |
a hard core of leadership in Syria belonging to so-called Islamic | :35:52. | :35:55. | |
state. I've corresponded with the BBC about their use of "IS", Islamic | :35:56. | :36:01. | |
state which is even worse than either saying so-called IS or indeed | :36:02. | :36:06. | |
Isil, but Daesh is clearly an improvement. I think it's important | :36:07. | :36:07. | |
we all try and use this language. We can speak now with Hassan Hassan, | :36:08. | :36:33. | |
who researches IS for the foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House | :36:34. | :36:36. | |
and calls them Islamic State. And Miqdaad Versi from the | :36:37. | :36:39. | |
Muslim Council of Britain, Good morning, why call them Islamic | :36:40. | :36:50. | |
state? I call them that because they call themselves that. After the Iraq | :36:51. | :36:55. | |
war, the group was established, the previous incarnation of the group | :36:56. | :36:59. | |
was established, it used to be called Al-Qaeda in Iraq, then in | :37:00. | :37:03. | |
200, they changed their name to Islamic state in Iraq, but the | :37:04. | :37:07. | |
Americans kept using the word Al-Qaeda in Iraq for some time. | :37:08. | :37:14. | |
Until the group left Al-Qaeda in 2013 and called itself Islamic state | :37:15. | :37:18. | |
of Iraq and Syria, Isis, that's when the Americans and everyone else | :37:19. | :37:25. | |
started using the word Isil, the acronym, or Isis. | :37:26. | :37:29. | |
I think they have not caught up to the fact that the group has renamed | :37:30. | :37:34. | |
itself, or rebranded itself as Islamic state. They are called | :37:35. | :37:40. | |
Islamic state for the simple reason that they want to counter the | :37:41. | :37:44. | |
tendency to say to not call them Islamic state, just to not | :37:45. | :37:48. | |
legitimize it. I think this idea's misguided. You mean people say don't | :37:49. | :37:54. | |
call it Islamic state because it legitimizes murder and heinous | :37:55. | :37:57. | |
terrorists? Yes. David Cameron's been saying that. I think that's | :37:58. | :38:01. | |
misguided because when you don't call it Islamic state, because you | :38:02. | :38:06. | |
think that Islamic state as an idea is more pure, there's smog better | :38:07. | :38:14. | |
and more ideal about the idea. You are addressing the group itself, | :38:15. | :38:19. | |
rather than the idea and the basically the roots of the idea. I | :38:20. | :38:25. | |
think that is dealing with the group rather than the idea. Miqdad, you go | :38:26. | :38:34. | |
with Daesh, explain why? Daesh for me is for the local population and | :38:35. | :38:38. | |
everyone else in the region, that is what they call it. It comes from | :38:39. | :38:43. | |
Boak haarment and others, it's what the local population call them. They | :38:44. | :38:50. | |
call themselves other things, but nobody calls them that other than | :38:51. | :38:56. | |
than themselves. It's not the fact they call themselves, that's not | :38:57. | :38:59. | |
what other media organisations do, we have to recognise what's become | :39:00. | :39:04. | |
the term that is used in the local population. What is really important | :39:05. | :39:09. | |
is that when it comes to the media here in the UK and how the | :39:10. | :39:14. | |
population perceives this, we recognise, and it's seen from | :39:15. | :39:19. | |
experts who look to Islamophobia, that the terminology in the media | :39:20. | :39:23. | |
plays a role in the formation of the link between Islam and terrorism | :39:24. | :39:35. | |
extremism. Don't you think the audience know what kind of a group | :39:36. | :39:41. | |
they are? People who throw gay people off buildings, behead Western | :39:42. | :39:45. | |
journalists and aid workers and rape women? Of course. Maybe I would have | :39:46. | :39:49. | |
a less worry about this, but the problem is that we have a situation | :39:50. | :39:56. | |
where over a quarter of young children believe Islam and terrorism | :39:57. | :40:00. | |
are linked. Over half the population in the UK believe that Islam is a | :40:01. | :40:05. | |
threat to our civilisation and liberty. These things don'ts happen | :40:06. | :40:10. | |
by themselves, hey happen through this constant link between Islam and | :40:11. | :40:14. | |
extremism. It's right that we need to talk about the issue and the | :40:15. | :40:18. | |
yetteds of whether there should be an Islamic state which some people | :40:19. | :40:24. | |
find important. They should be discussed openly and without any | :40:25. | :40:27. | |
trouble at all. There is a big difference between that and the term | :40:28. | :40:30. | |
used which, when you talk to Al-Qaeda, we don't translate the | :40:31. | :40:37. | |
term, the Taliban, we don't translate, Boko Haram we don't | :40:38. | :40:41. | |
translate. In Arabic, people are divided inside | :40:42. | :40:45. | |
Syria and Iraq over what they call it. Islamic state don't call | :40:46. | :40:52. | |
themselves that, but people who don't see themselves as part of the | :40:53. | :40:56. | |
organisation, they call it something else. Any of those are fine. In | :40:57. | :41:01. | |
English, translating is not normal. OK. Daesh, there is no consensus of | :41:02. | :41:08. | |
the use in Arabic of the word Daesh, some people who don't like the | :41:09. | :41:12. | |
organisation and people also who don't call the organisation also | :41:13. | :41:14. | |
call it something else. Go all right, we are going to leave it | :41:15. | :41:20. | |
there. Thank you. Not sure we are any clearer necessarily but we | :41:21. | :41:22. | |
appreciate your contributions. An Appeal Court in South-Africa has | :41:23. | :41:35. | |
ruled that the conviction of Oscar Pistorius for culpable homicide | :41:36. | :41:39. | |
should be replaced with murder. Mr Oscar Pistorius will have to go | :41:40. | :41:41. | |
back to court. The Pistorius family say, we have taken note of the | :41:42. | :41:44. | |
judgment that's been handed down by the Supreme Court of Appeal, the | :41:45. | :41:47. | |
legal team will study the finding and we'll be guided by them. We | :41:48. | :41:50. | |
won't comment further at this stage. The court heard that mistakes had | :41:51. | :41:53. | |
been made in the first trial of the runner, who shot his girlfriend | :41:54. | :41:56. | |
Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013. The defendant should have been found | :41:57. | :42:04. | |
guilty of murder. On a proper appraisal of the facts, he ought to | :42:05. | :42:09. | |
have been convicted, not of culpable homicide but of murder on that | :42:10. | :42:13. | |
count. In the interests of justice, the conviction and sentence imposed | :42:14. | :42:16. | |
must be set aside and the conviction substituted with a conviction of the | :42:17. | :42:18. | |
correct offence. Let's get more from criminal | :42:19. | :42:30. | |
barrister Mani vest spvp itz who is in Pretoria. Your reaction to the | :42:31. | :42:34. | |
overturning of the murder charge? I think the reaction is very simple. I | :42:35. | :42:42. | |
think it's correct. -- Mannie Witz. It was found that on a question of | :42:43. | :42:46. | |
law, the application of the law in South Africa what you would call | :42:47. | :42:50. | |
second degree murder in the UK was wrongly applied by the judge and | :42:51. | :42:54. | |
it's a question of law and, in terms of our criminal procedure act based | :42:55. | :42:59. | |
on English law with a smatter of Roman Dutch law, they are entitled | :43:00. | :43:02. | |
to substitute the correct conviction baseden a question of law and | :43:03. | :43:06. | |
they'll end up with a further question of law, whether the | :43:07. | :43:09. | |
circumstantial evidence which surrounded the matter, including the | :43:10. | :43:13. | |
blastic evidence given on the reconstruction of the actual scene | :43:14. | :43:15. | |
where the shooting took place should have been taken into account by the | :43:16. | :43:21. | |
learned judge in the trial court which it was felt wasn't correctly | :43:22. | :43:26. | |
done and they have now substituted which they believe that they have | :43:27. | :43:29. | |
concurred is the correct decision. It's been changed from manslaughter | :43:30. | :43:33. | |
or culpable homicide, negligent killing of a human being to murder, | :43:34. | :43:37. | |
as you would call it in the UK, second degree murder, in other words | :43:38. | :43:41. | |
it's not premeditated. Not premeditated? But intending to kill, | :43:42. | :43:49. | |
is that the crucial bit? The crucial bit is that in any law in which we | :43:50. | :43:53. | |
follow the English law in order to murder, you have to have intention, | :43:54. | :43:57. | |
criminal intention. If there's no criminal intention, there's no | :43:58. | :44:05. | |
murder, it can only be a competent manslaughter or culpable homicide | :44:06. | :44:08. | |
conviction. They are confident that the way he acted was intentional and | :44:09. | :44:13. | |
he should have realised that whoever was behind the door, including the | :44:14. | :44:19. | |
late Reeva, that by his actions, he caused the fatal injury as it | :44:20. | :44:22. | |
happened in this particular case. That's intention, one you have got | :44:23. | :44:26. | |
intention it's murder, but it's not premeditated. I understand. It's not | :44:27. | :44:32. | |
murder as us call it. Oscar Pistorius spent a year in jail and | :44:33. | :44:36. | |
is now several years under house arrest for culpable homicide. He now | :44:37. | :44:41. | |
presumably goes back to court for a new sentence? Yes, definitely. Part | :44:42. | :44:46. | |
of the court order was that they referred it back to the trial court, | :44:47. | :44:54. | |
the honourable Judge Musipa. In terms of the legislation, which for | :44:55. | :44:58. | |
a first offender like Oscar Pistorius, is a minimum of 15 years | :44:59. | :45:04. | |
and a maximum of 20, unless you can show compelling circumstances why | :45:05. | :45:07. | |
the could should differ from the minimum sentence, that is the | :45:08. | :45:12. | |
sentence you will get, so probably a minimum of 15. They'll take into | :45:13. | :45:17. | |
account the one year he's already served. He'll get something off for | :45:18. | :45:22. | |
that, minimum of a year and if there are other compelling circumstances, | :45:23. | :45:25. | |
which I believe there are, in regards to his disability and | :45:26. | :45:30. | |
various other parts of mitigation, they might be in a position to | :45:31. | :45:35. | |
reduce the sentence from the minimum of 15 years which our legislation | :45:36. | :45:40. | |
allows for. Thank you very much. | :45:41. | :45:47. | |
Still tocology. As British planes drop bombs on self-styled Islamic | :45:48. | :45:52. | |
state targets in Syria, we'll talk to a former RAF Tornado pilot | :45:53. | :45:55. | |
expecting to carry out future missions. Time for the weather now | :45:56. | :45:58. | |
with Alex. It has been quite mild in the South, | :45:59. | :46:12. | |
but to the north it has been quite chilly. We have got this divisive | :46:13. | :46:18. | |
weather front. Stepping outside this morning, the temperatures do not | :46:19. | :46:21. | |
feel like December in the South. Further north, much colder, down to | :46:22. | :46:25. | |
-3 parts Scotland overnight. Temperatures rising with the help of | :46:26. | :46:31. | |
a bit of sunshine but that boundary, that Waldrom front, is providing | :46:32. | :46:37. | |
some soggy conditions. The rain pushing back into Wales and | :46:38. | :46:40. | |
south-west England later on. Across the Midlands, much of eastern | :46:41. | :46:43. | |
England, staying dry. Staying dry in the far north, but staying cold. | :46:44. | :46:50. | |
Look at the temperature contrast. 13, 14 across the south-east, maybe | :46:51. | :46:54. | |
15 in some sunshine. There will be some snow on the hills in southern | :46:55. | :46:58. | |
Scotland and Northern Ireland, then the wet weather pushes away | :46:59. | :47:02. | |
overnight. Behind it, clear skies, so it will be a much colder night | :47:03. | :47:05. | |
across England and Wales, temperatures widely down to single | :47:06. | :47:09. | |
figures and across the Glens of Scotland there could be a touch of | :47:10. | :47:13. | |
frost. A bright start tomorrow, the many bus a sunny day, a few showers | :47:14. | :47:21. | |
in the far north-west, where the rainwater and persistent later on | :47:22. | :47:24. | |
and the breeze will pick up, too, but for many a fine day. Still a big | :47:25. | :47:28. | |
temperature contrast, the cooler, fresher feel across England and | :47:29. | :47:33. | |
Wales but still above average. We will see some lively weather on | :47:34. | :47:36. | |
Friday night, getting very windy indeed for the start of the weekend, | :47:37. | :47:41. | |
and there will be spousal rain as well, but it won't rain all weekend. | :47:42. | :47:42. | |
But it will be blustery on Saturday. It's Thursday, just after 10am, | :47:43. | :47:47. | |
I'm Victoria Derbyshire. This morning: | :47:48. | :47:49. | |
British warplanes have already They set off from their base | :47:50. | :47:58. | |
in Cyprus only hours after MPs voted by a majority | :47:59. | :48:02. | |
of 174 to back the action. I don't rest easy with the decision | :48:03. | :48:15. | |
that has been made because I have to think of people who are in Syria and | :48:16. | :48:19. | |
people who now have to live with the consequences of those decisions. It | :48:20. | :48:25. | |
was a huge burden yesterday and actually I would not say there were | :48:26. | :48:29. | |
thousands of relief. I was comfortable with the outcome. | :48:30. | :48:31. | |
A South African judge rules that Oscar Pistorius should have been | :48:32. | :48:34. | |
convicted of murder, not culpable homicide, because he had fired the | :48:35. | :48:52. | |
fatal shots that killed his girlfriend with criminal intent. | :48:53. | :48:57. | |
The matter is referred back to the court in the light of these | :48:58. | :49:00. | |
comments. Plus, yet another mass shooting | :49:01. | :49:02. | |
in the United States - this time at a health centre for disabled people | :49:03. | :49:05. | |
in California, where at least There was a shooter in the | :49:06. | :49:22. | |
building, and they ran into a room and locked the door. I told her, | :49:23. | :49:26. | |
turn off the lights, and I haven't tried to call her... I didn't want | :49:27. | :49:30. | |
the phone ringing. Britain has carried out | :49:31. | :49:36. | |
its first air strikes in Syria, just hours after MPs voted | :49:37. | :49:42. | |
in favour of military action. Jets set off from the British base | :49:43. | :49:58. | |
in Cyprus, targeting so-called Islamic State | :49:59. | :50:00. | |
targets in the east of the country. The jets dropped 500lb laser-guided | :50:01. | :50:03. | |
bombs on oil fields The Defence Secretary Michael Fallon | :50:04. | :50:05. | |
said I can confirm that four British | :50:06. | :50:07. | |
Tornadoes were in action after the vote last night, attacking oilfields | :50:08. | :50:18. | |
in eastern Syria. Attacking oil wellheads and helping | :50:19. | :50:26. | |
to disrupt the flow of revenue that diets get from the flow of oil. | :50:27. | :50:28. | |
The Government won the vote comfortably with with a majority | :50:29. | :50:31. | |
More than 60 Labour MPs backed the Government in last night's | :50:32. | :50:34. | |
Commons vote, including Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn. | :50:35. | :50:39. | |
It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria, | :50:40. | :50:43. | |
which is why I ask my colleagues to vote for this motion tonight. | :50:44. | :50:51. | |
14 people have been killed in a mass shooting at | :50:52. | :50:53. | |
The attackers, a woman and a man in their 20s, were shot dead by police. | :50:54. | :51:01. | |
It is the deadliest attack in the US since a school shooting | :51:02. | :51:04. | |
Oscar Pistorius has been found guilty of murdering his girlfriend | :51:05. | :51:16. | |
The decision by South Africa's Supreme Court overturns a previous | :51:17. | :51:19. | |
The judge said he had fired the fatal shots with criminal intent. | :51:20. | :51:27. | |
Guilty of murder with the accused having had criminal intent in the | :51:28. | :51:35. | |
form of dolus eventualis. The matter is referred back to the trial court | :51:36. | :51:39. | |
to consider an appropriate sentence afresh in light of the comments in | :51:40. | :51:41. | |
this judgment. Let's catch up with all | :51:42. | :51:47. | |
the sport now. Arrests at Fifa make | :51:48. | :51:54. | |
the headlines once more. Two "high-ranking" Fifa officials | :51:55. | :51:56. | |
taken by Swiss authorities on suspicion of accepting 'millions | :51:57. | :52:00. | |
of dollars' worth of bribes.' Our sports news correspondent | :52:01. | :52:04. | |
Richard Conway is Swiss authorities have confirmed two | :52:05. | :52:14. | |
arrests were made at this hotel, where a number of Fifa officials | :52:15. | :52:17. | |
were arrested back in May this year. They have not been | :52:18. | :52:20. | |
were arrested back in May this yet, the two people taken this | :52:21. | :52:27. | |
morning, but unconfirmed reports named them as two senior figures in | :52:28. | :52:31. | |
South America, Central American football, significantly men who are | :52:32. | :52:36. | |
Fifa vice president that have been arrested by the Swiss authorities on | :52:37. | :52:40. | |
behalf of those US prosecutors. We will get more information on this | :52:41. | :52:44. | |
later today, however senior the first sources told me that as many | :52:45. | :52:48. | |
as 16 people could be indicted today, names could be revealed later | :52:49. | :52:56. | |
wins the US authorities are prepared to release the information. | :52:57. | :52:57. | |
And some news we have just receieved from Zurich - Fifa's executive | :52:58. | :53:00. | |
committee will debate a proposal to expand the World Cup | :53:01. | :53:02. | |
They wouldn't require votes from the 209 member countries and it could be | :53:03. | :53:08. | |
From Switzerland to India now, and Great Britain's men's hockey team | :53:09. | :53:14. | |
They are competing in the World League finals, and have already | :53:15. | :53:21. | |
beaten the world's best side, Australia, in the group stages. | :53:22. | :53:24. | |
Our Olympic sports reporter David McDaid is there ahead of their | :53:25. | :53:27. | |
Great Britain already have reason to be pleased with their weak's work | :53:28. | :53:37. | |
here, with two wins and a draw taking them through to the quarter | :53:38. | :53:44. | |
finals as the poor winners. They beat Australia, the world champions | :53:45. | :53:48. | |
and the world number ones. Later today, they face hosts India. India | :53:49. | :53:51. | |
have had a different week to the Brits, only picking a 1 point from | :53:52. | :53:55. | |
three matches but tonight here they will be roared on by 4000 passionate | :53:56. | :54:01. | |
local fans. Here are the thoughts of both camps. They play attacking | :54:02. | :54:05. | |
hockey, they have a lot of skilful players. What we hope to do is take | :54:06. | :54:09. | |
the game to them. They are a good side, they have a lot of players. It | :54:10. | :54:13. | |
will be top. They have beaten Australia with a good margin so it | :54:14. | :54:18. | |
will be a tough game for us, but we're really happy that we're in the | :54:19. | :54:22. | |
quarterfinals and have it has to be in the semifinals. We are looking | :54:23. | :54:24. | |
forward to it. If Great Britain can come through | :54:25. | :54:28. | |
against the Indians later on, they will play either Argentina or | :54:29. | :54:32. | |
Belgium for a place in Sunday's final. | :54:33. | :54:32. | |
Best of to Great Britain. That's all the sport for now | :54:33. | :54:34. | |
but we'll have the League Cup and some big rugby news for you | :54:35. | :54:37. | |
at around 10.30am. Thank you for all of your reaction | :54:38. | :54:50. | |
to the fact that British planes are involved in military action in Syria | :54:51. | :54:56. | |
on IS targets. This tweet: Where was all the opposition last year to the | :54:57. | :55:00. | |
bombing of bias in Iraq? This from Tony: Here we go, the war | :55:01. | :55:04. | |
movie complete with slow motion replay, bomb by bomb analysis and | :55:05. | :55:10. | |
fourth umpire decision review. This from Charles: I watched the | :55:11. | :55:14. | |
entire debate yesterday and whilst I had no wish to see further military | :55:15. | :55:18. | |
action I was persuaded by the 'yes' lobby and particularly the wonderful | :55:19. | :55:22. | |
and sincere speech made by the Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary | :55:23. | :55:25. | |
Benn. We must take the fight to them, not sit and wait for the fight | :55:26. | :55:29. | |
to come to our streets. The 'no' lobby failed to convince me that | :55:30. | :55:33. | |
they had a coherent alternative strategy. I support the SNP but I | :55:34. | :55:37. | |
have to say I am disappointed by their stance. Have they forgotten | :55:38. | :55:45. | |
the attack on Glasgow airports so soon? | :55:46. | :55:55. | |
Isis are a threat to our country, our pilots are the best in the | :55:56. | :55:58. | |
world, stay safe. One says, what would those people | :55:59. | :56:02. | |
say to the families of aid workers and journalists tortured and | :56:03. | :56:06. | |
beheaded by the ruthless IS Kers also the Syrian girls used as sex | :56:07. | :56:11. | |
slaves, the old women and gay people murdered at the hands of IS? And | :56:12. | :56:17. | |
Danny, I am not a Conservative voter but I gladly support air strikes. | :56:18. | :56:22. | |
This evil has to be eradicated. If Jeremy Corbyn was Prime Minister, he | :56:23. | :56:26. | |
would gladly let Isis do as they please. | :56:27. | :56:29. | |
Thank you for those, keep them coming in. | :56:30. | :56:31. | |
The news overnight is that British games have dropped bombs on Islamic | :56:32. | :56:35. | |
State target in Syria and are now back at their base in Cyprus. It | :56:36. | :56:41. | |
happened within hours of MPs voting to extend British military | :56:42. | :56:43. | |
involvement to Serbia. What impact could the British air | :56:44. | :56:46. | |
strikes have on the fight against IS? Christian Fraser has been | :56:47. | :56:52. | |
looking at this. A lot of the focus is today was on | :56:53. | :56:57. | |
Syria, but it is worth remembering so-called Islamic state is no | :56:58. | :57:01. | |
respect of international borders, so their control and leadership is as | :57:02. | :57:04. | |
much but it is worth remembering so-called Islamic state is no | :57:05. | :57:06. | |
respect of international borders, so their control and leadership is as | :57:07. | :57:11. | |
much focused. That is why over the last year also 8000 air strikes in | :57:12. | :57:15. | |
all, twice as many, have been focused in Iraq as Syria, all the | :57:16. | :57:20. | |
way to November. Let me show you the map for a second, we will go in some | :57:21. | :57:35. | |
closer detail. The areas they have been focusing on, this corridor here | :57:36. | :57:37. | |
from IS headquarters in Raqqa along this mean arterial route through the | :57:38. | :57:40. | |
biggest city in the east of the city down to what we call the Sunni | :57:41. | :57:42. | |
Triangle where the Shia led militias are trying to get a foothold. To | :57:43. | :57:47. | |
remind you of what went on overnight, we know the plane set off | :57:48. | :57:51. | |
from over year, Cyprus, from Akrotiri. The bombs that were | :57:52. | :57:55. | |
dropped, as the Defence Secretary was saying, the Omagh oilfield here, | :57:56. | :57:58. | |
the installations from which Islamic State have been profiting. Let's | :57:59. | :58:04. | |
just have a look again, though, at this bomb pattern that I was talking | :58:05. | :58:08. | |
about. You will see where they have been dropped, I have put them in | :58:09. | :58:12. | |
blue circles. Hilary Benn quite elegantly was saying last night that | :58:13. | :58:15. | |
air strikes alone will not change the picture on the ground, and that | :58:16. | :58:19. | |
is true, but what they do is stop Islamic State from amassing hardware | :58:20. | :58:22. | |
and troop build-up in areas where they could take new ground, so they | :58:23. | :58:26. | |
stop them from going to Baghdad, this stop them from going to a town | :58:27. | :58:32. | |
in the north of the country, they have been influential in doing that. | :58:33. | :58:37. | |
If I show you this purple band here, this is the Kurds. If I showed you | :58:38. | :58:40. | |
that a year ago it would do differently, so they have been able | :58:41. | :58:45. | |
to take back control of some areas. Let's have a look at the targets. | :58:46. | :58:50. | |
Many of the targets are fixed, the oil infrastructure which they are | :58:51. | :58:54. | |
increasingly hitting, but also buildings, fighting positions, | :58:55. | :58:58. | |
artillery positions on the ground. These targets are becoming fewer and | :58:59. | :59:03. | |
farther between. A military analyst from the Royal United Services | :59:04. | :59:05. | |
Institute has been telling me that the battle on the ground is | :59:06. | :59:11. | |
changing. Those big, obvious area targets that | :59:12. | :59:15. | |
can be preplanned before a fight, go out and hit this specifically, those | :59:16. | :59:19. | |
have been hit. But in terms of forces on the ground that we can | :59:20. | :59:24. | |
usefully in support of Turkish fighters and Free Syrian Army, there | :59:25. | :59:27. | |
is definitely stuff there but it is harder to find. More dispersed, the | :59:28. | :59:34. | |
RAF hugely effective at surveillance and picking up targets like this, | :59:35. | :59:39. | |
this was a building being used by IS fighters in Ramadi. A drone involved | :59:40. | :59:46. | |
in this particular occasion and the Paveway bomb that. There, a smaller | :59:47. | :59:50. | |
munition than the ones the Americans are using, highly accurate, | :59:51. | :59:53. | |
laser-guided so long as you pick the right target, of course. Just | :59:54. | :59:57. | |
returning to the maps, the big questions on the lives of everyone | :59:58. | :00:02. | |
yesterday, who is going to take control of Syria? It looks like a | :00:03. | :00:07. | |
big paint job, it shows you how congested the battlefield is at the | :00:08. | :00:11. | |
moment. Among the 70,000 moderate troops to which the Prime Minister | :00:12. | :00:22. | |
referred, the Kurds, the so-called free Syrian forces and a lot of | :00:23. | :00:25. | |
other smaller groups as well, often aligned to more extreme elements | :00:26. | :00:27. | |
which are dominant, they have to be in this area in order to survive, | :00:28. | :00:30. | |
and their main target is President Assad. Still an awful lot of work to | :00:31. | :00:33. | |
do in Syria to find anything approaching a chord and their main | :00:34. | :00:35. | |
target is President Assad. Still an awful lot of work to do in Syria to | :00:36. | :00:38. | |
find anything approaching a, Christian. | :00:39. | :00:42. | |
Jonathan Beale, our defence correspondent has been speaking | :00:43. | :00:44. | |
to an RAF Tornado pilot, who's now expecting to fly over Syria. | :00:45. | :00:51. | |
Talking ahead of yesterday's vote, the pilot said | :00:52. | :00:53. | |
he didn't feel missions in Syrian airspace would be any more dangerous | :00:54. | :00:56. | |
You've flown over Iraq. What do you think the differences will be flying | :00:57. | :01:09. | |
combat missions over Syria? For myself as a tornado pilot, I feel | :01:10. | :01:13. | |
like flying the tornado and moving to Syria will be doing the mission | :01:14. | :01:17. | |
we are all trained to do, so in some respects, it will be no different. | :01:18. | :01:25. | |
We do know that Syria has Russian aircraft there flying, it was | :01:26. | :01:31. | |
recently Russian aircraft was downed, there are surface-to-air | :01:32. | :01:34. | |
missiles, it's more dangerous isn't it? We have coordination measures in | :01:35. | :01:42. | |
place in Syria, so if we were to go into Syria, I don't have any | :01:43. | :01:45. | |
concerns about operating in Syrian air space. There are bigger threats | :01:46. | :01:51. | |
there? Certainly threats there from Isis, we see that threat and operate | :01:52. | :01:57. | |
with that threat in Iraq. The same threat as Syria. We have our own | :01:58. | :02:03. | |
capabilities and tactics and techniques and procedures to | :02:04. | :02:05. | |
minimise that threat to ourselves. Do you think you could make a | :02:06. | :02:08. | |
difference on the ground? People are talking about this being a token | :02:09. | :02:12. | |
evident essentially from the UK? We can absolutely make a difference. | :02:13. | :02:17. | |
The tornado itself might be a slightly old platform but it's | :02:18. | :02:20. | |
absolutely up-to-date with the capabilities it has. Some unique | :02:21. | :02:28. | |
capabilities we bring to the operation, such as Brimstone, | :02:29. | :02:31. | |
reconnaissance pod, absolutely up-to-date cutting edge platforms in | :02:32. | :02:35. | |
terms of their capabilities. Very last question, when you are flying a | :02:36. | :02:41. | |
mission, what is it like knowing that you are flying a combat | :02:42. | :02:44. | |
mission, what do you think it would be like flying over Syria in a | :02:45. | :02:48. | |
combat mission, just a sense of what it's like for you as a pilot knowing | :02:49. | :02:54. | |
that you are targeting the enemy? Of course, it's serious, we take it | :02:55. | :02:58. | |
very seriously, it's something that I've done a number of combat | :02:59. | :03:02. | |
missions in a number of different theatres and I don't think myself | :03:03. | :03:06. | |
I'll treat it any differently other than at the highest levels of | :03:07. | :03:10. | |
professionalism possible, concentrating on the task and job we | :03:11. | :03:14. | |
have been given. You will be more worried that it's over Syria that | :03:15. | :03:17. | |
you are dealing with these missions? Absolutely not, no. | :03:18. | :03:23. | |
Joining us now from Westminster is the | :03:24. | :03:25. | |
He voted with his leader Jeremy Corbyn and | :03:26. | :03:29. | |
against air strikes, unlike 11 of his shadow cabinet colleagues, | :03:30. | :03:32. | |
What do you think of their colleagues? They voted in the athey | :03:33. | :03:41. | |
wanted to with their conscience. That's why I called for a free vote. | :03:42. | :03:47. | |
People will remember in Iraq all those years ago, the fact that you | :03:48. | :03:50. | |
can party political decisions mixed in the vote seems to be wrong, | :03:51. | :03:53. | |
whether you are going to back the leader or not. In matters of War and | :03:54. | :03:57. | |
Peace, putting British troops in harm's way, it should be an MP's | :03:58. | :04:01. | |
conscience and nothing else that decides that decision. I think | :04:02. | :04:05. | |
people can have a high degree of confidence in the decisions that MPs | :04:06. | :04:07. | |
reached last night because, on our side at least, that was purely in | :04:08. | :04:14. | |
accordance with what they thought was the right thing to do. Do you | :04:15. | :04:18. | |
not acknowledge that your leader failed to convince so many of your | :04:19. | :04:22. | |
colleagues, almost a third of the Parliamentary party? Do you know, I | :04:23. | :04:26. | |
think this issue really divides families and splits the country, | :04:27. | :04:29. | |
it's a very split decision. I found that myself as I was weighing it up | :04:30. | :04:35. | |
over the weeks running up to it. Very close decision, much harder in | :04:36. | :04:39. | |
many ways than any other I've taken in Parliament and I think people | :04:40. | :04:44. | |
have come down on either side of the lain. I don't think it's a bad thing | :04:45. | :04:47. | |
that there's a difference of views within our party, but also within | :04:48. | :04:52. | |
other parties in Parliament. I looked very carefully at what the | :04:53. | :04:55. | |
Prime Minister was saying. I think you have to be as sure as you can be | :04:56. | :05:00. | |
before you vote for military action. I just had too many doubts when it | :05:01. | :05:04. | |
came to the vote last night, that's why I voted against. | :05:05. | :05:08. | |
What swung it for you in the end then in terms of the doubts? | :05:09. | :05:15. | |
I do think back to Iraq... Just remind us which way you voted for | :05:16. | :05:21. | |
Iraq? I voted for. I've agonised about that decision ever since. Many | :05:22. | :05:25. | |
in many ways, I can justify the original decision I took. What I | :05:26. | :05:28. | |
can't justify is the lack of a plan for the aftermath. I was horrified | :05:29. | :05:35. | |
as the chaos began to unfold in Iraq in years after the invasion. I | :05:36. | :05:39. | |
applied that test to this vote. Was there a clear plan for Syria, for | :05:40. | :05:44. | |
the aftermath? I couldn't see it. You know, the graphics you were just | :05:45. | :05:48. | |
showing a moment ago kind of make the point - Syria is such a | :05:49. | :05:54. | |
complicated situation right now. I didn't hear from the Prime Minister | :05:55. | :05:56. | |
clarity about what was going to happen on the ground to those areas | :05:57. | :06:00. | |
that were bombed, which troops would move in and secure it, I didn't hear | :06:01. | :06:04. | |
the answers. That was the main reason why there were others too, | :06:05. | :06:09. | |
but that was the main reason why I couldn't give my support to the air | :06:10. | :06:13. | |
strikes last night. Some might say that because you voted against air | :06:14. | :06:16. | |
strikes is alongside your leader Jeremy Corbyn, at least you won't | :06:17. | :06:19. | |
get bullied by colleagues in your party for coming to a decision | :06:20. | :06:22. | |
that's opposite what the leader wanted? | :06:23. | :06:27. | |
It's outrageous that anybody should be bullied... Why isn't Mr Corbyn | :06:28. | :06:31. | |
clamping down on it then? He has said something. I know how it feels | :06:32. | :06:37. | |
because I voted for military action on a number of occasions. I promise | :06:38. | :06:41. | |
you, it's the hardest thing you ever do in Parliament, it genuinely is. | :06:42. | :06:45. | |
People agonise about it then go over and over it in the days after the | :06:46. | :06:48. | |
vote and that will be happening today, MPs will be feeling like that | :06:49. | :06:52. | |
today, that's how they'll be, feeling pretty down I guess some of | :06:53. | :06:57. | |
them because nobody, nobody takes any relish in doing what's been | :06:58. | :07:01. | |
done. I would ask people who're sending comments in just to think | :07:02. | :07:04. | |
about that, these are decent people, they have done the right thing, as | :07:05. | :07:08. | |
they saw it at the time, and they deserve a bit more respect than they | :07:09. | :07:14. | |
sometimes get. People like Anne Coffee saying we are going to | :07:15. | :07:18. | |
campaign from your e-mail selection coming from a group called Momentum | :07:19. | :07:23. | |
which very much backs Jeremy Corbyn? It makes me sad about the current | :07:24. | :07:26. | |
state of the Labour Party that people think they can treat somebody | :07:27. | :07:32. | |
of that long-standing and experience in Parliament like Anne, could treat | :07:33. | :07:36. | |
her in that way. She's served Stockport, her constituents, our | :07:37. | :07:40. | |
party for many years, with distinction. People need to have a | :07:41. | :07:42. | |
look at themselves before they think they can go around throwing threats | :07:43. | :07:46. | |
at people like that. What should Jeremy Corbyn do? There's been a | :07:47. | :07:50. | |
divisive situation, hasn't there, people have voted different ways. In | :07:51. | :07:53. | |
the end, the right decision was taken. I'm asking you what the | :07:54. | :07:56. | |
leader should do about the bullying of your colleagues? A firm line | :07:57. | :08:02. | |
needs to be taken, a code of conduct around social media, there cannot be | :08:03. | :08:05. | |
abuse of Members of Parliament by members of the Labour Party or | :08:06. | :08:08. | |
supporters of the Labour Party. That isn't the kindparty I want to be in. | :08:09. | :08:13. | |
It's not just on social media is it, another colleague of yours has | :08:14. | :08:17. | |
people hassling her office staff? Staff?! Well, I know, that's just | :08:18. | :08:23. | |
completely indefensible. We are many the public eye and we take those | :08:24. | :08:28. | |
decisions and we have to be held accountable for them, absolutely, I | :08:29. | :08:34. | |
fully and completely ex-that, but do it with respect -- expect that, but | :08:35. | :08:40. | |
do it with respect. With the leader contest test in the summer it was | :08:41. | :08:45. | |
the same, people are being put off going into it at all at local and | :08:46. | :08:50. | |
councillor level. If you are sitting with a keyboard, you can be more | :08:51. | :08:53. | |
offensive than you are if you are speaking to somebody face-to-face | :08:54. | :08:57. | |
and it's a bad culture. We need to draw a line under it. So Jeremy | :08:58. | :09:03. | |
Corbyn should introdues a code of conduct? I would say so. If there is | :09:04. | :09:06. | |
evidence that people are abusive to colleagues in the Labour Party, | :09:07. | :09:09. | |
there should be no tolerance of that whatsoever, in my view. Thank you | :09:10. | :09:14. | |
very much. Can I just say before I left, how much I admire the work you | :09:15. | :09:18. | |
have done to give courage to other cancer patients, you know, it really | :09:19. | :09:21. | |
is a fantastic thing that you have been doing, I just wanted to say | :09:22. | :09:22. | |
that. Thank you very much and thank you | :09:23. | :09:37. | |
for talking to us. It's worth remembering who are | :09:38. | :09:43. | |
involved, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar are involved, countries like | :09:44. | :09:49. | |
Italy who've given machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, | :09:50. | :09:51. | |
ammunition and humanitarian aid. Andrew Brookes, a former RAF pilot | :09:52. | :09:55. | |
with 30 years experience and a former US Air Force special pilot, | :09:56. | :09:59. | |
Nolan Peterson who's been involved in air strikes and Iraq and | :10:00. | :10:05. | |
Afghanistan previously and Kinder Haddard from the group Air Wars, | :10:06. | :10:11. | |
monitoring casualties in Syria. Andrew Brookes, four British planes | :10:12. | :10:15. | |
involved so far, targeting oil fields under the control of IS, what | :10:16. | :10:20. | |
is your reaction? It's part of a team, as you said. The question does | :10:21. | :10:24. | |
it make a difference, we'll have to see. There's always been a theory | :10:25. | :10:29. | |
that there are panacea targets, if you just take something out, the | :10:30. | :10:33. | |
whole machine falls apart. Oil is a classic but if it worked the | :10:34. | :10:36. | |
Americans would have done it years ago. The fact they have been bombing | :10:37. | :10:40. | |
more than us and haven't closed the air down doesn't give me a warm | :10:41. | :10:44. | |
fuzzy feeling that a few extra bombs from us will shut down that | :10:45. | :10:47. | |
particular facility. On that point then, why do you think the Americans | :10:48. | :10:50. | |
haven't taken out those oil fields so far? It's very difficult. People | :10:51. | :10:55. | |
think, you know, you're used to playing Star Wars on your computer | :10:56. | :10:59. | |
and everything, it all works. These things are massive. To get the right | :11:00. | :11:04. | |
pinpoint, the right bottleneck, is incredibly difficult a thing to do. | :11:05. | :11:06. | |
The Americans have the technology to do that? You say that, it's | :11:07. | :11:12. | |
intelligence-based. At the end of the day, people don't want to take | :11:13. | :11:16. | |
over a desert. You want to leave something there that, if you like, | :11:17. | :11:20. | |
the good guys can take over. They want to take over a going state. | :11:21. | :11:26. | |
Whoever wins this, they want to be up and running very quickly. If you | :11:27. | :11:30. | |
give them a wasteland, you haven't really given anybody a chance to | :11:31. | :11:36. | |
post Assad to create a new Syria. Nolan Peterson, you have flown many | :11:37. | :11:39. | |
of the missions and have been involved in air strikes in Iraq and | :11:40. | :11:44. | |
Afghanistan. Can you give our audience an insight into what it's | :11:45. | :11:49. | |
like flying one of those jets? I think the greatest concern for my | :11:50. | :11:56. | |
pilot obviously is to limit civilian casualties, but the unique nature of | :11:57. | :12:00. | |
the wash in Syria and Iraq right now is that the battlefield is so | :12:01. | :12:03. | |
complicated and there are so many different elements on the ground | :12:04. | :12:06. | |
that it's tough for pilots to know who is good and who is bad. For | :12:07. | :12:12. | |
example, in Syria, you have the forces of the regime of Bashar Assad | :12:13. | :12:18. | |
on the ground next to the Free Syrian Army and Isis. So it's tough | :12:19. | :12:23. | |
for pilots to know exactly who the elements on the ground are without | :12:24. | :12:27. | |
our own troops there to tell us what we are shooting at. | :12:28. | :12:31. | |
So as a pilot then in the scenario that we are seeing now in Syria, how | :12:32. | :12:37. | |
do you get the right intelligence, or is it inevitable that mistakes | :12:38. | :12:42. | |
are going to be made? Unfortunately, it's probably inevitable that | :12:43. | :12:44. | |
mistakes will be made. Normally, you have a lot of different meetings to | :12:45. | :12:50. | |
tell who is on the ground and Iraq and Afghanistan, when I flew, we had | :12:51. | :12:54. | |
technology like blue force tracking where we'd have a Google map-type | :12:55. | :13:02. | |
map that would show us where friendly units were with icons so we | :13:03. | :13:10. | |
could verify where people were. We don't have that in Syria and Iraq. | :13:11. | :13:19. | |
We have another system to tell us. Looking at patterns of life and the | :13:20. | :13:25. | |
behaviour of the infrared images, that is how we decide whether we are | :13:26. | :13:31. | |
shooting at the good or bad guys. How many civilians have been killed | :13:32. | :13:39. | |
by coalition air strikes in Iraq so far in Syria? Over the last 15 | :13:40. | :13:44. | |
months, there's been at least we think a minimum of 700 in Iraq and | :13:45. | :13:57. | |
Sir. -- Syria. We collate all this information from the ground, press | :13:58. | :14:02. | |
reports, recorder, Twitter and Facebook, YouTube, as well as daily | :14:03. | :14:09. | |
reports saying where and when they have bombed. How do you know they | :14:10. | :14:13. | |
are civilians, as opposed to extremists for example? The casualty | :14:14. | :14:18. | |
recorders on the ground often have people who interview casualties and | :14:19. | :14:21. | |
we know about Syria in particular, about 300 of them, we have names, | :14:22. | :14:30. | |
ages and what they did, where they lived and just under half are women | :14:31. | :14:36. | |
and children. The thing is, Daesh is in civilian centres, so the target | :14:37. | :14:40. | |
could be an IS headquarters, for example, but it's inevitable that | :14:41. | :14:43. | |
you are going to destroy some of the houses around or passers-by. You | :14:44. | :14:48. | |
might get faulty intelligence or civilians might go into a different | :14:49. | :14:52. | |
zone after the bomb has been dropped, so it's just impossible not | :14:53. | :14:58. | |
to have civilian casualties even though we have precise weaponry. | :14:59. | :15:03. | |
Because we have precise weaponry, we have less casualties than the | :15:04. | :15:10. | |
Russians or the Assad regime. Figures have been published and | :15:11. | :15:15. | |
whereas Assad killed 1,000 civilians, the Russians killed 260 | :15:16. | :15:21. | |
and the regime killed 13. Some events are bigger. We have had 64 | :15:22. | :15:26. | |
people being killed in one go because they have targeted a weapons | :15:27. | :15:31. | |
depot. That explodes and causes secondary explosions. Thank you very | :15:32. | :15:32. | |
much. Thank you for your messages about | :15:33. | :15:48. | |
what IS should be called. E-mail from Martin says I think the BBC | :15:49. | :15:51. | |
should carry on calling them IS and not bow to David Cameron, everyone | :15:52. | :15:55. | |
in Britain knows them as IS. This e-mail from John, I find it amusing, | :15:56. | :16:01. | |
all this talk about what to call this bunch of murderers, it's | :16:02. | :16:05. | |
political correctness gone mad, a good old English word everyone would | :16:06. | :16:11. | |
understand, they should be known as "scum" it is everything they stand | :16:12. | :16:18. | |
for. By calling IS their name of choice, we give them power, we | :16:19. | :16:22. | |
should call them Daesh, not only is it an acronym of their true name but | :16:23. | :16:28. | |
it's also an insult to their ears, calling them Daesh kills two birds | :16:29. | :16:30. | |
with one stone. Yesterday we reported on | :16:31. | :16:35. | |
the 50-year-old woman who rejected life-saving kidney treatment | :16:36. | :16:41. | |
because she felt she'd "lost her Our legal affairs correspondent | :16:42. | :16:43. | |
Clive Coleman is back Remind us of this sad case you | :16:44. | :16:52. | |
reported on yesterday? It is a desperately sad case about a | :16:53. | :16:56. | |
woman who lived a life of sparkle, a champagne lifestyle, if you like, a | :16:57. | :17:01. | |
woman who had four husbands, affairs, her life, these are the | :17:02. | :17:04. | |
words of her daughter, revolved around her looks, men, material | :17:05. | :17:09. | |
possessions. In recent times she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she | :17:10. | :17:13. | |
had not wanted treatment for that because she thought it would make | :17:14. | :17:17. | |
her fact, she had also had a long-term relationship that had | :17:18. | :17:31. | |
fallen apart, she had fallen into debt. As a result of that she'd try | :17:32. | :17:34. | |
to take her own life, she took 16 paracetamol tablets which were | :17:35. | :17:36. | |
washed down with some champagne. That damaged her organs and as a | :17:37. | :17:38. | |
result of that she needed life-saving kidney dialysis | :17:39. | :17:40. | |
treatment. She didn't want it because she did not want to grow | :17:41. | :17:43. | |
old, she said she did not want to be old, poor and ugly. There was a | :17:44. | :17:48. | |
hearing in November, mid-November, in which the trust that were | :17:49. | :17:52. | |
treating her, the hospital trust, wanted to have the Court of | :17:53. | :17:56. | |
protection, which makes decision for people who do not have mental | :17:57. | :17:59. | |
capacity, to order that she had the treatment against her wishes. The | :18:00. | :18:03. | |
judge, in an incredibly difficult case, had to listen to the evidence | :18:04. | :18:08. | |
of psychiatrists and, critically, listen to the evidence of the | :18:09. | :18:12. | |
woman's daughters, who gave evidence that she simply didn't want to | :18:13. | :18:15. | |
continue to live a life where she got she was going to be old and | :18:16. | :18:22. | |
ugly. The judge made an order, refused the application by the | :18:23. | :18:26. | |
hospital, that happened in mid-November. She died Barbie sadly | :18:27. | :18:30. | |
on Saturday but it was only actually on Monday that we became aware of | :18:31. | :18:35. | |
the judgment, the judge published the full judgment, which is why | :18:36. | :18:38. | |
there is a slightly cheery chronology. | :18:39. | :18:43. | |
Thank you. -- slightly curious chronology. | :18:44. | :18:46. | |
The political fallout from the the decision by parliament | :18:47. | :18:50. | |
to back British air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria. | :18:51. | :18:53. | |
And as an appeals court in South Africa convicts the | :18:54. | :18:59. | |
Oscar Pistorius of murder, we'll bring you the latest reaction | :19:00. | :19:02. | |
Britain has carried out its first air strikes in Syria, | :19:03. | :19:08. | |
just hours after MPs voted in favour of military action. | :19:09. | :19:11. | |
Jets set off from the British base in Cyprus. | :19:12. | :19:15. | |
They targetted Islamic State group targets in the east of the country. | :19:16. | :19:18. | |
The jets dropped 500lb laser-guided bombs on oil fields | :19:19. | :19:21. | |
The Defence Secretary Michael Fallon backing said | :19:22. | :19:25. | |
I can confirm, first of all, that four British Tornado were involved | :19:26. | :19:36. | |
in strikes in the early hours of this morning in the eastern oilfield | :19:37. | :19:40. | |
in Syria, specifically the Omagh oilfield, attacking oil wellheads | :19:41. | :19:46. | |
there, hoping to disrupt the flow of oil and the revenue that the | :19:47. | :19:47. | |
Bayerische terrorists gain from oil. The Government won | :19:48. | :19:50. | |
the vote comfortably with a majority More than 60 Labour MPs backed the | :19:51. | :19:52. | |
Government vote, including Shadow Whether you are | :19:53. | :20:15. | |
or not is not important. In matters of war and Besic had been the MP's | :20:16. | :20:20. | |
conscience and nothing else that makes the decision. People can have | :20:21. | :20:23. | |
a high degree of confidence in the decisions MPs reached last night, | :20:24. | :20:27. | |
because, on our side at least, it was purely in accordance with what | :20:28. | :20:30. | |
they thought was the right thing to do. | :20:31. | :20:31. | |
14 people have been killed in a mass shooting at | :20:32. | :20:34. | |
The attackers, a woman and a man in their 20s, were shot dead by police. | :20:35. | :20:39. | |
It is the deadliest attack in the US since a school shooting | :20:40. | :20:41. | |
Oscar Pistorius has been found guilty of murdering his girlfriend | :20:42. | :20:47. | |
The decision by South Africa's Supreme Court overturns a previous | :20:48. | :20:53. | |
The judge said he had fired the fatal shots with criminal intent. | :20:54. | :21:02. | |
Guilty of murder, with the accused having had criminal intent | :21:03. | :21:04. | |
The matter is referred back to the trial court to consider an | :21:05. | :21:12. | |
appropriate sentence afresh in light of the comments in this judgment. | :21:13. | :21:20. | |
There's other headlines come here is the sport. | :21:21. | :21:23. | |
The main stories in sport this morning | :21:24. | :21:27. | |
Swiss Aurthorities say they've take two 'high-ranking' Fifa officials | :21:28. | :21:31. | |
They'll be discussing whether to expand the World Cup | :21:32. | :21:45. | |
A great night for Liverpool, and the club's strikers especially - | :21:46. | :21:53. | |
Divock Origi scored a hat-trick and Daniel Sturridge added two in their | :21:54. | :21:56. | |
England fans might be wishing the RFU took a little longer | :21:57. | :22:01. | |
Heyneke Meyer has stepped down as South Africa's head coach with | :22:02. | :22:05. | |
immediate effect after leading the Springboks to | :22:06. | :22:07. | |
And Great Britain's men are facing hosts India in the last eight | :22:08. | :22:10. | |
of hockey's World League Finals this afternoon - they were unbeaten | :22:11. | :22:13. | |
It could be a big day for them. We will have more sport including the | :22:14. | :22:20. | |
latest from the UK study championship on BBC news throughout | :22:21. | :22:22. | |
the day. Thank you. The vote that air strikes | :22:23. | :22:26. | |
in Syria followed a ten hour debate on the right and wrong is of | :22:27. | :22:31. | |
military action. Towards the end a powerful speech by the Shadow | :22:32. | :22:33. | |
Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn was applauded by all sides of the house. | :22:34. | :22:41. | |
Let's have a look. What is the reaction to the vote | :22:42. | :22:47. | |
last night? Good morning. Do you have any reaction to the vote? I did | :22:48. | :22:57. | |
not ask you to be here. Clearly that was Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour | :22:58. | :23:00. | |
leader, reacting this morning as he left his home. I think we can hear | :23:01. | :23:03. | |
Hilary Benn now in the Commons yesterday. | :23:04. | :23:09. | |
Hopefully! Maybe not. Let's talk to Norman Smith instead, our political | :23:10. | :23:13. | |
Guru at Westminster. Let's talk about Hilary Benn's speech, so many | :23:14. | :23:19. | |
people were commenting on what a brilliant speech it was, and one of | :23:20. | :23:23. | |
the best beaches in parliament ever. Explain to those who did not hear it | :23:24. | :23:27. | |
what it contained? It is a shame we could not hear it, | :23:28. | :23:32. | |
maybe we can in a few minutes. It was an amazing speech by him, | :23:33. | :23:36. | |
because it was a moment when he held Parliament in his hands. The whole | :23:37. | :23:40. | |
place was absolutely silent, gripped by what he had to say, not because | :23:41. | :23:45. | |
it was a barnstorming rhetorical toured of course, it was because of | :23:46. | :23:49. | |
the clarity of his arguments, the moral conviction with which he | :23:50. | :23:54. | |
expressed them, and the scent of his own personal integrity which came | :23:55. | :23:59. | |
across. But there was another reason, because it was also, I | :24:00. | :24:03. | |
thought, a brave speech, a speech in which he basically confronted his | :24:04. | :24:07. | |
own party and his own leader. Not in an abusive tone, but in which he | :24:08. | :24:12. | |
laid down a direct challenge, saying to his party, look, we are an | :24:13. | :24:17. | |
internationalist party, we cannot simply walk on by. We helped to | :24:18. | :24:23. | |
found the United Nations, our sister Socialist party in France has | :24:24. | :24:36. | |
appealed for our help, and, above all, Labour has always stood up | :24:37. | :24:38. | |
against fascism, whether it was General Franco in Spain in the | :24:39. | :24:41. | |
1930s, or Hitler's Nazis. You got a sense that he changed the mood in | :24:42. | :24:44. | |
the house and some of those who were undecided actually came behind him | :24:45. | :24:48. | |
because of his speech. I think we can now hear a bit of what he said. | :24:49. | :24:55. | |
Socialist and trade unionists and others joined the International | :24:56. | :24:58. | |
Brigade in the 1930s to fight against General Franco. It is why | :24:59. | :25:04. | |
this entire house stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It is why our | :25:05. | :25:09. | |
party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for | :25:10. | :25:15. | |
justice. And my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this | :25:16. | :25:21. | |
evil, it is now time for us to do our bit in Syria. And that is why I | :25:22. | :25:28. | |
ask my colleagues to vote for this motion tonight. | :25:29. | :25:35. | |
The reaction, you saw the reaction at the Commons, but even this | :25:36. | :25:38. | |
morning MPs who have been around a long time are saying they have never | :25:39. | :25:41. | |
seen anything like it. I was chatting with the Defence Secretary | :25:42. | :25:44. | |
Michael Palin this morning, eight this was his reaction to the speech. | :25:45. | :25:49. | |
It is one of the most impressive speeches I have seen in nearly 30 | :25:50. | :25:53. | |
years in Parliament. He put the argument extremely well. There were | :25:54. | :25:58. | |
good speeches on both sides of the argument, and I think Parliament did | :25:59. | :26:01. | |
justice to a very important decision. | :26:02. | :26:05. | |
Even some of Mr Corbyn's supporters, you saw Mr Corbyn | :26:06. | :26:11. | |
delivering the speech -- when he was delivering the speech, sitting | :26:12. | :26:14. | |
slumped, flagging up the divide that is emerging this morning, John | :26:15. | :26:18. | |
McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, through gritted teeth, I thought, | :26:19. | :26:23. | |
gave a rather nuanced response to the speech. Other listen to what he | :26:24. | :26:27. | |
said. On the retreat itself, across the | :26:28. | :26:33. | |
house, I thought the were excellent, Jeremy was careful in the way he | :26:34. | :26:38. | |
approached it, I thought Hillary's rectory was great. It reminded me of | :26:39. | :26:42. | |
Tony Blair's speech taking us into the Iraq war and I am always great | :26:43. | :26:49. | |
test -- always aware of the greatest oratory but also the greatest | :26:50. | :26:53. | |
mistakes as well. The greatest oratory can leaders | :26:54. | :26:57. | |
into the greatest mistakes. He talked about the Tony Blair speech | :26:58. | :27:02. | |
in 2002, I'm old enough to have been in the chamber when Tony Blair was | :27:03. | :27:06. | |
making it. It was, again, one of those speeches which turned the | :27:07. | :27:11. | |
mood. I have a clip of that. The outcome of this issue will now | :27:12. | :27:16. | |
determine more than the fate of the Iraqi regime, more than the future | :27:17. | :27:20. | |
of the Iraqi people, for so long brutalised by Saddam Hussein! , | :27:21. | :27:25. | |
important though those issues. It will determine the way Britain and | :27:26. | :27:30. | |
the world confront the security threat of the 21st secretary, -- | :27:31. | :27:35. | |
21st-century, the relationship between Europe and the United | :27:36. | :27:38. | |
States, relations within the European Union, and the way the | :27:39. | :27:41. | |
United States engages with the rest of the world. It could hardly be | :27:42. | :27:46. | |
more important will stop can I ask you, Norman, about the searing | :27:47. | :27:53. | |
divisions in the Labour Party at the moment? | :27:54. | :27:56. | |
We spoke to the Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham, I asked him | :27:57. | :28:00. | |
about bullying of certain members who voted for air strikes. He called | :28:01. | :28:04. | |
for Jeremy Corbyn to introduce a code of conduct for Labour members | :28:05. | :28:11. | |
and supporters. It is pretty bad, isn't it? It is extraordinarily | :28:12. | :28:16. | |
bad, not just the obvious division within the Labour Party, 66 Labour | :28:17. | :28:21. | |
MPs, 11 members of the Shadow Cabinet, defying Jeremy Corbyn last | :28:22. | :28:24. | |
night on what is one of the most fundamental issues we can ever face, | :28:25. | :28:27. | |
War and peace. It is not just that but the nature | :28:28. | :28:31. | |
of the division that is becoming increasingly bitter and personal and | :28:32. | :28:37. | |
nasty. Not just, I think, on social media, though a lot of it is on | :28:38. | :28:43. | |
social media, some of the stuff there has been pretty extraordinary. | :28:44. | :28:47. | |
One Labour MP, Liz Kendall, yesterday received a tweet saying | :28:48. | :28:51. | |
she should be part of the final solution, which would be a purge of | :28:52. | :28:55. | |
Blairite scum like her. That gives you a sense of some of the animosity | :28:56. | :29:02. | |
out there. The difficulty is this, many Labour MPs feel that although | :29:03. | :29:06. | |
Mr Corbyn has condemned it, that he has also licensed it to some extent | :29:07. | :29:10. | |
by almost encouraging the grass roots to put the squeeze on Labour | :29:11. | :29:15. | |
MPs and the real fear is that some of them will basically be deselected | :29:16. | :29:22. | |
because they are not corporate MPs. We heard Ken Livingstone this | :29:23. | :29:25. | |
morning saying ineffective would be happy to see MPs who voted against | :29:26. | :29:30. | |
Jeremy Corbyn deselected, and that is what is driving this, the fear | :29:31. | :29:35. | |
that there is almost a hit list of non-Corbin MPs who risked being | :29:36. | :29:38. | |
bumped off, and my sense is the Labour Party parliamentary party is | :29:39. | :29:45. | |
now a profoundly disorganised and -- dysfunctional organisation at the | :29:46. | :29:48. | |
moment where the leader is at odds with key figures in his own team, | :29:49. | :29:53. | |
like Hilary Benn. You have a Parliamentary party at odds not just | :29:54. | :29:55. | |
with the leader but with the party and the country, too. | :29:56. | :29:59. | |
Thank you very much, Norman. Much more from Norman throughout the day | :30:00. | :30:03. | |
on BBC News. This news just in to do with the BBC | :30:04. | :30:07. | |
executive Alan Yentob, formerly the chairman of trustees of the failed | :30:08. | :30:11. | |
Charity Kids Company, and the news is that he is stepping down, | :30:12. | :30:41. | |
resigning as a BBC executive. Here is his statement: The BBC is | :30:42. | :30:43. | |
going through particularly challenging times and I have come to | :30:44. | :30:46. | |
believe that the speculation about Kids Company and the media coverage | :30:47. | :30:48. | |
around my role is proving a serious distraction, so I have spoken to | :30:49. | :30:50. | |
Tony Wall, the director-general, the boss of the BBC, and told him I | :30:51. | :30:54. | |
think it is best I stepped down from Mike senior management role as | :30:55. | :30:56. | |
creative director at the end of the year and focus on programme making | :30:57. | :30:58. | |
and TV production, including the Imagine series. I love the BBC, | :30:59. | :31:00. | |
continues the statement from Alan Yentob, and will continue to do | :31:01. | :31:03. | |
everything I can to ensure it thrives and fulfils the great | :31:04. | :31:05. | |
expectations we all have of it. This statement, too, from the | :31:06. | :31:07. | |
director-general, Tony Hall, on the news that Alan Yentob is resigning | :31:08. | :31:12. | |
as creative director of the BBC but will continue making programmes, | :31:13. | :31:16. | |
this from Lord Paul: Allen is a towering figure in television, the | :31:17. | :31:20. | |
arts, add a creative force for good for Britain. | :31:21. | :31:23. | |
He served the BBC with distinction in a number of different executive | :31:24. | :31:27. | |
roles, all of which characterised by his energy, creativity and | :31:28. | :31:31. | |
commitment to public service. He has an extraordinary bulk of | :31:32. | :31:34. | |
achievement. For the record, BBC News considered whether Alan Yentob | :31:35. | :31:39. | |
had influenced the BBC's journalism on the reporting of Kids Company. | :31:40. | :31:43. | |
They concluded that he did not. Despite that, I do stand his | :31:44. | :31:58. | |
reasons. In doubt as creative director. He has been thinking about | :31:59. | :32:00. | |
this carefully for some time and we have discussed it privately on a | :32:01. | :32:03. | |
number of occasions. I'm pleased he will continue his work at the BBC as | :32:04. | :32:06. | |
a programme maker in the future. There were reports that as a trustee | :32:07. | :32:08. | |
of the failed charity Kids Company Alan Yentob was accused by a number | :32:09. | :32:11. | |
of BBC journalists of trying to interfere with their coverage of | :32:12. | :32:13. | |
what happened to Kids Company but as Tony Hill, director-general of the | :32:14. | :32:17. | |
BBC, says in this statement, BBC News considered whether Alan Yentob | :32:18. | :32:21. | |
had influenced the BBC News journalism on the coverage of Kids | :32:22. | :32:24. | |
Company but concluded he did not. So the news is that Alan Yentob will | :32:25. | :32:29. | |
no longer be a BBC executive, he will no longer be the creative | :32:30. | :32:33. | |
director of the BBC, he is resigning from that role but will continue to | :32:34. | :32:36. | |
make programmes. More reaction on that to come. | :32:37. | :32:41. | |
Some reaction to the air strikes from Syrians living in this country | :32:42. | :32:44. | |
in just a moment. 14 people have been killed and | :32:45. | :32:46. | |
seventeen injured in a mass shooting A few hours later, two suspects, | :32:47. | :32:50. | |
28-year-old Syed Farook, and 27-year-old Tashfeen Malik were shot | :32:51. | :32:56. | |
dead in a gunfight with police. President Obama said the | :32:57. | :33:07. | |
United States has a pattern of mass shootings that has no parallel | :33:08. | :33:11. | |
anywhere else in the world. A more unlikely venue for a shooting | :33:12. | :33:22. | |
rampage it might be difficult to find. | :33:23. | :33:35. | |
14 dead, 17 injured after gunmen opened fire on a holiday party at a | :33:36. | :33:41. | |
Centre for People with special needs. | :33:42. | :33:48. | |
My daughter's in there. She texted us about 30 minutes ago and said | :33:49. | :33:53. | |
there was a shooter, he'd shot about 20 to 30 people she thought. | :33:54. | :34:01. | |
There was a shooter in our building. They went into a room and locked the | :34:02. | :34:08. | |
door. They told her turn off the lights and I haven't tried to call | :34:09. | :34:13. | |
her because I didn't want the phone ringing. For several hours, the | :34:14. | :34:19. | |
attackers were at large before police spotted a suspect vehicle and | :34:20. | :34:25. | |
gave chase. There was a fierce gun battle in which two suspects, a man | :34:26. | :34:29. | |
and woman, were shot dead. Police recovered hand guns and assault | :34:30. | :34:33. | |
rifles. Another man is in custody, although it's not known if he was | :34:34. | :34:37. | |
linked to the attack. President Obama's reiterated his call for | :34:38. | :34:42. | |
tougher gun control laws here. We have a pattern now of mass | :34:43. | :34:47. | |
shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the | :34:48. | :34:52. | |
world. There are some steps we could take not to eliminate every one of | :34:53. | :34:56. | |
these mass shootings, but to improve the odds that they don't happen as | :34:57. | :35:00. | |
frequently. The motive for this attack remains a | :35:01. | :35:05. | |
mystery, but theories ranging from a work place dispute to terrorism have | :35:06. | :35:10. | |
all been advanced, but not since the Sandy Hook massacre three years ago | :35:11. | :35:14. | |
have so many died in a single instance of gun violence. | :35:15. | :35:18. | |
A short time ago I spoke to Cliff Cummings who owns | :35:19. | :35:21. | |
There were helicopter flying overhead, you had probably 400 | :35:22. | :35:33. | |
responding officers, multi divisions came, the Cher rich's department, | :35:34. | :35:38. | |
the local Police Department and it just went on and on, highway patrol. | :35:39. | :35:46. | |
There was a massive response. I want to compliment the chief and all the | :35:47. | :35:48. | |
law enforcement guys who did such an amazing job getting this situation | :35:49. | :35:54. | |
under control. We were very fortunate in that there was a | :35:55. | :35:58. | |
training exercise going on about a mile and a half from the shooting | :35:59. | :36:03. | |
area and they were able to respond incredibly quickly. The very sad | :36:04. | :36:07. | |
part of this I learned a little while ago is that the couple who did | :36:08. | :36:11. | |
this had a six-month-old baby who is in the care of a neighbour I'm told | :36:12. | :36:16. | |
or a relative, so what prompted them to do this is just beyond me. It | :36:17. | :36:21. | |
shows one thing, that it can happen anywhere. What is the solution, do | :36:22. | :36:25. | |
you think? There isn't one. I can tell you right now, in my mind, I've | :36:26. | :36:29. | |
thought through this many times, I've had this discussion, I don't | :36:30. | :36:34. | |
know that there is a solution because of the sheer numbers of what | :36:35. | :36:39. | |
you would have to do. There are literally millions of guns out there | :36:40. | :36:42. | |
that are not registered. I don't know that you can solve a problem | :36:43. | :36:45. | |
that numbers in the millions. Many people | :36:46. | :36:48. | |
in Syria are all too used to the frightening sound of explosions | :36:49. | :36:51. | |
and the grim news of casualties. So, how will the addition of British | :36:52. | :36:54. | |
firepower affect people living Rozin Khaleel Hamjool, | :36:55. | :36:57. | |
an 18-year-old Yazidi women who moved here with her family | :36:58. | :37:04. | |
when she was ten. Hello, Rozin, thank you for talking | :37:05. | :37:15. | |
to us. Tell us about the reaction from your friends, family, back in | :37:16. | :37:19. | |
Sir yarks to the fact that the British are now involved militarily | :37:20. | :37:25. | |
in your country? I think so far from what I've heard from both of the | :37:26. | :37:30. | |
areas like in Iraq and Syria and as well as my family here now, I think | :37:31. | :37:36. | |
it's a very positive one that it's a good thing that they have started | :37:37. | :37:42. | |
these air strikes. However, I think they want to know if the | :37:43. | :37:48. | |
humanitarian aid will also be talked about in perhaps Parliament. | :37:49. | :37:53. | |
Yes. Which is a very fair question. I'm also going to bring in, many I | :37:54. | :38:00. | |
Fay, Mohammed Izreb who lives in the UK and is from Syria. Tell us about | :38:01. | :38:06. | |
your own friends and family back home and what, if any, difference it | :38:07. | :38:13. | |
makes to them that the British are involved militarily in your country? | :38:14. | :38:17. | |
To be honest, it was disappointing seeing what happened yesterday in | :38:18. | :38:20. | |
the Parliament. The whole discussion was about Isis and although it's a | :38:21. | :38:24. | |
big threat in Syria, the main threat in Syria really is the Assad regime, | :38:25. | :38:30. | |
mainly 80% of deaths are caused by the Assad regime and it was only a | :38:31. | :38:33. | |
few people yesterday in the Parliament who managed to discuss | :38:34. | :38:39. | |
the civilian protection. Most of the deaths in Syria happen due the | :38:40. | :38:43. | |
aerial bombardment so how can we assure Syrian people that that we | :38:44. | :38:50. | |
are not going to respond to that. I was hoping to see some part of that | :38:51. | :38:54. | |
discussion going on in addition to bombing Isis. I don't know if you | :38:55. | :38:59. | |
know Mohammed, but going on in Vienna are these so-called peace | :39:00. | :39:06. | |
talks, there is an ambitious time frame for a ceasefire in Syria | :39:07. | :39:11. | |
within six months and then within 18 months free ahhed fair elections we | :39:12. | :39:16. | |
are told - this is the plan - which will lead to an inclusive Government | :39:17. | :39:18. | |
representing all the people of Syria? We heard those talks for a | :39:19. | :39:23. | |
long time now. Syrian people can't believe it any more. We have | :39:24. | :39:28. | |
experience that the Assad regime only respond to political talk when | :39:29. | :39:33. | |
there is actually some military threat. That is what is happening | :39:34. | :39:37. | |
two years ago when we threatened we are going to do something against | :39:38. | :39:41. | |
the chemical weapons. Suddenly the Assad regime decided to sit on the | :39:42. | :39:44. | |
table and give up his chemical weapons. It's the same now, if we | :39:45. | :39:49. | |
just only sit on the table without enforcing that, with actually | :39:50. | :39:52. | |
credible military threat to say that unless something happens, we are not | :39:53. | :39:57. | |
going to let those civilians die every day. 150 die in Syria every | :39:58. | :40:02. | |
day, that's a Paris attack happening every day in Syria. And Syrian | :40:03. | :40:08. | |
people will have listened to this debate without hearing any singling | :40:09. | :40:12. | |
word to assure them that civilian casualties will not happen. 150 | :40:13. | :40:16. | |
people every day multilied by six months and you can guess the total | :40:17. | :40:20. | |
loss of life if that even happened after six months. That is | :40:21. | :40:23. | |
extraordinary and thank you for reminding us of that. Rozin, our | :40:24. | :40:28. | |
audience remembers what happened to the use still people at the hands of | :40:29. | :40:34. | |
IS earlier this year. Do your friends and family in Syria feel | :40:35. | :40:39. | |
they are more at threat from IS or President Assad as Mohammed was | :40:40. | :40:45. | |
saying? I think the big problem is that | :40:46. | :40:55. | |
actually I don't know much about the President Assad's involvement with | :40:56. | :41:03. | |
IS and the whole situation really, but what Islamic state is doing and | :41:04. | :41:12. | |
the theology is completely wrong and against humanity and that should be | :41:13. | :41:17. | |
everyone's worry, surely. Mohammed, you've clearly said that | :41:18. | :41:20. | |
there doesn't seem to be, or you don't have much faith in the plan to | :41:21. | :41:26. | |
remove President Assad from power - I wonder how you think things will | :41:27. | :41:32. | |
unfold then over the next six months, 12 months, 18 months? | :41:33. | :41:38. | |
I mean, I'm hoping there'll be more political pressure on Assad regime | :41:39. | :41:47. | |
and I hope that a real and legitimate pressure... That pressure | :41:48. | :41:50. | |
would have to come from Russia because they are allies but there is | :41:51. | :41:55. | |
no sign that President Putin wants President Assad to go? I don't think | :41:56. | :41:59. | |
Putin would want to see Assad going. They are claiming now that they are | :42:00. | :42:03. | |
bombing Isis, Russia do. All you are seeing is bombing of hospitals and | :42:04. | :42:07. | |
civilian areas, where Isis is not even there, they are just bombing | :42:08. | :42:11. | |
the Free Syrian Army under the big umbrella of bombing Isis. Only two | :42:12. | :42:18. | |
days ago, we had a hospital bombed by Russian airplanes. They are using | :42:19. | :42:23. | |
cluster bombs. I mean, that's the risk here, we look to the eyes of | :42:24. | :42:31. | |
Syrians, as if we are joining Russia in bombing and Russia is not bombing | :42:32. | :42:39. | |
Isis but the Free Syrian Army. So they won't be able to differentiate. | :42:40. | :42:50. | |
To Syrians, we have to take things in balance. When 150 people die | :42:51. | :42:55. | |
every day because of Assad, there is a lot of people, but it's not the | :42:56. | :43:00. | |
same level, 5% of the death toll in Syria is caused by Isis, so it's | :43:01. | :43:05. | |
still horrendous but you can see why Syrian people are putting more | :43:06. | :43:08. | |
emphasis on Assad. Thank you both very much for talking | :43:09. | :43:10. | |
to us. Thank you for your many, many | :43:11. | :43:23. | |
messages. We do read them all, I promise you. This viewer on WhatsApp | :43:24. | :43:28. | |
says, I totally agree that Britain should have gone in sooner to carry | :43:29. | :43:33. | |
out air strikes on Isis. E-mail from Robin, Daesh are already killing | :43:34. | :43:39. | |
civilians indiscriminately, raping, beheading et cetera. What would have | :43:40. | :43:44. | |
happened in 1944 if he said we couldn't attack when Hitler and his | :43:45. | :43:47. | |
vile regime were already killing millions? Get real, Jeremy Corbyn, | :43:48. | :43:51. | |
and supporters in the long run, Daesh have to be stopped before | :43:52. | :43:55. | |
there are no civilians left. And this tweet from Lynn, | :43:56. | :44:01. | |
practically every Syrian person who's asked says it's | :44:02. | :44:03. |