Prince Harry has been frighting the Taliban

[NAB3wishesfor2008]

For the last 10 weeks.

Good for him and very sensible to tell us after the posting.

I was thrilled to see news footage of him eating a pot noodle - chicken and mushroom.

I think it sounds as if he has done a really good job and for once I feel quite proud of the Royal Family.

Yes but for once it wasn't OUR media who broke the press blackout so that's something.

When he was first going to go out to Iraq apparently all his battalion(?) went out & bought ginger wigs to try & fool the insurgents!!! I know it was only a joke but I thought it showed they appreciated he didn't want special treatment & as fletch says just get on with his job.

Wel didn't we all know that the decision to keep him home was a cover up? Sorry but you join the forces you do your tours - no matter who you are. Bloody Press.

a cover-up?

More to the point, what the fuck is David Gest doing there? Surely a very appealing target for the Taliban...

(pic 2 in WelliesAndPyjamas link)

He's a soldier and that's all that he wants to be!

Let him get on with it.

FFS, that must suck to have your life so fucked with by the press and you had no control over whom you were born to.

Shame on whoever let it out AT ALL.

I am far from being a monarchist but I have to say that I when I heard about this I thought "nice one Harry!"

I feel really pleased for him, hes doing a really good job. Just a shame the word is out.

He is doing his job, and the press blackout was, IMO neccessary, not just becasue of him being a target, but for the safety of those he is fighting alongside. Unfortunately now it has been released the tossers feckersMOD will need to decide if it's worth keeping him there.
I bet he didn't ahve crap equipment though, his gun wold be working properly and he would be issued with everything he needed
The press can't all be bad, they got this story weeks ago , and did interviews with him and kept it quiet, I think that is good. I also think it was good that his comrades kept it out the news, I could imagine some of them would be desperate to ring their DW/DPs and say "guess who is out here with us". Having said that DH wouldn't tell me, he would wait till he got back, and even then only if the story had already broken

I agree with expat on this- shame on whoever leaked it

With you on this one Expat and Mrsruffallo.

I have met him and he is a really nice guy. I watched him, his father and William (and randomly Tommy Lee Curtis) play polo once and I met him in the bar afterwards. Such a nice person and an amazing polo player - better than his dad and his brother!!!!!

Is he coming home? A real shame this has leaked

saltire - agree about the equipment.
A bit like when Chereee Blair made a big thing of having her baby in an NHS hospital.

Well, of course he got special treatment and that's inevitable. He had a bbc crew following him around making a documentary, knowing that he would be the huge news story as soon as he was home.

I don;t think it's that hard not to be 'normal'.

Well I am of a completely different thinking on this. There have been so many reports recently about how appaulingly our soldiers are treated and the lack of equipment etc. I don't expect Harry had any of these problems. Frankly I feel he is more a liability to the British Army and the royals seem to think that somehow it is their right to serve regardless of the consequences. If my son was in his troop I would be pretty mad and very worried. The amount of press this has received today is ridiculous - what is this a PR exercise. How come so many cameras were there, how come certain people can give so much info and pictures if it was so secret.

Lets face it we all have things we would love to do. But only if you're royal can you absolutely do what ever you like. How selfish.

Lastly the press evidently had a special restriction put on any reporting which means it is treason to report so hence no reporting over here. It was inevitable this would get out and put the lives of our hard working soliders at risk.

They put him with gurkhas though, didn;t they? Call me cynical but I thought maybe this was so that there was no question of putting 'our boys' at risk.

It wasn't "restricted" - no treason! - the media here agreed to keep quiet about it for the duration of his tour, and were promised film & interviews to use after he came out.

Once it was blown by that US website there was no point in our media keeping it quiet.

Not just gurkhas, pd.

It was leaked through a German source, Wendy.

I think worse than any 'restriction' was the complicit post-fighting PR stunt.

Bild were quite vague though, it was the Drudge report follow-up that gave the game away.

Being vague is different from a blackout, however.

FWIW, I don't think it was a stunt by the Royal family and I don't believe in monarchy, either.

I don;t think it was a stunt.

It was a piss poor deal by Harry and the army and a wonderful coup for the press

I believe a D-notice was used. This a censorship notice issued in the UK by the Department of Defence to the media to prohibit the publication of information on matters alleged to be of national security. The system dates from 1922.

Actually I don't think it was stunt. However if publicity was not the aim why is there now so much publicity. To my mind if he was totally serious he would have wanted to keep this completely secret until it came out, which of course eventually it would, but then he would have nothing to say on the matter. Instead we get documentaries, pictures the full bloody works.