Sunday, September 05, 2010
Blair and Brown draw fire over funding of armed forces
The Sunday Independent reports that the former head of the Army has accused Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of letting down British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan:
They say that in his new book, Leading From the Front, General Sir Richard Dannatt branded Mr Brown "malign" for failing to fund the armed forces adequately and said Mr Blair lacked the "moral courage" to make his then chancellor deliver the money that was needed:
In his book, Gen Dannatt says that evidence for Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction - the official justification for Britain's involvement in the 2003 invasion - was "most uncompelling" and the planning for the aftermath of war an "abject failure".
While the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) provided a "good framework" for defence policy in the Labour years, it was "fatally flawed" by being underfunded by Mr Brown's Treasury and could not cope with the strains of deploying troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time.
Gen Dannatt reserved his fiercest fire for the two politicians at the head of the Labour administration.
"History will pass judgment on these foreign adventures in due course, but in my view Gordon Brown's malign intervention, when chancellor, on the SDR by refusing to fund what his own government had agreed, fatally flawed the entire process from the outset," he wrote.
"The seeds were sown for some of the impossible operational pressures to come."
Mr Blair "lacked the moral courage to impose his will on his own chancellor", said the general.
These accusations are not new of course, I believe that General Dannatt has made them before. Nevertheless they remain a damning indictment of the Blair and Brown Governments and one that has never been convincingly answered.
They say that in his new book, Leading From the Front, General Sir Richard Dannatt branded Mr Brown "malign" for failing to fund the armed forces adequately and said Mr Blair lacked the "moral courage" to make his then chancellor deliver the money that was needed:
In his book, Gen Dannatt says that evidence for Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction - the official justification for Britain's involvement in the 2003 invasion - was "most uncompelling" and the planning for the aftermath of war an "abject failure".
While the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) provided a "good framework" for defence policy in the Labour years, it was "fatally flawed" by being underfunded by Mr Brown's Treasury and could not cope with the strains of deploying troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time.
Gen Dannatt reserved his fiercest fire for the two politicians at the head of the Labour administration.
"History will pass judgment on these foreign adventures in due course, but in my view Gordon Brown's malign intervention, when chancellor, on the SDR by refusing to fund what his own government had agreed, fatally flawed the entire process from the outset," he wrote.
"The seeds were sown for some of the impossible operational pressures to come."
Mr Blair "lacked the moral courage to impose his will on his own chancellor", said the general.
These accusations are not new of course, I believe that General Dannatt has made them before. Nevertheless they remain a damning indictment of the Blair and Brown Governments and one that has never been convincingly answered.
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Piffle! Dannatt is doing the usual blame-shifting. What he *should* be saying is that we taxpayers were dragged into an unwinnable war which damaged us (and killed 10's of 1,000's of innocents, but they don't matter).
No amount of extra squandering of our taxpayers money on shiny death-dealing gadgets would have changed that. Trouble is, no establishment figure can take on 'our boys' without being slimed by the Murdoch press.
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No amount of extra squandering of our taxpayers money on shiny death-dealing gadgets would have changed that. Trouble is, no establishment figure can take on 'our boys' without being slimed by the Murdoch press.
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