Our troops are risking life and limb for a cause politicians insist is vital to the interests of UK security. If so, it needs to be waged with vigour, determination - and unswerving commitment. Without the wholehearted support of the state they are sent to defend, how can we ask our soldiers to fight and die for it? Yet after eight bloody years, there is little evidence that anyone in power - from the Prime Minister down - has their heart in it. Nobody is sounding the rallying cry. No-one stands up and says precisely why we are there or what we intend to achieve. Indeed, from the outset, Our Boys had to fight as hard with the Treasury as with the Taliban. Every scrap of kit - from boots to helicopters - had to be gouged out of the MoD. Now, disgracefully, they are told desperately-needed choppers are not fit to fly in danger zones. A crucial fleet of armoured trucks is stranded in Dubai because there are no aircraft to fly them in. Young heroes just have to risk death and mutilation. Even MoD spin doctors are fed up with fibbing about the way Our Boys are being looked after. Voters support the troops. But they are sick of politicians who stay away when flag-draped coffins are flown home. They want to know precisely why we are there and why we are not giving our Forces the right equipment. Gordon Brown and bungling Defence wallah Bob Ainsworth must deliver the answers... now.
ANOTHER brave British soldier was blown to pieces in Afghanistan yesterday - the 192nd victim, with no end in sight to the carnage.
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
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