By MATT SANDY General Sir Richard Dannatt says planning for after the Iraq war was an 'abject failure' The former head of the Army has accused Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of letting down British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. 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. He makes the accusations in his autobiography, Leading From The Front. General 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 was an 'abject failure'. While the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) provided a 'good framework' for defence policy in the Labour years, he says 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. General Dannatt, whose book is serialised in The Sunday Telegraph, writes: '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.' Mr Blair 'lacked the moral courage to impose his will on his own Chancellor', adds the general. he adds: 'I felt that the top end of the government did not understand or fully appreciate the pressures the Army was under and I tried really hard to get that understanding across. I felt it was pushing a rock up a steep hill pretty much all the way through. 'It was frustrating because from the land forces' point of view, we always do our job, but we knew we couldn't do it as well because we hadn't got the resources we needed.' 'Malign': Gordon Brown with British troops at Basra Air Station in Iraq Weak: Tony Blair in Basra. General Dannatt says he should have stood up to Gordon Brown General Dannatt said he felt that from Labour's arrival in office in 1997, Mr Blair was 'prepared to use the Armed Forces on the world stage', but Mr Brown was 'not particularly interested in defence'. But he did not absolve Mr Blair of responsibility for funding shortfalls: 'every organisation has its tone set by its leadership. 'To me it seems extraordinary that the Prime Minister, the number one guy, cannot crack the whip sufficiently to his very close friend, the Chancellor, and say, "We're doing this in the national interest, Gordon, you fund it."' General Dannatt complains that after Mr Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, he did not have regular enough opportunities to talk with him about the problems the Army was facing. He says that at one point in early 2009, he was forced to 'ambush' Brown during a chance encounter in horse Guards Parade to get across his concerns about Afghanistan, where British troops were suffering high casualty rates. Up to 5,000 troops could be discharged from the armed forces because they are medically unfit for combat duties, including many injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. A leaked Ministry of Defence document says 5 per cent of the Army's 102,000 personnel were no longer fit to be deployed in action. It suggested that the worst affected 1,500 troops were in line to be discharged first, with 750 following in each of the next few years, according to the Sunday Times. While 'only a proportion of those discharged are likely to have been injured on operations... this number is likely to grow as operations in Afghanistan continue', the document said. British soldiers on patrol in Iraq. A leaked Ministry of Defence document says thousands of injured troops will be axed because they are unfit The MoD refused to comment on the leaked document, but a spokesman played down suggestions that a mass cull of injured troops was in the offing and insisted there was no quota for numbers to leave the Army. 'The number of soldiers medically discharged is done on a case by case basis and it is inappropriate to speculate on future numbers,' said the spokesman. Earlier this year, the MoD unveiled a £70million project to help injured troops to either remain in the forces or make a transition to civilian life. The Army Recovery Capability scheme envisaged 12 'personnel recovery units' around the UK providing programmes aimed at either getting them fit to return to a military post or preparing them for life outside the Armed Forces. Launching the programme in February, General Sir David Richards, the head of the Army, said: 'I confidently expect that no soldier who thinks it is in his interest to stay will be forced out.' But the new document, drawn up by a civil servant at UK Land Forces HQ in Wiltshire and circulated to ministers, senior MoD officials and Army top brass, suggested that the discharge of injured troops was likely to prove controversial. Entitled Management of Army Personnel who are Medically Unfit for Service, it conceded that discharges of injured troops may be seen as the 'MoD discarding those who have sacrificed much on our behalf', said the Sunday Times. And it added: 'Difficult decisions will inevitably need to be made about individuals who already have a significant media profile. These will require careful handling.'Blair lacked 'moral courage' and Brown was 'malign':
Ex-army chief hits out over military funding
Soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan 'to be axed'
Sunday, 5 September 2010
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