Squandered lives 2

The television and radio were full of them yesterday, as were the online newspaper sites – the details released by the MoD of the four killed on Sunday in the attack on a boat patrol on the Shatt Al-Arab waterway.


According to the MoD, the four were (pictured in order above) Warrant Officer Class 2 Lee Hopkins, Staff Sergeant Sharron Elliott, Corporal Ben Nowak and Marine Jason Hylton.

Says the MoD website:

…all died as a result of injuries sustained following the detonation of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) mounted on a bridge on the Shatt Al Arab River on the eastern edge of Basra City. The incident took place at approximately 1350 hrs local time. All were onboard a Rigid Raiding Craft (RRC) which was part of a routine boat patrol travelling north towards the Shatt Al Arab Hotel, a British Army base on the river. Three other UK service personnel sustained serious injuries in the attack.

Now, I have thought long and carefully before writing this piece – the third on this particular incident, the others here and here. The reason for my caution is a wish to avoid being seen as "wise after the event" or unrealistically and unfairly critical.

On the other side of the equation though is the crucially important fact that these deaths are not only personal tragedies in the own right – touching the lives of families, friends and colleagues. Each and every one diminishes the resolve of this nation and the ability of our government to maintain troops in Iraq and thus pursue this nation's foreign policy objectives.

Many in the UK, for that very reason - desirous of forcing a change in our foreign policy - are exploiting those deaths, using them as part of their argument for bringing our troops back.

The Secretary of State for Defence, Des Browne, on the other hand, has offered his ritual condolences, talking rather too glibly for my liking of "the sacrifice made by the brave men and women of our armed forces" but no one officially is able to dispute that these deaths were unnecessary, leaving the field to the anti-war groups.

In the minds of those anti-war campaigners, the cause is simple – Blair's determination to do the bidding of Bush and keep troops in Iraq. However, rather than disagree in principle with them, we believe also that the deaths were unnecessary. But, while we have common cause with the "antis" in that respect, they want to withdraw our troops. We do not. What we do want, in the broadest sense, is better protection, to enable our troops to perform their tasks while keeping down the casualty rate. Since no-one else is pointing this out with any force or consistency, we feel we have no choice but to agitate for this option.

Where we have to be careful though is in our assertion that the deaths were "unnecessary". This, in our view, means that they were preventable and by means other than simple withdrawal of all troops from the theatre. We would also assert that such measures as we say could have been taken do not rely wholly on hindsight.

Here, we call in aid our own piece, written on 28 September, in which we noted that the Army was mounting a high-profile security operation in Basra. This was Operation Sinbad and we suggested that, as a result, we might also see an "upsurge in the Iraqi losses".

Only five days later we were noting the death of a British soldier from an "indirect fire attack" at the Shatt Al-Arab Hotel, remarking that this might not be a coincidence. Then, a mere week ago, we were analysing the death of another soldier but also noting that four Russian technicians working on the reconstruction of al-Najibiya power plant in Basra had also been injured by a mortar strike.

Crucially, we had learned that the bomb "accidentally" hit the power plant and that the real object of the strike was "UK Armed Forces", indicating that troops were being targeted far more often than they were being killed.

This we knew anyway, from accounts of how British forces were being routinely mortared at their base in Basra Palace and how the Foreign Office had to withdraw their staff from the British Consulate in Basra.

What has also been the case has been that the Army, acutely sensitive about the losses arising from the attacks on "Snatch" Land Rovers, has been taking additional precautions, not least escorting them with Warrior MICVs, thus making them less vulnerable targets. That, and a number of other counter-measures, has made it less likely that Land Rovers would be attacked, but has not diminished overall the chances that attacks of some description would be made.

Turning to Sunday's bombing incident, we now know that – contrary to one early report – just one boat was involved. We now know also that it was a "Rigid Raider", one of several based at the Army base at Shatt Al-Arab Hotel (pictured).

But what shrieks out from the MoD report is that this boat was on a routine patrol. And you do not have to be a security expert to know that, in protecting yourself from targeted terrorist attacks, the one thing that must be avoided wherever possible is routine. Many of us have heard experts – right through the sixties, seventies and eighties in respect of the IRA campaign – drone on about varying times and routes, to the point that it has become part of our own normal background knowledge.

What we also now know is that any craft to the south of the Shatt Al-Arab Hotel base would have to negotiate a pontoon bridge, through which it seems the Rigid Raiders must have routinely passaged. And it was here that a bomb was waiting, detonated as far as we know, by remote control – which suggests that there may have been an observer watching the craft. We have not been able to find a published still photograph of the bomb site, although the Telegraph had put up some video footage. However, the paper's management is so anal about bloggers downloading its output that we have not used it. Undaunted, we have found a picture (right) of what looks to be the pontoon bridge (we think from the opposite bank).

Nevertheless, despite the general injunction about routine, there is some suggestion that this particular patrol had to be at this place at the time it was. And it seems the insurgents might have known for weeks in advance that the pontoon bridge would have a heavy British presence "as it does every Sunday" when it is opened to let large river traffic through. They would have had plenty of time to plant a device.

On this basis, the author of this assertion thus argues that the bombing was:

…another lesson that whether they (troops) are on foot, in vehicles, in the air or on the water they will continue to be vulnerable targets until the terrorists are removed from the city.

This is far too passive. If a procedure has unavoidably to be adopted routinely, then there are two other safeguards. Firstly, any areas where a boat might be particularly vulnerable should be searched by land patrols, carrying out the well-known and entirely routine practice known as "route proving".

Then, looking at more general issue of how inland "riverine" patrols should be organised, we have revisited the Vietnam campaign, where the US acquired considerable experience in the use of small vessels in hostile territory. And what is particularly interesting is that, in setting up patrol formations, the US equipped them with their own organic attack helicopters, which became an integral part of the operation. Thus a contemporary source records:

A key component of the Game Warden operation was its air support element. Initially, the Army deployed detachments of two UH-1B Iroquois helicopters and their crews to PBR bases and river-based LSTs. Beginning in August 1966, however, air crews from the Navy's Helicopter Support Squadron 1 replaced the Army personnel. Then on 1 April 1967, the Navy activated Helicopter Attack (Light) Squadron (HAL) 3 at Vung Tau with responsibility for providing Task Force 116 with aerial fire support, observation, and medical evacuation. By September 1968, the 421-man "Seawolf" squadron controlled detachments of two helicopters each at Nha Be, Binh Thuy, Dong Tom, Rach Gia, Vinh Long, and on board three LSTs stationed in the larger rivers of the Mekong Delta. The Bell UH-1B "Hueys," armed variously with 2.75-inch rockets; .50-caliber, 60-millimeter, and 7.62-millimeter machine guns; grenades; and small arms, were a powerful and mobile complement to the Game Warden surface units.

As always, therefore, we are back to resources. Irrespective of the specific cause of this incident, there is a very strong case for arguing that small patrol baots should not operate without their own air support.

In arguing for more helicopters, we have been participating in a debate on the aviation forum pprune but, we are told by someone who looks like he knows what he is talking about, the crux of the problem is that "money is too tight" even for our suggested option, "cheap and cheerful" solutions.

If this is really the case, then it is scandalous, especially in the context of £8.8 billion having been lost from the defence budget on wasted or useless European projects.

We, of course, could not begin to suggest that the European experiment has cost lives. That would be exploiting the deaths of our troops for political ends, which only the anti-war movement is allowed to do. But it does seem that this government, for all its fine talk, is prepared to allow troops to die for want of the proper equipment. That truly makes for squandered lives.

COMMENT THREAD

Uncharted waters

He may be the latest but he is by no means the first. "He" is Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham in east London, where the BNP won 11 council seats in May's local elections

And Cruddas is warning that more and more disgruntled Labour voters are switching support to the BNP. Furthermore, he is suggesting that people in Labour heartlands have lost hope and have turned to the party in protest at mainstream politics.

As early as December 2003, Labour politicians have been raising similar warnings, then being the turn of Scottish MP Michael Connarty who criticised the government's treatment of asylum seekers, declaring that it could "fan the flame of the BNP".

More famously, we had Margaret Hodge in April this year, who claimed that as many as eighty percent of white families in her Barking constituency in east London had admitted that they were tempted to vote BNP in the then forthcoming council elections.

This was followed by the publication in the same month of a study for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. It indicated that up to a quarter of voters are considering supporting the BNP, the authors stating that this reflected feelings of "powerlessness and frustration" with the main political parties.

Then there was Frank Field, the former Labour minister who in June said that UK politicians were "living on borrowed time", arguing that it was only because the BNP were so inept that the debate had not taken off. Mainstream politicians had to address immigration, he said, "before the BNP stumbles on somebody with talent".

Of course, "mainstream politicians" have not addressed immigration – they have merely paid lip service to it believing, like the Conservative Party establishment last week, that the electorate is still in a mood to play games.

Jon Cruddas, at least, is closer to understanding what is going on – witnessed by the council by-election result on 26 October in Rotherham West. This is the archetypal "Labour heartland", where a turd with a red rosette could get elected – and often does. But, while Labour held the seat with 44.3 percent of the vote, BNP – standing for the first time, came a creditable second with 26.2 percent. And, had not an independent candidate been fronted as a deliberate "spoiler", creaming off 23.2 percent of the vote, BNP would have done better.

Interestingly, the Lib-Dems did not field a candidate, but the Conservatives did, expecting to gain from their rival's absence. While the previous May the Lib-Dems polled 21.3 percent, the Conservatives scored an embarrassingly low 6.3 percent.

The result had Tory blogger and self-acclaimed political commentator Iain Dale twittering in dismay, having totally failed to see it coming.

Had his finger been closer to the pulse, he would have seen the "straws in the wind" on 22nd April 2004, when in the Madeley Ward by-election (Telford, Shropshire), Martin Coleman of the BNP polled 13 percent of the vote (188 votes), only eight points behind the Conservative candidate who came third with 21.5 percent.

The real wake-up call came with the Euro-elections two months later and although the UKIP result was the big news, there were more important undercurrents, which were easily missed.

One person who didn't miss them was Mark Steyn who wrote that the political "mainstream" had become the minority. The only two parties most Britons had ever known couldn't muster 50 percent of the vote between them. Furthermore, between them, UKIP and BNP pulled 32.6 percent of the vote against Labour and the Lib-Dems whose combined share of the vote was 33.9 percent. "What, other than the blinkers of the media-political Westminster village, makes 32.6 percent the fringe and 33.9 percent the mainstream?" Steyn asked.

It was then that BNP noticed what they call the "mining town" effect, where their votes were appreciably higher in the old mining and steel towns than they were elsewhere. One of Iain Dale's own commentators had it:

The white local population are predominantly old-style working class, who would rather be burnt alive than vote Conservative. They dislike Liberals ("Tories with beards and sandals"), they really loathe TB's NuLab ("southern tossers"), and still hanker after the glory days of Arthur Scargill and the miner's strike. They have also had large-scale immigration dumped on them against their wishes and are a long way from the politically correct multiculturalism influences of North London.

So these OldLab supporters have the option of either staying at home or voting for the BNP. Large swathes of the North are in a similar position, which is why the likes of Jack Straw are trying to become more OldLabour in their approach to multiculturalism.

This is what happens when the three main political parties all try and stand on the same bit of the centre ground. Those who don't like it there have only extreme parties to vote for. Be prepared for large votes for the BNP and UKIP at the next election. DC be warned...

Up North though, UKIP is dead in the water, certainly in Yorkshire and Humberside, which leaves BNP. There really should have been no surprise at the Rotherham result. Yet, Mr Cruddas – in today's statement – is still able to assert that:

The BNP thrive in areas where people feel forgotten by the mainstream parties. We have to mobilise ordinary decent people against the BNP, on the streets, in workplaces and in local communities.

There are times when it is impossible to convey precisely the right flavour of a situation with the use of cold, clinical English and one has to resort to more colourful phraseology. And if there was ever a more appropriate use for the phrase, "heads up their own backsides", it would be hard to define it. Somehow, that phrase does so completely describe many contemporary politicians.

With their heads in the position – where the sun never shines – few of them saw more straws in the wind with the May local government elections. All the attention was in Dagenham where the BNP pulled 11 seats but up in Bradford, BNP contested 16 of the 30 wards up for grabs. They took 27.5 percent of the vote coming a close second to the Conservatives, pushing Labour into third and the Lib-Dims into fourth places.

The BNP were to repeat the trick in early October when they won a "surprise" 29 percent of the vote in a council by-election in Loughborough. Andrew Holders, the party's Loughborough organiser, took 478 votes to come second to Labour in Shelthorpe ward, Charnwood Borough Council.

There were also, of course, the two June by-elections in Bromley and Blaenau Gwent. In the hitherto rock-solid Tory seat of Bromley, the Conservative candidate, Bob Neill, only just got in with 11,621 votes against a strong challenge from the Lib-Dims, slashing a general election majority of 13,342 to 633.

UKIP came third, beating Labour into fourth place, taking 2347 votes, but what was especially interesting was that, collectively, the eight minority parties polled 4,518 votes. At the time we wrote that the cumulative effect of these minority parties was getting quite significant. It had definitely been a factor in the general election, where the UKIP/Veritas vote exceeded the Labour majority over the Conservatives in 28 seats, undoubtedly costing the Tories a significant number of seats.

Thus do we have a number of factors coming together. Firstly, we have a rebellious electorate that has ceased to act in accordance with its traditional, basically tribal mores. Secondly, we have a political class that has lost the ability to "read" its own electorate. Thirdly, we have polls which were basically designed to deal with a two-party system and have long since stopped properly measuring public opinion. Fourth, and finally, newspapers (and other media organs) which were once the bellwether of public opinion have so far diverged from their readers, listeners and viewers that they now represent the opinions only of themselves.

This can be seen even today, from the leader in The Sunday Telegraph which blithely asserts that, "No reasonable person disputes that … the British National Party is repellent."

That might once have been the case. But only in the last few days have we had Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller of MI5 telling us that her organisation is tracking 30 UK terror plots and keeping 1,600 individuals under surveillance, warning that the threat is "serious" and "growing".

This comes on the back of the London bombing, the Danish cartoon protests - where the BNP was the only political party that made a stand - and the "debate" over the wearing of veils.

We have also seen the recent conviction of Dhiren Barot, who has been sentenced to life after pleading guilty to conspiracy to murder people through a series of bombings on British and US targets. His invaluable contribution to "multi-culturalism" was the "gas limos project", a plan to blow up three limousines "packed" with gas cylinders and explosives next to or under target buildings in the UK.

And all the time, we see with our own eyes the growth of militant Islam on our own streets. This is while the politicians talk tough about immigration but do nothing and Blair is tells us that we face a "long and deep struggle" against (Islamic) terrorism - only he cannot bring himself to mention the "I" word.

Far from the BNP being "repellent", therefore, it is increasingly coming to represent mainstream public opinion - the only party so to do. It is leaving our politicians and their parties like beached whales, stranded on the shores of their own ignorance, complacency and arrogance, supported by a media which itself has completely lost the plot.

That puts us in uncharted waters but, amazingly, the politicians still think they are in command. So insulated from reality are they that they haven't even begun to realise that they are heading for the rocks and that the passengers have disconnected the wheel from the rudder.

COMMENT THREAD

Apparently the American system is not dying after all

A few short days ago there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth about the American political and constitutional system. It was dying. Democracy had no future in that country. The people of the United States were not to be trusted with their own future. The Constitution was clearly a seriously flawed document.

Well, well. What a difference a few days can make. It seems that the American system is not dying after all. The Constitution is a very fine document; democracy is flourishing and the American people are not the moronic hicks we were led to believe they are. All because the Democrats are now controlling the House of Representatives and (just) the Senate. God’s in his Heaven and all’s right with the world.

Or not, as the case may be. For now the Democrats and their supporters in the MSM, the tranzis and the European political class will have to face up to the reality of politics, which does not consist of Michael Moore-type posturing or statements by Hollywood fruitcakes. In fact, they are all being kept well away from the cameras and Nancy Pelosi, probably the first woman Speaker of the House has already transformed herself into a statesman-like figure who is not out to get the President but to work with him for the good of the people. Whether that is what she will do or not, that is what she says now.

Of course, Pelosi is not the only one around and a number of Democrats, as Michelle Malkin says, have started the impeachment drumbeat. As it happens there is nothing to impeach either Bush or Cheney for, just as there is nothing to impeach Blair for. Even if the Iraqi war will turn out to be a huge mistake (and precisely how do you measure that?) it will only signify bad political decisions. That is not impeachable.

The Democrat leaders, I suspect, have noted certain facts. One is that the new Congress is not much less conservative than the last one was. Many Dem wannabes brought out their conservative credentials or, at the very least, pretended to have them. Michelle was one of the first to note that and David Frum, among others, followed up with an interesting analysis. In other words, the Republicans got a drubbing to a very great extent because they betrayed their conservative principles. Now, I wonder if that might apply to any other party that any of us can think of.

Then there is the problem that the next lot of elections, this time presidential as well as some Congress and gubernatorial ones, will be with us in two years’ time, with the campaign starting considerably sooner than that. The Democrat mandate, despite the hysterical burbling of the British media, is not actually that big. The Senate they are controlling by one vote and that includes two independents on their side. One of those independents is Joe Lieberman and he is very unlikely to get involved in revenge-fuelled anti-Bush and anti-war activity.

Some of the new senators are not precisely on the left either, while some of the Republicans who lost were. (Others were not.) James Webb, the new Senator Elect from Virginia is, apart from being a successful novelist, a man who comes from a military family, who served as a marine in Vietnam (and did not dump on his buddies afterwards as Kerry did) and was the Secretary for the Navy under Reagan, resigning because he disagreed with the cuts. His son has just gone to Iraq. Will the moonbats approve of him? I think, possibly not.

I do not propose to analyze all the new Senators and Representatives. I am merely saying that the situation is not quite as bad as some people make out.

Furthermore, I, too, think that we have seen democracy triumphant and in a way that is almost impossible in any other country. (Yes, I am a bit of a fan of the American Constitution and of the American system, though I believe that pencil and paper are more useful than all that chad-ridden machinery.)

The point of accountable government is that the people to whom it is supposedly accountable can either get rid of it or, as in this case, give it a good kicking. The people owe nothing either the government or political parties. This sometimes gets forgotten by the politicians and the media that swarms round them. They owe us. And that is what the American people have said.

However, unlike us, the American people do not have to choose one or t’other of two fairly hopeless parties but can mix and match because there is a true separation between the legislative and executive branches of government. There is a suspicion around that the vote was a deliberate one for a legislative gridlock and that is not a bad thing.

As things stand, both parties have been put on probation for the next two years.

Could we do anything like that here? Apart from our system, which enforces a vote for the legislative and the executive simultaneously and degrades both Parliament and the government by not separating them, could we really give our rulers a good kicking if we did not like the way they ruled or legislated?

Of course, we do have a problem in that we have no Opposition worthy of its name at the moment but even if we did have one, could we change the trend in government through our electoral system? Alas, no.

Let us consider a few randomly chosen facts. The Financial Services Action Plan, which consists of numerous far-reaching directives that are being put into British law, has been unrolling for about ten years and part 2 is set to unroll in the next five. Elections do not matter, for the legislation, which will hurt the City of London far more than any other place in the European Union, is going ahead through its appointed stations.

Can a different British government have different policies on immigration or border control (a sore point in the United States as well though for different reasons)? Well, errm, no, as we found out when Michael Howard, then leader of the Opposition tried to advance certain policies on the subject during the last election campaign and was slapped down by the Commission.

Could the Conservatives, if they ever came to power, introduce that loopy idea they voted through during the conference about reducing or even abolishing VAT on environmentally sound light bulbs (not that anyone is going to vote them into power for that reason)? Actually, no.

Remember what happened when the Labour Government came to power in 1997, having put into its manifesto (those sacred words) a promise to abolish VAT on domestic fuel? The duly elected Chancellor of the Exchequer of the government with the largest majority in post-war Britain had to crawl to Brussels to beg the Commission to allow him to fulfil his electoral promise. He was told that he could reduce the VAT to the minimum level of 5 per cent but could not abolish it. Those who voted Labour for that reason just had to lump it.

I could go on, but shall not. Many of our readers will be able to think of examples themselves. The sad truth is that while the people of the United States can express their views about their government, can change its course in some ways and can administer a good drubbing if they are unhappy with the way things are going, we in Europe cannot to any significant degree.

Next time you hear clever-dick comments about the ridiculousness of the American system, remember that sad truth. Oh wait. The American system is no longer ridiculous since it delivered (almost) the result our own clever-dicks, not to mention the various media hacks, euro-hacks and tranzis approve of.

Even for them the problems are beginning to loom. The International Herald Tribune raises an interesting problem in today’s issue. The new man in the Pentagon, mindful of a Democrat-controlled Congress, may well abandon the idea of America leading a coalition of the willing and revert to NATO as the primary security structure. At which point there will be a challenge for the Europeans to change their attitude to many security problems. Above all, the game being played now, of “let’s try to create a security structure without the Americans while relying on them for military power” may well have to be reassessed. And not even the Democrats are likely to be happy about shouldering a disproportionate burden in NATO any longer.

We are in for some interesting times.

COMMENT THREAD

We are not being told the half of it

Following on from the report on this blog of the death of the British soldier from the 2nd Battalion, Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, who died after an attack on the Old State Building in Basra, the soldier has been officially named as Kingsman Jamie Hancock, aged only 19 and on his first active tour.

Amongst others, that information found its way into The Daily Telegraph both online and print copy, with the by-line of James Burleigh, in what was almost a straight copy-out of the MoD press release.

The choice of Burleigh to front the piece is not particularly odd. As a journeyman hack, he turns his hand to a variety of stories and occasionally writes defence pieces. However, the Telegraph also got its defence correspondent, Thomas Harding, to write a piece on the death of Kingsman Hancock. And, while readers will be aware, I am no fan of Harding, it was actually highly informative.

Now what is really odd is that, not only did the piece not appear in the print edition, it appeared only very briefly on-line before disappearing and, currently, can no longer be found on the paper's own search engine. Under a subject search, it is the Burleigh piece that comes up.

Turning to the Harding story, not only is it informative, it also effectively contradicts the official Army spokesman, Major Charlie Burbridge, who originally told Sky News: "There were bursts of automatic fire, which is an indication that this was not a sniper … These are individual rogue elements of criminal gangs and militias who target our soldiers."

Writes Harding of the dead soldier, he was guarding a British base in the centre of Basra when a sandbagged watchtower (sangar) came under attack from automatic weapon fire. Despite wearing the new Osprey body armour and being protected inside the fortified sangar … he died within minutes as a result of his wounds.

Hancock's company, we learn from Harding, is stationed at one of the most dangerous locations for troops in the centre of Basra, the Old State Building where 200 British soldiers are based. He tells us:

The building comes under attack from rocket propelled grenade and automatic gunfire three or four times every 24 hours with the attacks usually occurring at night. During a recent spate of RPG attacks the 2Bn The Royal Anglians used snipers hidden in rooftops to kill 10 gunmen over a two week period. It is believed that the insurgents use the building to "blood" young terrorists by testing their ability and courage. If the recruits pass then they are offered positions on mortar teams earning up to $300 a firing – the equivalent of almost six month's wages.

I tracked down some photographs of the Old State Building and assembled them into the composite below. The first line shows the roof of the building, with a "sangar" being built (and completed), the second line shows the highly fortified perimeter and the third line shows views from the roof, in which some of the fortifications can be seen.


To the story in general, Major Burbridge adds that:

The incident involved a series of bursts from automatic gunfire in an attack carried out by one or more gunmen … The solder guarding the sangar was injured by the gunshots and died within a few minutes. We did not catch the gunmen as they did not hang around after the incident. They fired off a few bursts and then disappeared. It is believed AK47 assault rifles were used in the attack that was probably carried out from a window or building overlooking the British base.

With what we wrote in our earlier piece, this really does not convey the impression that the situation in Basra is under control – far from it, with the insurgents able to attack at will a highly fortified British base, heedless of losses. There is a serious war going on out there and we are not being told the half of it.

COMMENT THREAD

And so it begins...

Launch customer for the troubled Airbus A380 freighter, the US freight giant FedEx, has decided to bail out – possibly the first of many.

It has cancelled its order for ten of the Superjumbo aircraft, ordering instead 15 new Boeing 777 Freighters, with options to purchase another 15.

However, we should not be at all triumphal. Two weeks ago, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote that British taxpayers stood to lose up to £700m of launch investment unless Airbus succeeded in winning a new wave of orders for its flagship aircraft.

So far, the government has invested £530m of our money in the A380 and a further £250m in aid to Rolls-Royce for the Trent 600 and 900 engines. It said the funding would lead to 22,000 Airbus jobs in Britain, where the wings are built, and safeguard a further 62,000. In fact, Airbus now employs 13,000 people in the UK – and the number can only go down.

The way the system works is that a royalty is paid on every aircraft sold, but the taxpayer foots the bill if the jet proves to be a flop. With its 159 orders now reduced by ten, even the original, rather optimistic break-even of 270 aircraft looks unreachable, much less the current estimate of 420 – which means that we stand to lose our shirt on this European white elephant.

Without even the technical troubles though, I could have told you that this thing was a non-starter. In fact, I did … which, after his comments when the A380 visited London recently, makes chancellor – soon to become prime minister - Gordon Brown look like a bit of a prat.

Final words on the Budapest riots

[Warning: The pictures in this posting are highly unpleasant and not for readers with a nervous disposition.]

As Hungary is shaking itself after another lot of October events (as the 1956 uprising was known euphemistically for many years in the country) and promising to have a budget that will “contain measures required by the European Union”, it might be worth taking another look at the last few weeks for, although this was not another 1956 (and Gyurcsány may be a less than totally honest individual and politician but he is no Mátyás Rákosy) the events have shaken Eastern Europe and the EU more than somewhat.

The second demonstration on November 4, anniversary of the Soviet tanks’ return to Budapest did not come to much. It seems that about 1,000 people gathered in Vörösmarty Square, which just happens to have one of the best cafes and patisseries in Budapest, to remember and also to demand various completely unachievable matters, such as the abrogation of the Treaty of Trianon, which in 1920 created a much smaller Hungary than it had ever been before. Two thirds of Hungarian territory and something half of her people found themselves in other countries, two of which, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia no longer exist, but the erstwhile Hungarian lands remain in “foreign hands”.

On the whole, abrogation of the Treaty of Trianon is not a particularly popular issue. The settling of post-1956 scores, on the other hand, is. One of the post-Communist Socialist-Democrat Prime Ministers, Gyula Horn, had volunteered to serve in the militia that was helping the Soviet troops to mop up the revolutionary groups.

The second Socialist Prime Minister, Péter Medgyessy was proved to have worked for the Secret Police. The present one, Ferenc Gyurcsány was an activity in the Young Communists and managed to pick up some very good bargains during the immediate post-Communist privatization thanks to his excellent connections within the Party. The story of his remarkable outburst on September 18 during which he admitted to lying “morning, noon and night” about the state of the Hungarian economy and the subsequent protests and demonstrations has been told often enough.

The trouble, of course, is the opposition, FIDESZ, that has not managed to turn itself into a modern, western right-wing party. The leader, Viktor Orbán, about whom many people were hopeful, has not justified those hopes and has, in recent months increasingly linked the party with some of the more extreme nationalist groups. (Though, to be fair, those links remain tenuous.)

It would seem that FIDESZ found itself at loss when trouble broke out on October 23. They had demanded all kinds of things: a referendum on the reforms, the Prime Minister’s resignation and, indirectly, an admission that the direct heirs of the Communist Party had no right to celebrate the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Just before October 23 the police moved in and cleared Kossuth Square of the various people who were staging a permanent demonstration there. This and the continuing police barricades mean that Hungarians themselves cannot approach the main memorial to the uprising and its heroes. Instead, the government with numerous foreign dignitaries turned the whole event into a rather self-serving, pompous occasion.

Tens of thousands demonstrated in Budapest and some other cities and the demonstrations, inevitably, attracted a very large number of people whose own politics is somewhat unsavoury. Protests against “globalization” or reforms can, in the somewhat overheated atmosphere of East European politics and emotionalism, so easily turn into unpleasant forms of nationalism.

The fact that many groups carried not the national flag of red, white and green, which was good enough in 1848, in 1918, when Hungary became independent again and in 1956 but the mediaeval Árpád flag aroused many people’s worries for two reasons.

One was the obvious connection with the Hungarian Nazi party of the early forties, the Arrow Cross (Nyilas) Party, which took power in 1944 after Horthy was overthrown and introduced a ferocious Holocaust. Again, one has to be fair: the Arrow Cross had their own symbol added to the flag and that has not made an appearance (in fact, it is illegal in Hungary).

There is, however, another, more convoluted problem. The Árpád flag, a perfectly legitimate mediaeval flag, symbolizes an older, less liberal form of nationalism. It has, more or less, been accepted by FIDESZ and its supporters who speak of the Socialist government as being “illegitimate”. It is, of course, completely legitimate, as is the fact that FIDESZ has in the last local elections taken control of almost all counties and most cities. The question is can modern, democratic politics develop in a country in which the official opposition encourages ideas about dumping the Hungarian constitution and reverting to some form of mediaeval governance, however daft these ideas might seem?

Finally, there was the role of the police, as seen from pictures dotted in this posting. These were sent to me by an acquaintance who was present at the demonstrations and who feels that the Western media, weeping crocodile tears over the 1956 Revolution and anxious not to show up Ferenc Gyurcsány, has not done them justice.

The police, masked and with numbers hidden, attacked the demonstrators with tear gas, iron sticks, which are illegal in Hungarian law and rubber bullets fired at head level. The various photographs demonstrate this and show some of the results of this “routine operation”. Let us not forget that this was going on a few days ago in another EU Member State. The Commission has, somewhat half-heartedly demanded an explanation but no particular sanctions are proposed on the Hungarian government until they sort the mess out (unlike the rather odd sanctions on the Austrian government when the populace had dared to vote for a fairly unpleasant right-wing party, largely to punish the two ineffective main ones).

Well, I feel vindicated. I have always predicted that taking the East European countries and, in particular, Hungary will cause all sorts of problems for the European Union. Of course, once Romania comes in, the problems will increase exponentially. After all, those who want to revise the Treaty of Trianon, undoubtedly have something to say about the Transylvanian question.

COMMENT THREAD

Tipping points

Few of us are under any illusions about the inadequacies of the media but, even then, it comes as a shock to realise quite how badly we are served.

That comes today with the news of yet another soldier killed in Basra, bringing to 121 the number of British casualties in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003.

The sad news, but now distressingly common, is accompanied by minimal details. The soldier was from the 2nd Battalion, Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, who died after the Old State Building - a coalition base in central Basra city - came under small arms fire.

Army spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge, who is increasingly taking on some of the characteristics of Saddam Hussein's Minister of Information, informs us that the soldier was killed while on sentry duty. "There were bursts of automatic fire, which is an indication that this was not a sniper," he told Sky News. "These are individual rogue elements of criminal gangs and militias who target our soldiers."

It may be a complete coincidence that last week saw men from the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment on trial for abusing Iraqi prisoners but, whatever the reason for the shooting, this does not seem to be an action by "individual rogue elements", as Burbridge claims.

Last Thursday, we got a flavour of how bad it was getting in Basra from Thomas Harding of the Telegraph, also with comment that "Operation Sinbad" was stirring up a hornet's nest. But what we did not get was any idea that the Army was losing control of the city. That we had to deduce for ourselves, relying largely on other sources, one of which today gives us important additional information.

Amazingly, this is from a website called Newslab, which turns out to be a Siberian-based operation. The "News laboratory" portal, we are told, is a project of Krasnoyarsk "Informburo" news agency, which was launched on January, 28 in 2003. It includes news from Siberian Region, feature articles and reference information which is interesting to Territory residents.

Yet it is from this source – not the British media or our own government – we learn that on the Friday, the day after Thomas Harding's breathless report, about British troops being mortared in Basra Palace, four Russian technicians working on the reconstruction of al-Najibiya power plant in Basra were injured by a mortar strike.

Crucially, we also learn that the bomb "accidentally" hit the power plant and that the real object of the strike was "UK Armed Forces". The same report also tells us that earlier, a "Russian energy specialist" was killed and six more workers, including three Russians, were wounded.

That a British soldier today was regrettably killed, therefore, seems only an accident of history – we could have had such a report last Friday. The death or injury of Russian or other nationality workers, though, is not worthy of a report in the British media.

Also not worthy of the British media is a report about “provocative” British tactics, datelined 5 November by a local media agency. It records a "strong protest" by the Basra provincial council over recent actions by "British occupation troops".

The council's deputy chairman, Jassem al-Abadi, described British troops' conduct as "provocative and unjustified," and was particularly critical of the treatment of Iraqi security forces in the city. He said on one occasion the troops forced Iraqi police officers to dismount their vehicles as they were on their way to check "a suspicious item" under one of the bridges. Says al-Abadi:

The (British) troops compelled Iraqi forces to surrender their weapons, ordered them to lie down on the ground and put their boots over their heads. This is a heinous practice that is insulting to all the citizens and not only to the police officers involved.

According to the report, Abadi warned the troops not to repeat such practices in the future. "If they do, the masses will teach them a lesson this time," he said, declaring that the people of Basra were "angry and furious" over the troops' practices.

Abadi also accused British occupation troops of attacking the headquarters of al-Fadhila party, one of the most influential factions in the city. Fadhila is powerful in Basra and its supporters and armed men are reported to be wielding immense influence in the city. "These provocations are unacceptable and we warn British troops not to repeat them otherwise the people’s reaction will be beyond control," he said.

There may well be special pleading here, and the source is hardly impartial. Not least there have been persistent reports of Iraqi police siding with the militias and insurgents, assisting them to attack British troops, so they can hardly expect an easy ride. But the very nature of the report indicates that things are far from under control in Basra and may well explain why, today, we are hearing of another British casualty.

None of this, though, we are going to hear from our own media. The major effort, as always, is in Baghdad, from where the BBC makes its most recent report, while the likes of the The Guardian is more interested in pushing its own agenda, its story for today recounting how: "Dead Soldiers' Kin Seek Inquiry Into War".

Even where they do pick up some nuggets, the analysis simply is not there, for instance in a report in The Scotsman about the death of Lance Corporal Allan Douglas. He was killed by a sniper's bullet in the Maysan province in January, the 99th British casualty of the war. One of his contemporaries describes their role in Iraq as "driving around until they were shot at".

This brings to mind the piece we wrote in June last reporting the observations in a House of Lords debate of the Viscount Brookeborough. “We seem to be providing ourselves as a target,” said the Viscount, recalling his experiences in Northern Ireland, and calling for more helicopters in Iraq. But that was not reported by the media either.

Thus, when last week we saw the claim recorded by the stupid Thomas Harding that southern Iraq was at a "tipping point", we could hardly agree. It is more like already lost. Thus, we might say that it is the media coverage that is at the tipping point, although the indications are that it has actually passed over the edge and is on the slide downwards.

COMMENT THREAD

Cost-effective defence

Lewis Page, the man who brought us the book Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs - tabulating some of the MoD's procurement scandals – has done it again.

For the ERC, (Economic Research Council), he has produced a paper entitled "Cost-Effective Defence". It details how, in his view, the UK could radically reorganise its Armed Forces within the existing budget to finally move them beyond their redundant Cold War footing.

He explains in detail what equipment and capabilities needs to be bought and discarded and how funds can be found for a fifty percent pay rise for combat troops. He believes that the correct level of pay for a private is about £22,000 - which is still less than a policeman or firefighter. This, he writes, "can be paid for within the existing budget by cutting back on the Eurofighter and other pointless procurement projects whilst still retaining funds to buy the equipment and capabilities our armed forces actually need."

The ERC, which claims to be Britain's oldest economics-based think-tank, founded in 1943, is to be commended for publishing the work. There is little enough being done to provoke a debate about the nature and structure of our armed forces and, if it encourages a few pieces in the media, that could be helpful.

What is particularly useful is Page's initial analysis of the central defects of our defence effort. The problem is that our armed forces are likely to face three types of opposing forces: what he calls "paramilitaries" (i.e., insurgents); the armed forces of minor powers; and the armed forces of nuclear powers. The last is extremely unlikely, the second happens every ten years and the first continuously since 1945. But, he notes, the UK's military capabilities reflect the reverse of these facts.

Page thus argues that insufficient effort is being made in the provision of deployable ground combat troops with a small logistical footprint, utility and transport helicopters, both heavy and light military air transports, sea-based aviation of every type and "recruitment and retention of suitable junior servicemen and women."

But, he declares, giving the MoD more money would be unwise and merely continue present duplication of effort and "overextension into foolish areas" to persist. A radical reorientation of existing resources is required first.

We would, as you can imagine, completely endorse Page's view on this. More cash to the MoD as presently constituted would simply be throwing more money after bad. And Page offers plenty of detail as to where the axe would fall – not least on the Eurofighter Tranche 3 (the ground attack version), the Nimrod MR4 maritime patrol project, a halt to the Type 45 building after six ships (which will probably happen anyway) and reducing the Royal Navy frigate and destroyer fleet to 14 ships.

In fact, reflecting his previous experience as a Royal Navy officer, Page is savage on grey floating "toys", although he wants more amphibious warfare ships and the two carriers (preferably reconfigured for conventional take-off and landing). Overall, he thinks he can save £20-25 billion from the proposed procurement budget, all of which he would use to improve pay and conditions, with a starting salary for privates and equivalents to be at least £22,000, especially for combat troops.

We do not entirely agree with his emphasis on paying privates more and, if anything, it seems that within the services, this is not the main issue. Furthermore, with the current overseas bonus, it must be even less of an issue than it was.

This though is not the only area where Page's arguments start to unravel. When it comes to green "toys", he is clearly out of his depth. That is not to say that a former naval person cannot acquire considerable expertise in army equipment and land warfare, but you have to put the work in – which Page does not seem to have done. Little things, as well as big, betray him. In the former category, he seems to be unaware that the Saxon APC has been junked and that the Phoenix UAV has been withdrawn from service.

Page's biggest problem though is in dealing with the issue which we promised we would address in an earlier piece - the vitally important issue of how, in counterinsurgency operations, you bring the battle to the enemy.

Here – as in all military procurement – one should not be defining the equipment so much as the tasks, and then designing the equipment to allow your people to carry them out. In that earlier piece we already set out the need to protect your own personnel. In the context of the IED having become the insurgents' main weapon, from that has evolved a range of mine/blast protected vehicles, the design principles of which are very different from those of "conventional" armoured vehicles.

This is Page's first error, in that he fails completely to recognise the need for these, the need for patrol vehicles that give better protection than the "Snatch" Land Rovers and other lightly armoured vehicles.

His second error – one which the Army also makes – is failing to realise that dealing with IEDs must be carried out on a proactive as well as reactive basis. The Americans – for all their other mistakes – have understood this, with the formation of their IED-hunting teams and their requirement for specialist equipment.

Interestingly, the NAO Report points out that shortfalls in recruitment/retention are patchy and one of the key shortages is in bomb disposal officers – an area where the British Army is singularly badly equipped.

However, if protecting your own people through passive and active defences formed the first unbreakable principle - the need to minimise "unnecessary" deaths - the second rests on the need to make a "promise" to the insurgents. The first says, effectively, if you try to kill us you will fail; the second says, if you try, you will die.

The reality of an insurgency though is that the enemy is invisible until he reveals himself and is identifiable only for so long as he engages – merging back into the environment to become invisible again. To the question, "how do you kill an insurgent?" therefore, the answer is "very quickly" - or not at all. Most often, you have a fleeting "target of opportunity" and your equipment must be geared to maximising the chances of a "kill" in time afforded.

Some of this is old technology – intelligence-led ambushes and the use of long-range, pre-positioned snipers who take out the enemy when he appears. But where, for instance, you get the hit-and-run mortar team, new technology is vital. We have already spelt this out in terms of needing accurate counter battery radar, UAVs to carry out routine surveillance, plus light helicopters that can carry out surveillance functions, which can mount attacks and which can deliver rapid response ground teams.

But what are also proving extremely valuable are Unmanned Aerial Combat Vehicles (UCAVs). The later models such as the Predator B – now renamed the Reaper – are able to deliver a variety of munitions including laser/GPS guided bombs, and up to 14 Hellfire anti-vehicle/personnel guided missiles. With their advanced surveillance capabilities, these, above all, seem to hold out the most promise of being able to deliver an instant and deadly response to the fleeting insurgent. We have already seen many examples of their utility.

But here, as with the other equipment issues, Page does not seem to be on the same planet. He makes no provision for re-equipping the Army with blast protected vehicles or supplying it with large numbers of light attack/reconnaissance helicopters. Furthermore, he costs only for the Watchkeeper in his UAV programme, with no provision for UCAVs. Yet these essential additions would absorb a considerable portion of his expected savings and that is without even considering the extremely expensive enhancements in satellite communications capabilities needed to operate an extensive number of UAVs.

In this 40-page paper, though, you would expect that there are many other ideas, and indeed there are. Another major suggestion from Page is the total abolition of tank regiments, which he argues should re-role as armoured infantry, switching from Challengers to Warriors, while the existing mechanised infantry would convert to light infantry.

Yet this ignores completely the experience of an increasing number of armies, from the Americans to the Israelis – and now the Canadians, all of whom are reconsidering the role of heavy armour in counterinsurgency operations. The Israelis are even considering moving away from lightly armoured personnel carriers to the heavy Namera APCs, based on the Merkava MBT.

Strangely though, where there is room for significant financial savings – such as in abandoning the FRES programme – which Page clearly does not understand – he comes up with no recommendations. And, despite the extraordinary cost of the Future Lynx programme, this is allowed to stand.

All of this makes for an extraordinarily shallow paper, which offers very little* that can be treated as a serious contribution to defence strategy. Nevertheless, up front, I did commend the Economic Research Council for publishing the paper – as a contribution to the debate - and stand by that. I wish, though, the Council had been a little more aggressive in testing the arguments of its author before going public.

* Originally, I wrote "nothing" but, on reflection, that is a little too severe. There are some good ideas in the paper, albeit very few.

COMMENT THREAD

All we hear is silence

Take a very stupid man, dress him up in a blue flak jacket, and send him to Basra to work for The Daily Telegraph as its defence correspondent and you still have a very stupid man. All you are going to get out of him is very stupid journalism.

This particular piece by Thomas Harding is headed, "Southern Iraq approaches the tipping point" but today the Telegraph excels itself by adding another stupid piece written by this blog's favourite village idiot, none other than Boris Johnson. Between the pair of them, they typify all that is wrong with modern journalism and demonstrate why we are not going to sort ourselves out until morons like this are no longer given space to air their vacuous views.

We need not detain ourselves with Johnson at the moment. In a truly vacuous piece, he informs us that we have already lost the battle – heedless of the fact that it is still in the balance. That is left to the brainless Harding to evaluate and he starts his piece with a bit of lurid prose:

Sheltering under a table on the dining room floor of Basra Palace with 200 soldiers, seconds after a mortar round had been 10ft away from penetrating the roof and causing carnage, it would have been difficult to argue that the British Army was making progress in Iraq…

… From dawn till dusk we had been rocketed or mortared 15 times in Basra Palace — one of the two main British barracks in the southern Iraq capital. There was the usual fear and thrill of coming under enemy fire but that was just for 12 hours and by the evening the novelty was beginning to tire.

Harding actually uses this as a launch pad to argue, as his title implies, that southern Iraq is at a "tipping point" with everything being staked on the Army's "Operation Sinbad", and that it could go either way – towards partition and bloody ethnic cleansing or a new "Dubai", a beacon of hope for the rest of the country.

That is actually as far as need to go for, right up front – without Harding even beginning to understand it – is the very reason that "Operation Sinbad" is failing and is going to end up in failure. If the Army cannot even secure its own headquarters, and is suffering continued mortar attacks of the nature described by Harding – having already deserted its bases at Abu Naji for the same reason – while civilians are being evacuated from Basra Palace, then this is not an organisation which has the situation under control. It has no credibility and is not going to succeed.

Think about it. This is not rocket science. If the Army cannot even secure its own headquarters, the chances of it securing the rest of the province is exactly nil. As soon as it walks away, the militias will take over.

Turning it round, we are continuing to struggle to find reasons why this problem is not dealt with. As we have pointed out, responding to mortar attacks is not technically difficult.

In the first instance, the Army needs counter-battery radar but, as we have, already established, this equipment is available in the form of the Mamba, and it works. If this is not sufficient, then there is also Cobra (illustrated), bought recently at great expense.

With this equipment, we know that a mortar can be detected within seconds of it being fired, before its first bomb has landed. As we also know, though, a team can be away within minutes, long before a ground patrol can arrive at the firing point. Therefore, it should go without saying that, at the very least, we need helicopters. Unmanned aerial vehicles would be nice – and more economic - but not absolutely essential. But without helicopters, there is no game.

Now, in the UK, there are only three of the 40 police forces that do not have helicopters. Even Surrey, with an area of 1,663 square kilometers, has its own machine, like the one illustrated here. And there – as far as we know – there is no shooting war. The Constabulary enjoys one of the lowest crime rates in England.

Yet, in Basra province, the Army is supposed to support police functions and suppress an insurgency in an area of 19,070 square kilometers – more than ten times the size of Surrey, with an estimated population of about 2,600,000 people. To do that, it has available to it a mere six Lynx helicopters, which also have to carry out multiple other functions. In effect, the Army is being asked to do a job with less equivalent resource than the chief constable of Surrey.

This brings us back to Boris Johnson. As we have pointed out before – and as he keeps reminding us – he is a Member of Parliament. And while some doubtless will be entertained by his vacuous outpourings, I cannot find any trace of evidence that suggests that he has ever explored the technical issues involved in fighting and defeating an insurgency.

Instead of mouthing off, is that not what he should have been doing? As it is, with his demonstrable lack of knowledge, who is he to pontificate on whether we have won or lost?

But that leaves us with the ultimate puzzle. Although it is not possible to say that, with the right number of helicopters, the insurgency in southern Iraq can be defeated, there can be no doubt at all that, without them, it cannot. And, at current rates, £4 million buys you a state-of-the art MD Explorer (illustrated) or equivalent, equipped with the very latest in surveillance equipment. All you have to do is paint it green.

The puzzle is: where is the clamour? Where is the media – the likes of Thomas Harding? Where are the Parliamentarians – the likes of Boris Johnson? And where, for that matter, is the blogosphere? On this substantive issue, all we hear is silence.

COMMENT THREAD

God is on our side!

Well, a Roman Catholic bishop – which amounts to the same thing, I suppose.

Taking time off from plotting the expansion of the European Union – and no doubt from working on his plans for the European Rapid Reaction Force - the Rt Rev Tom Burns, the catholic bishop of the forces, warned the government yesterday that it was "morally reprehensible" to fail to provide British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with proper equipment.

This is according to The Daily Telegraph which cites the bishop as saying that British servicemen and women had a "right" to be adequately armed, supplied and reinforced.

Burns's comments have also been included in a letter to be sent to all catholics in the forces to mark Remembrance Sunday, and comes after military personnel and their families had expressed their concerns to him. He writes that troops had to be re-assured they were valued and to know "none of their superiors will ever lack the moral fibre to stand by them".

"Force strengths have to be sufficient; strategies realistic; supplies adequate; equipment appropriate, and apparel proper to the task in hand," he wrote. "Delay has no excuse. All improvements are welcome. These things are owed to our servicemen and women as of right. They are inherent parts of the job that they are asked to do. Anything less risks lives and is morally reprehensible."

According to the Telegraph's story, servicemen and women are understood to have told the bishop they often have worse equipment than colleagues from other countries and do not have sufficient numbers to counter insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bishop's intervention is good news and re-states a very simple principle. Basically, where we as a nation (whether we agree with it or not) send men and women out to die for us in a war, we are morally bound to ensure that they are properly equipped.

Furthermore, since members of our armed forces are limited in their freedom of speech and do not have the right to pick and choose their orders, they are not in a position to argue the case for more and better equipment. It is thus incumbent on the media and Parliament to fight for them and to ensure the government does look after our people on the front line.

What is happening though is that both the media and Parliament are doing a poor job – the Telegraph itself illustrating its own inadequacy in the very article it publishes about the bishop. Written by Jonathan Petre, the religion correspondent, and George Jones, the political editor, they say:

The number of British troops killed in Iraq since March 2003 reached 120 last Friday and they include at least 20 who have been died while on patrol in softly-armoured Land Rovers, or "snatch vehicles", which cannot withstand blasts from increasingly sophisticated bombs.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, has announced that 300 tougher armoured vehicles will be purchased for use in Iraq and Afghanistan but they will not be available until the end of the year…

It is that last sentence which is particularly objectionable, exactly the same mindless phraseology used before by the newspaper and by the Mail on Sunday and The Guardian, all illustrating the uncritical sheep-like mentality of hacks who should know better. Des Browne has said they are "tougher" and the mindless morons imbibe the word with the same enthusiasm of a day-old baby drinking mother's milk, uttering not a word against the Pinzgauer that is giving this blog so much concern.

The Telegraph compounds its error with a dire leader on yesterday’s debate, pontificating that: "An inquiry must be held into Iraq war". "After the Falklands War," it says,

…the Franks Committee, comprising six Privy Counsellors sitting in private, reviewed events leading up to the Argentine invasion of April 1982; among those who gave evidence was the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The far more portentous invasion and occupation of Iraq calls for a commensurate response.

Mr Blair's amour-propre should not be allowed to stifle properly informed debate on the heart of British foreign policy.

But, as we all know, the Franks Committee sat after the Falklands War had been won. In Iraq, the war is still being waged and – in our view – badly. What is needed, therefore, is a properly informed debate on the prosecution of the war, something which the Telegraph, in its puerile, facile way, has so far shown itself incapable of conducting.

That, of course, leaves the bloggers to take up the slack, with many of the so-called political bloggers laying claim to replacing the MSM as the true representatives of the people. This is what I was getting at in September but few have risen to the challenge. Not a few spluttered with indignation at the very thought that someone might actually question their performance.

But, if the Bishop is right about the government having a moral responsibility to ensure that our troops are properly equipped, in a democracy we as citizens have a responsibility to ensure that the government does its duty. And, as we have often observed, democracy is not a spectator sport – we have a duty to make our voices heard and, the greater the capability, the greater the responsibility.

COMMENT THREAD