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Ex-defence chief attacks Brown’s evidence to Iraq inquiry

06 March 2010 02:16 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Former commanders accused Gordon Brown of deliberately misleading the Iraq inquiry after he blamed the military for failing properly to equip the Armed Forces for war, APA reports quoting timesonline.co.uk web-page.
The Prime Minister denied putting the lives of British troops at risk by starving the military of equipment. In a confident performance yesterday at the Chilcot inquiry, he admitted curbing spending while troops were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to stop public finances spiralling out of control. But he insisted this had not affected soldiers on the front line.
Admiral Lord Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff up to the start of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, disagreed. â€œHeâ€™s dissembling, heâ€™s being disingenuous. Itâ€™s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed,â€ he said.
â€œThere may have been a 1.5 per cent increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds.â€
Year on year when Mr Brown was Chancellor it failed to get the money it needed to meet the level of activity demanded by the Government, he said.
Mr Brown said that every request for money for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and occupation of Iraq was swiftly approved by the Treasury. He shifted the blame on to generals when confronted with complaints from the relatives of soldiers killed by in attacks on Snatch Land Rovers.
Colonel Stuart Tootal, former commander of 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, said: â€œI am quite staggered by the lack of any sense of responsibility. He was the man with the purse strings.â€
The Prime Minister repeatedly expressed sorrow for the British and Iraqi deaths. He told the inquiry: â€œI think this is the gravest decision to go to war. It was the right decision and it was for the right reasons.â€