David Brown, Michael Evans and Deborah Haynes
London Times
March 6, 2010
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.
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. “He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed,” he said.
“There may have been a 1.5 per cent increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds.”
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