(Source: UK Ministry of Defence; issued Aug. 30, 2006)
Defence Secretary Des Browne has responded to claims in the 29 August 2006 issue of The Guardian newspaper that British troops are ill-equipped and that the defence budget is insufficient.
Writing in The Guardian's 'Response' column, which can be found on Page 7 of [the Aug. 30] main edition, Mr Browne put forward the following reply to Michael Moriarty's claims:
"Michael Moriarty’s article on these pages yesterday is liberally scattered with accusations against British politicians and military commanders about operations in Afghanistan. Mr Moriarty claims that both I and the Chief of the Defence Staff have “acknowledged” that force levels and equipment in Afghanistan are insufficient.
This is untrue. What is true – in Afghanistan as in every other campaign – is that the longer the operation goes on, the more we learn, and that includes learning about what we need, and responding accordingly. That can mean providing more people and equipment – or different types of people and equipment. As the Chief of the Defence Staff has said, this is "normal military business".
The bigger charge at the heart of Mr Moriarty’s article is that the defence budget is not large enough, and that "the climate of financial threat" generated by the Treasury has encouraged military chiefs to take on discretionary operations in order to justify their budgets. As a former soldier, he should know better than to think the chiefs of staff would deploy their people into operations they saw as inadequately planned or funded in order to please the Treasury – or anyone else for that matter.
Mr Moriarty is wrong to say we’re short of money or that the Treasury is demanding cuts. At the planning stage of the Afghan operation, I was at the Treasury. I know what the MOD asked for, and I know what it got. They are one and the same thing.
The operation is fully funded – and this includes extra costs which emerge, as they always do during military operations.
There is a well-established procedure for approving these. People should be reassured that every time, without exception, I have gone to the Treasury to fund these extra costs, it has done so. Of course it asks for justifications, as it should with every use of taxpayers’ money, but it has recognised the need in each of these cases.
Similarly, I have identified a number of urgent equipment issues at Defence which needed addressing – including the rapid acquisition of new armoured vehicles – and again the Treasury has made new money available. And crucially, these operational costs are all funded from the Special Reserve – in other words the idea that the Defence budget is threatened by operational costs is completely groundless.
In any case, Mr Moriarty’s suggestions about the Defence budget itself are not right. He complains that it has only risen in line with inflation since 2001. Actually the annual defence budget has risen by five billion pounds over the last five years - well in excess of inflation.
But we still have to stay within that budget, of course. And we have to make sure we get the most out of it. We are looking to "cut the fat" wherever we can to ensure that cash goes to the front line – something all departments do, if a little less literally. It’s not because we are short of money, it’s because it’s the right thing to do.
Finally Mr Moriarty suggests morale in Afghanistan is suffering. Rather than me suggesting he’s wrong from here in Basra, I think a recent comment by Lt Col Stuart Tootal, commander of 3 Para in Helmand, where the fighting has been most intense, sums it up. 'I have never seen the morale of my men as high. This is exactly what they are trained to do'."
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I was watching Mr Bush do his thing this afternoon in Salt Lake City, his words were in the lines of "We shall supply all the equipment they need to our troops in the Middle East to get the job done"
You won't hear that from our Government.....
"We will get the equipment our troops need out in the Middle East, when we get it, in the meantime, buy it yourself."