Hmmmmm........just read an interesting snippet by Piers Morgan in his
The Insider column in the Mail on Sunday TV weekly supplement.
Doesn't pull any punches
about his thoughts on Mike Jackson. It's not online so for the sake of 10 mins I've typed it word for word (if anyone wants a pdf scan PM me).
Former army chief Sir Mike ‘I’m a soldier’s soldier’ Jackson has furiously denounced everyone but himself for the Iraq War fiasco in his new book.
I once met General Jackson at Sir David Frost’s annual garden party, where he was guzzling champagne and laughing and joking with his Number 10 crony Alastair Campbell. It seemed an odd thing then for our senior military man to be doing as war raged.
I recounted our exchange in my first volume of diaries, The Insider:
‘Here’s someone who needs reconstructing,’ said Campbell. ‘Have you met anti-war editor Piers Morgan?’
‘You must be very proud of yourself,’ Jackson sneered.
‘Not as proud as you must be waging an illegal war. What are you doing with Alastair – just getting your orders to go and bomb Iran and Syria as well?’
‘What would you possibly know about war?’ he said.
‘Well General, I do know we haven’t found any WMD yet and, forgive me, but I thought that was why we did it in the first place.’
‘Listen to me, Morgan,’ he snapped back. ‘Let me explain. It’s very simple. Bad guy got slotted, OK. What’s your problem, for God’s sake?’
‘My problem, General, is that there are loads of bad guys out there and we can’t just march into all their countries “slotting them” or the world will end.’
His eyes screwed up. ‘What a load of typically sanctimonious left-wing b******s. Saddam Hussein was a tryrant and the world is safer place now he’s gone.’
No mention then of all the serious concerns he is now airing about Iraq. Sir Mike would like us to view him as a craggy-faced war hero. But I, and most military people I know, just see a vain (how many ‘soldiers’ soldiers’ have cosmetic surgery to remove the bags under their eyes?) old expert-in-hindsight who is now shamelessly cashing in on his role in the biggest British military disaster for centuries.