A failure of opposition

This is the front page of the Sunday Telegraph website today. The story is about the suicide bomb attack on a Royal Marine Land Rover, which we reported on 4 December.

The crews of vehicles rushing away from the scene with their injured colleagues fired on civilian vehicles, causing at least one death and several injuries. And now, we are told by the Telegraph, it has "emerged" that the deaths are being investigated by Nato.

As did confusion reign at the scene, however, so does confusion reign now. Even at the time, papers like the Gulf News were reporting that a Nato inquiry was to be carried out. Said spokesman Major Luke Knittig, cited by multiple media sources, "We will establish the facts. It is still unclear in what way the troops reacted."

And then… we have the BBC. One of the lead items on the radio news and pride of place on the website last night was the news that the Royal Military Police have already investigated whether the troops acted outside the rules of engagement.

The British spokesman in southern Afghanistan, Lt Col Andy Price, said the investigation had been thoroughly completed and that proportional and reasonable force had been used throughout. The men perceived a serious risk, and had fired only after warning shots and flares had been fired, he said.

However, according to the same BBC source, the MoD says reports of civilian injuries are being investigated, adding that, "It would be inappropriate to comment further whilst this investigation is ongoing."

Next, we have the Guardian. Its piece is headlined, "Troops under investigation for Kandahar shooting spree" and it cites Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, a spokesman for Nato regional command in Kandahar. He describes the reports as "disconcerting" and, according to the Guardian, promised a thorough investigation by Royal Military police. "If people are found to have acted outside the rules of engagement, they will be held to account for their actions," he was cited as saying.

However, whatever happened on 3 December, of one thing we can be sure. There is no way British troops should have been driving up "Ambush Alley" in unarmoured Land Rovers.

Looking at the amount of damage done to the targeted vehicle, it can be said almost as a matter of certainty that, had they been properly equipped – as have been the Canadians - (and the Dutch, the Americans, the Australians, the Germans and the French) the troops would not have been injured.

Had the troops been uninjured, there would have been no wild dash to get the casualties to the hospital, no shootings and no civilian deaths or injuries. Thus, any enquiry should surely encompass questions as to why the troops were so dangerously and irresponsibly exposed.

Now to the main issue of the title. As we have observed earlier, there has been a curious lack of concern from the media about the welfare of these troops (in comparison with the crocodile tears elsewhere). This, in turn, has created a major opportunity for the opposition. Any switched-on spokesman could quite properly have exploited this issue to the advantage of his own political party and our soldiers exposed to danger.

Imagine, if you will, that this issue had been raised on Monday 4 December by none other that the Boy King, "Dave" Cameron. Suppose it had been followed by a blitz of questions from the defence team, raised at prime minister's questions on the Wednesday and then plastered all over the Conservative's web site.

With Iraq high profile in the news and then General Mike Jackson’s intervention, complaining inter alia about inadequate equipment, one can now easily imagine that the Conservatives would be at the centre of a political storm, their attacks on the government on every front page.

This was what I was trying to get at in Part II of my "retreat from politics" series. We have already shown that defence procurement can be a front page issue and with only a little skill, this current issue could have been turned into another procurement issue, forcing the government to take emergency action to obtain suitable equipment.

As it is, the story is on the front page, but it is focused on the troops involved rather than the government – adding, no doubt, to the soldiers' feeling of being under-valued. But the Conservatives have been silent on this issue and therefore, there is no mention of any Conservative politician.*

The best we have had in recent times is the procurement spokesman, Gerald Howarth, giving a commercial puff to the dangerously fragile Pinzgauer.

Any which way you cut it – as I am rather fond of saying at the moment – this is a failure of opposition. And it is not unreasonable to postulate that one result of that failure is that troops will continue to be unprotected, and some will die unnecessarily. A further result may be that some civilians may also die.

It is not only government that has duties and responsiblities, Mr Cameron. Yours is to oppose – for which activity the taxpayer gives you several million pounds as "short" money - and you are not doing it. When we hear of more troops being butchered in their unprotected Land Rovers, therefore, I think it would be entirely fair to lay some of the blame at your door.

* The reference is to the website. Although the lead story on the web is almost invariably the front page in the print edition, strangely the story did not appear in the print edition at all and any reference to it disappeared from the website (although the link is still live).

COMMENT THREAD

Going backwards

When the news started coming in yesterday about the raid by coalition forces in Basra, details were sparse and I thought it better to wait until we knew more.

A day later and we are not much the wiser. The whole of the publicity seems to have been generated, and is therefore controlled, by the Army. We know what the Army wishes us to know – no more and no less.

One should not be too churlish I suppose. If the Army is to be believed, five "terrorist leaders" were captured, together with a quantity of arms and explosives and some documents of "intelligence value". However, that does seem somewhat small compensation for a raid described as the biggest military operation since the end of the war on 1 May 2003.

Altogether, over 1000 men took part, including a 250-strong Danish contingent, deploying 14 Challenger II MBTs, 28 Warriors, an unknown number of light armoured vehicles ("Snatch" Land Rovers and Danish MOWAG "Eagles", based on the Humve chassis - illustrated right) and ten assault boats. In support were USAF F-15s which carried out overflights as a diversion and "a show of force".

Mercifully, unlike the 24 November raid, no one was killed. That alone may have justified the scale of the force, which was not unopposed.

But if the size of the force deployed was not excessive (under the circumstances), there was certainly something so gloriously OTT about the Telegraph coverage. It not only included a huge map, occupying the best part of half a page, but was announced by a headline spanning two pages reading: "'Armoured fist' smashes into Basra at dawn, capturing five terrorist leaders." One suspects that the writer (our old friend Thomas Harding) and the editorial team harbour secret ambitions of being comic-strip writers.

Behind the MoD-supplied details (and photographs), the problem is, as always, that the newspaper presents a breathless view of events which avoids any depth, understanding or analysis. This is not what one would expect from grown-up journalists.

Any such analysis, of course, would not necessarily accompany this piece – and we learnt not from this but from the BBC that one of the objectives of the raid was to deal with "criminals" who were mounting attacks on British bases. Interestingly, the Telegraph's location map miss-positions the Shatt al-Arab Hotel base. It shows it closer to Basra Palace than anywhere, rather than its correct place – well within mortar range of al Harthah. And, as recently as Wednesday, the base was at the receiving end of yet another mortar attack. Was al Harthah the source?

So, here we go again. In June we wrote a piece noting that we have been here before. We remarked on how between 1972 and 1980, mine protection technology emerged, which has been refined and developed as the basis of today's blast-protected vehicles.

But, if the colonials were there before, we were there even before that. A remarkable website shows that in Oman between 1970 and 1973, British forces were operating modified 4-tonners with armour plate fitted to deflect blast from mine strikes.

But even more fascinating is the website of Barry Dunning recounting his exploits in the 10th Royal Hussars (Middle East Land Forces) in Aden in 1965, riding in a Saladin armoured car.

As a boy I recall this vehicle (illustrated). Built on the same chassis as the Saracen armoured personnel carrier, it was specifically designed for mine protection and could continue operating with any one wheel blown off by a mine. For their party trick, Alvis, the manufacturers, used to drive the vehicle round a test track on demonstrations, with one of the front wheels missing.

Anyhow, Dunning writes:

The 12th of September is a day I will never forget!! Coming back from Dhala we went on ahead to pick up the Infantry whom were up on the ridges (to cover the convoy through the wadi). We had just passed Mile Stone 36 when we hit two anti-tank mines and 25lb of plastic explosives. It picked the 14 tons of armoured car and threw us about 25 feet into the air, leaving a crater 30 foot wide and 10 foot deep. We were very lucky the armour did not split open as we were fully loaded with all our shells and bullets... It would have been a real fireworks display if they had gone off, and we were lucky no one was hurt.

Mick had a cut on his cheek where the Browning rounds wrapped around his face. Geordie hit his face on the front driver hatch as he was thrown forwards. It knocked him silly for a moment and he had a bloody nose. Because of the shock the medics could not take any chances with us so they flew us out on an Army Scout helicopter back to camp. The Saladin was brought back on a low loader.

And above right is a close-up picture of the front wheel bay, which took the full force of the explosion. Now imagine if that had been a "Snatch" Land Rover.

As relevant to the predicament of our troops in Basra, however, are the experiences of British forces attached to the Sultan of Oman's army in 1970. Amongst other things we see in another fascinating website is a Saracen APC pressed into duty as a mine clearance vehicle at RAF Salalah. One feature of this vehicle is that it could be driven easily in reverse, a feature used in the illustration, where it is rigged to push a mine roller. Interestingly, we also see sand-filled 40-gallon drums stacked up as blast protection – the predecessor to the "Hesco" containers currently used. There is nothing new under the sun.

Just as relevant though was that the base came under continuous mortar attack. To counter this threat we see the predecessor of the current Mamba and Cobra counter battery sets – the "Green Archer" counter mortar radar in place (in the foreground). Behind the radar is a 25-pounder in a gun pit, ready to return fire once the mortar location has been identified.

But it did not stop there. Out on the tarmac were pairs of Strikemaster light jets, aircraft based on the then RAF basic trainer, the Jet Provost. Despite their provenance as trainers, these were formidable ground attack aircraft and were, in the hands of their RAF pilots, potent weapons.


And, of course, there were the helicopters, also on quick alert ready to transport Omani Scouts to a trouble spot and deal with the insurgents - yes insurgents - who were seeking to overthrow the government.

These, being the Omani's choice - and free from the strictures of the RAF and the then MoD (which hardly seems to have changed) were Bell UH1Ds, the famous "Hueys" of VietNam fame. Now, of course, the RAF has a few, in the form of the Augusta Bell 412, but only for air-sea rescue in Cyprus and for training aircrew. But the Army is not allowed to have them.

There we have it. Over thirty years ago, nearly all the elements of COIN warfare were in place, right down to the mine/blast protected vehicles, which are now no longer on charge. In many respects, therefore - with our inadequate "Snatch" Land Rovers instead of the Saracens (which were also used in Northern Ireland), the absence of light (or any) ground attack capability and an acute shortage of helicopters - we are less well equipped than were our own and even the Omani armies all those years ago.

But there another major difference. Unlike Oman with its wide-open spaces (more like Afghanistan in some respects), weapons like mortars and Katyushas are being fired from highly congested urban areas, with the terrorists using civilians as a screen.

To deal with that, we have other weapons - the C-RAM (and even that is based on 70s technology) and UAVs armed with precision, small-warhead guided weapons. We have no C-RAM though and, as to our UAVs, we have none capable of being used for this function and our attempts at flying off the wrongly-named Phoenix (it does not rise from the ashes) have met with embarassing failure (illustrated above).

For want of the right equipment, therefore, it seems we must send a 1000 men, backed by tanks, armoured vehicles and aircraft smashing into Basra at dawn, all to arrest five men, before scuttling back to our fortifed bases and the daily barrage of mortars and rockets.

Oddly, Gateway Pundit on Friday hailed as "good news" the optimistic account of the situation in Basra by Iraqi-American Haider Ajina, citing Major General Ali Hamadi chairman of the tri-security agencies in Basra. He claims that operation Sinbad, for security and reconstruction, has achieved important results.

Yeah right. That's why we need a small army to arrest five men, while all our bases are under constant daily attack. Yet, in June 2003, our troops were walking the streets in soft hats. Every which way, in my book, we're going backwards.

COMMENT THREAD

Where were you?

Yes, Mr Bush, we know it is bad - we've been saying so for a long time. Yes, we agree with you when you tell our prime minister, Tony Blair, that "we need a new approach". And yes, we entirely agree with General Sir Mike Jackson (now retired) that it would be "morally wrong" to pull out of Iraq at the moment.

And we even agree with Jackson when he accused the government in his speech of neglecting soldiers and of "asking too much" of the armed forces.

But what we also want to know is why it has been left until now? What have our professionals and analysts being doing all these years and, in particular, what was the professional head of the Army doing in August 2003?

This blog, of course, didn't exist back then. But General Sir Mike Jackson – or "Macho Jacko" as he was already known - was Chief of General Staff, the professional head of the Army. He had been appointed on 1 January 2003, he had seen the successful assault on Basra by British troops and then enjoyed the short-lived fruits of victory with the official termination of hostilities in Iraq on 1 May 2003.

Then, on 14 August - two days after Basra had been swept by organised riots, with mobs protesting against the lack of fuel and electricity in the city – when British forces were shot at and returned fire, killing at least one Iraqi - Captain David Jones was travelling from Basra with his driver in a clearly marked military ambulance (pictured above left), conveying a soldier to the military hospital in the Shaibah logistics base outside the city. He never arrived. Shortly after 9am British time, the vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb, killing Captain Jones and injuring the other two soldiers, and badly damaging the vehicle (illustrated right).

One national newspaper at the time reported that this had been the most serious attack on British forces since six military policemen had been killed in Majar al-Kabir, north of Basra, on 24 June. Furthermore, as this was the very first roadside bomb attack on a British military vehicle, the fear was that the "honeymoon" was over – that British troops in the southern, mostly Shia, part of Iraq, were now to be targeted by guerrilla attacks. Up to date, these had been reserved for American troops in the ethnic Sunni area around Baghdad.

As reported by The Scotsman, the BBC had defence analyst Paul Beaver saying that the attack had been very different to any incident dealt with by British forces in Iraq before then. "This looks like a step up in operations by a group you can only call terrorists," he told BBC News. "This is very much a pre-meditated act of terrorism. There's no doubt at all what we're actually seeing here is someone making capital out of the fact there is now a greater awareness of discontent in the Basra area."

The newspaper suggested that the campaign in Iraq had "entered a dangerous new phase".

One swallow does not make a summer though, but any thoughts General Sir Mike Jackson might have had of disagreeing must have been disabused by reports of an incident on 23 August. Three soldiers from the Royal Military Police - Major Matthew Titchener, Co Sergeant Major Colin Wall and Corporal Dewi Pritchard - were killed in an ambush in central Basra.

Witnesses said the RMPs were riding in a sports utility vehicle in a routine two-vehicle convoy and came under small-arms fire from an unknown number of men in a pick-up truck at around 8.30am. The soldiers returned fire, but appear to have been killed either by a grenade thrown from the other vehicle or when their own vehicle crashed into a wall.

Then, on 27 August, Fusilier Russell Beeston, a Territorial Army soldier in the 52nd Lowland Regiment, was killed on after a crowd surrounded his patrol vehicle in Ali As Sharqi, southern Iraq, and opened fire with guns and rocket-propelled grenades. He was 26 and from Govan. Shortly afterwards, on 7 September, a roadside bomb in Basra exploded when a British diplomatic convoy was passing killing four people of unknown nationalities, wrecking the car and flipping it upside down. When a later explosion killed ten more, there can have been no doubt. The honeymoon was definitely over and an insurgency was in progress.

Now, in his speech entitled, "The Defence Of The Realm In The 21st Century", General Sir Mike Jackson tells us his lecture was "a way of taking stock". He has been considering "what may be demanded for the defence of the Realm in this uncertain century; and how ready we are for those demands."

But he adds: "We also need to be honest as to how well we are meeting these demands now," effectively admitting that we are not doing enough. He says: "we must do better in this complex situation, faced as we are today by a determined and ruthless enemy".

That "determined and ruthless enemy" was to continue slaughtering British troops. But, in August and September and points thereafter, Jackson was not only thinking about the war in Iraq. As befits the professional head of the Army, he was thinking in grander terms, of the longer term. "How should the United Kingdom position and defend itself?" he was asking.

He doesn't actually tell us the timeline but we know from other events that this was the thinking going on in the MoD. The arch Europhile secretary of state for defence, Geoff Hoon, had his own political priorities. They were to put clothes on Tony Blair's 1999 initiative, making good his St Malo promises to co-operate with Jacques Chirac, building a European Rapid Reaction Force.

Through 2003, as the attacks on British troops intensified, Blair's high-level political initiative was filtering down to Army level for implementation. General Sir Mike Jackson was thus required to look at the broader strategy - a European strategy to balance the US-orientated Iraqi strategy. As conveyed to us in the Dimbleby lecture, he rationalised it thus:

The UK cannot isolate itself from the wider world, so I'm not at all sure that it is an available strategy, even if we wanted to choose it. That said, I think perhaps the most fundamental question, is the relationship, the strategic relationship, between the United States and Europe. ...

And the UK's position as between the US and Europe has been a dilemma for this country for many decades. A black or white choice, one way or the other, would be fatally flawed. The fate of this country, given its geography and its history, is to wrestle with the conundrum that whilst we sit unequally in geographical distance between the United States and the mainland continent, of Europe, the political distance is a much more equal proposition.

We had our "special" relationship with the US but, "we are also part of the continent of Europe, and a member of the continent's polity, the European Union." Thus said the General, "...it is inevitable that there will be an ebb and flow to the UK's relationship with these two centres of gravity." We could not sit on the fence, he mused. "We are so closely involved strategically with both the United States and with Europe, that in our strategic posture we must embrace both."

So, instead of concentrating on dealing with the war in Iraq, with its special equipment needs, in November 2003 he palmed the troops off with second-hand "Snatch" Land Rovers, drawn from stocks held in store in Belfast.

That done, Jackson then devoted his energies to feeding the European fantasy, as he set about reorganising the Army to fit in with the demands of the ERRF. The rest, as they say, is history. The attacks continued, "Snatches" burned and soldiers died for want of better equipment.

Except that the history has yet to be written. Thus, in his Dimbleby lecture, General Sir Mike Jackson put in his bid for his version. "We could well be asking too much of our Army," he says:

It all comes down to a question of balance: balance between capabilities within the defence budget - how much of this, how much of that; current operations against what may be required in the future; not only current operations, but current training which is the investment for our capability in the future; people against technology - that's pay for example, accommodation standards for example, against current and future equipment.

This should not be a dilemma incidentally, this should not be a zero sum or an either/or. We should be able to provide what is required for soldiers to be fully and properly equipped, thoroughly trained, decently paid, and, together with their families, decently housed. They deserve nothing less.

So they do, General Sir Michael Jackson, GCB, CBE, DSO., so they do. At a time when even the Americans were beginning to realise that better equipment, like the superb RG-31, was needed (even available as an ambulance), why weren't our soldiers "fully and properly equipped" instead of being palmed off with second-hand Land Rovers?

So, when the real history comes to be written, it will include the question: "Where were you, General Jackson, when the Army really needed you?"

COMMENT THREAD

Two soldiers lightly hurt

So reads the headline (or part of it) from the Calgary Sun, Canada, with a full account in CTVNews, its report bearing the headline "Canadian convoy attacked on 'Ambush Alley'".

We are, as you might imagine, writing about Kandahar city again, where there has been yet another suicide bomb attack, this time with a fortuitous outcome. In fact, "fortuitous" barely begins to describe it. One casualty, Cpl. Robert Chafe, suffered a cut on the side of his mouth and on the little finger of his left hand. The other, Master Cpl. Greg Keeping, was slightly hurt in the leg.

But we are doing much more than just writing about this incident. In this post, we shall try (and probably fail) to pull together some of the many ideas and arguments being explored as to how we should fight (instead of losing) our battles against insurgents.

For the moment, though, we are able to start the discussion with a remarkable photograph because, riding in the convoy was a Canadian TV crew. It was just two vehicles behind the targeted truck and able to capture the incident. The first picture (top left) shows the scene seconds after the bomber had struck. This second one (right) shows the suicide bomber's vehicle, illustrating the force of the explosion to which the troops were exposed.

The third picture of our sequence shows the truck that was hit. It can immediately be seen that the cab is armoured, with a heavy armoured glass windscreen, which undoubtedly saved the lives of the men behind it.

Not so the lives of two Afghani civilians who had the misfortune to be beside the truck when the bomb went off - a graphic illustration of the effect of the bomb on unprotected people and, crucially, yet more evidence of the indiscriminate nature of the bombing. The Taliban have shown time and again that they are entirely unconcerned about civilian casualties, be they men, women or children.

The fourth picture in this sequence shows the convoy in a long-shot, the composition of which indicates why the truck was targeted. Bombers are known to go for the most vulnerable targets and here it can be seen that the convoy escorts are the now-famous RG-31s. Attacking these would be fruitless. The other vehicle in view is an armoured Bison APC, a type that has proved vulnerable to attack when the crew ride with opened hatches - but not on this occasion. This time, in a line of unpromising targets, the truck must have looked the most vulnerable.

Compare and contrast with the unarmoured British Land Rover targeted by a suicide bomber on Sunday, an incident in which three Royal Marines were injured - one seriously. This shot shows an Afghani policeman attempting to drive the vehicle after the attack, demonstrating - as indeed does the visible condition of the vehicle - that the damage was relatively modest. Yet, in the absence of effective armour, far greater injuries were caused than in the attack than on the armoured Canadian convoy.

This does point up an issue that we have rehearsed time and time again - that we must have more and better armoured vehicles. But we are not talking about any armoured vehicles. They need to be designed specifically to deal with the technical threat of improvised explosive devices, whether in the form of roadside or suicide bombs.

That much is evident from a less happy scenario - another suicide bomb attack in Kandahar, this one on 27 November when two Canadian soldiers riding in a Bison APC were killed. The Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) - as it is known - is a "conventional" wheeled armoured vehicle, one designed for the European battlefield. Its fatal weakness - in common with most vehicles of the type - is that it is not designed to be operated in a fully closed down condition for long periods of time. Visibility is restricted and crew comfort (especially when it is hot) suffers. By any measure, this equipment is far from ideal for use as convoy escorts or as patrols in counter-insurgency operations.

On the other hand, yesterday, we read reports of yet another Royal Marine being killed (the 42nd British servicemen to die in Afghanistan) and one injured, but this time in what amounts to a conventional attack. The casualties arose when UK troops mounted an offensive on a Taliban-held valley, attacking the village of Garmser. Despite being elite troops, however, backed by airstrikes and artillery fire during the 10-hour battle, they were forced to withdraw after the Taliban launched a ferocious counter-attack with heavy weapons and tried to outflank the British troops.

Here, though, the Canadians - who have scored so well by using RG-31 blast-protected vehicles for their patrols - are again ahead of the game. Having been fully committed to offensive operations throughout the summer, they have learnt from their experiences and introduced Leopard tanks into the equation. On the other hand, the British - with theoretically a more experienced, elite cadre of troops - are committing what is in fact light infantry to a conventional attack, without armoured support. They are perhaps forgetting that the tank, in its original inception, was an infantry support weapon.

What emerges from this is that, effectively, we need two armies - one capable of fighting a largely conventional war and the other specifically equipped to fight insurgents in a mainly urban environment. In equipment and and function, the two roles are so different that they hardly seem compatible.

Looked at this way, one is able to see how ill-equipped the British are. In Iraq, they have a largely conventional army, designed - as we have observed before - to fend off mass armoured attacks by the Warsaw Pact in northern Europe, augmented by equipment developed for dealing with terrorism in Northern Ireland. Quite how inadequate this mix has become is apparent from these photographs taken last Sunday in Basra.

Where once we used to be able to send out foot patrols, conveyed to their locations in unarmoured Land Rovers, we have graduated to 3-vehicle armoured "Snatch" Land Rover patrols and now, as the security situation has deteriorated, the numbers have had to increase. But, the Land Rovers themselves, which were once used as convoy escorts, must now themselves be escorted by Warrior Mechanised Infantry Combat Vehicles (MICVs) front and rear.

On the other hand, for offensive operations in Aghanistan, such as the Garmser attack described above, the Warriors would be ideal, especially if they were backed by their natural partners, the Challenger II Main Battle Tank. That is not to say, of course, that tanks would be suitable for all operations, but commanders are not being given an option. There are no heavy tanks available to the British.

Apart from a few light tanks, the only tracked armoured vehicles issued to the Royal Marines in Afghanistan are the BvS10 "Vikings", delivered with great fanfare in October. Although superb cross country machines and fully amphibious (the latter capability not greatly in demand in land-locked Afghanistan), they do not even begin to compare with the Warrior, much less a Challenger II. As a result, not only did the Marines take casualties yesterday - they also failed to achieve their objectives.

Taking stock.

In order to win, I wrote in an earlier post, we must first stop losing. And the first thing in this context we must do is ensure that our own casualties are minimised. The number of deaths might be minuscule compared with the First and Second World Wars, and even Korea, but such is the sensitivity of this issue that even a few hundred deaths might create a political head of steam which forces our withdrawal from active theatres.

No one is naïve enough to believe that we can fight wars without taking casualties but, what we suggested in earlier pieces (here, here and here) is that the tolerance is lower when the war is unpopular and deaths are seen as unnecessary. Too many of the deaths we have recorded over term seem definitely to come into the "unnecessary" category - not least those arising from the recent attack on the boat using the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Thus we are seeing headlines announcing that troops have been killed, when we need to see more in the manner of the title of this piece, "two soldiers lightly hurt".

Yet, instead of striving for such headlines, this government seems to be going out of its way to prosecute its wars in a way which will ensure that the unnecessary deaths continue. In many respects, we are but one military disaster away from total failure and the government seems to be behaving as if it actually wants failure. Can this really be incompetence?

Mulling over this, I happened today on a piece from the North West Evening Mail which recounted the experiences of "Barrow soldier" Lance Corporal James Larsen, recently returned from Basra after serving with the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment. While based at the Shatt al-Arab Hotel, he claims to have survived more than 1,000 bomb attacks on his base and had been just 70 metres from a colleague who was killed by a mortar bomb. He adds:

My friends have been thrown on top of me and I have been mortared from 25 metres away when the tent got hit. We had breeze blocks going round our beds. I would roll off the bed and go under it next to the breeze blocks. I soon stopped sleeping on the bed and just lay with the breeze blocks.

We were already aware of the situation at the other main base within the city limits, Basra Palace, which even this week was attacked again with Katyusha rockets. Larsen's experience confirms that Shatt al-Arab Hotel is also under continuous attack.

Yet, although both bases are defensible and, as we pointed out, a range of technology and weaponary exists to counter mortar and rocket attacks, there seems to be a wilful refusal on the part of the British government to provide the wherewithal for defensive action. Contrary to American practice, where helicopters are often scrambled and even British practice in Afghanistan, where Harrier jets have been despatched to seek out mortars, the British military in Iraq seem to take an entirely passive line on such attacks.

What must be done?

The Iraq Study Group Report, out today, tells us: "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating". It adds that, "There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved".

The thrust of the report, however, is towards seeking political solutions to the crisis, on the oft-argued basis that there can be no military solution. However, while it may be true that the military cannot provide the solutions, in the final analysis, without the military, there is no prospect of a political solution. The military underwrites the security to an extent where the political process can develop and take root.

The presence of the military can only be sustained if casualties are kept down. We have no idea what the tipping point might be, which might trigger a political crisis, but it must make sense to take every technically achievable step necessary to increase force protection. We need to see substantial improvements in base protection and in the protection of mobile forces. And then, in the context of a more aggressive approach to attackers, our forces must have the capability to take the battle to the attackers, responding to them with lethal force when they dare to attempt killing our men and women.

But, gradually, that writ must also extend to all the security forces. As in Northern Ireland, where a primary task of the Army was to protect the civilian police, we must ensure that co-operating with the occupying powers is not a death sentence - as it so often is at the moment.

Furthermore, what applies to Iraq must also, to a very great extent, apply to Afghanistan. There, the Taliban has been quite explicit. It aims to kill our people and Nato troops in general, to break our will. In that sense, the currency of this dispute, there as in Iraq, is the lives of our soldiers. Keeping them alive, in theatre while they are actively carrying out their protective roles, is itself a victory. It sends a message to the terrorists that they cannot win.

...to be continued

COMMENT THREAD

Time to call a halt

It has been known for some time that Taliban tactics are changing, with this blog reporting just over a week ago that they intended to resort to laying mines as a tactic to demoralise troops.

But it was also the case that they were going to be targeting troops with suicide bombs with the aim of killing as many soldiers as possible, to put pressure on the Nato governments.

And yesterday we perhaps saw another result of that tactic, a British Land Rover, part of a military convoy, damaged by a suicide car bomb in Kandahar, south Afghanistan. Three Royal Marines have been injured, one seriously. The other two are in a stable condition.

One thing is for certain, looking at the relatively modest damage to the vehicle, had the troops been riding in an RG-31, they would not even have had a headache. They might even have survived uninjured in a Snatch Land Rover – with its basic armour - but this is not even an armoured Land Rover.

It is a "wolf" version, stripped down and fitted with roll cages and weapons mounts – the so-called Weapons Mount Installation Kit (or "Wimik"). Fully equipped, it looks a macho machine in the style of David Stirling's World War II SAS jeeps. But it has no place as a convoy escort in Kandahar, where the suicide bomb is a known and potent enemy tactic and where, in the same town, two Canadian soldiers were killed in a suicide car bombing last week.

Maybe yesterday, the three marines were "lucky" that they were just injured although, at least eight people other people were killed. According to Reuters, three civilians died when the bomber struck and five more were shot by troops afterwards.

As these appear to have been civilians, Nato spokesman Major Luke Knittig had said that the alliance will "establish the facts". But one fact is certain – deploying British troops in unarmoured vehicles in urban areas is too dangerous, exposing them to unnecessary risks. It is time to call a halt on this practice.

COMMENT THREAD

The retreat from politics – Part II

David Cameron's unannounced visit to Basra yesterday and today – with his shadow foreign secretary William Hague – is another piece of evidence that tends to confirm our own impression of the electoral importance of the military adventure in Iraq.

That he was prepared to abandon a long-standing appointment to speak at the CBI annual conference, further confirms the importance, as does his comment before departure that: "The situation in Iraq is one of the most critical issues facing the British government and our country."

Characteristically though, Cameron - the man who came to listen - is seen in one of the few photographs published in today's newspapers (this one in the Yorkshire Post) talking to Lieutenant General Richard Shirreff. And why the general should be wearing his helmet in a location described as "Basra Air Station" - one of the safest areas in the whole of southern Iraq - is not immediately clear.

This notwithstanding, Cameron's presence in Basra does underline the politicians' concern that, contrary to conventional wisdom, headline domestic issues will not necessarily predominate at the next election. The indications are that security, defence and foreign policy issues could be far more central than they have been in other elections.

This is not entirely because of the convergence between the main parties on the "social" issues. The campaigning in the next election will be done against the backdrop of troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and rarely has the terrorist threat been so grave. The effects of "globalisation" will have reached down to the lower levels and most voters will understand that there is a direct connection between what happens overseas and their own prosperity and safety.

Thus, assuming that the Tories can position themselves on the "soft" issues – not so much to win the argument as to neutralise them as election winners for Brown - the emphasis must then be on foreign affairs and defence. The Tories must dominate these issues in a way they have so far failed to do. It will require of "team Cameron" a major change in direction, moving away from the "social agenda" in order to give equal (or certainly more) time and prominence to the hard-edge.

That makes the most important men in the Cameron team his shadow foreign secretary, William Hague (pictured), and his defence shadow, Liam Fox. Also, because of the huge importance of military equipment and the fact that there is – with Labour's failings – a huge open goal, the shadow minister responsible for defence procurement is a key man. He is, currently, Gerald Howarth.

The calibre of the team, however, simply reinforces the view that the Conservatives will lose the next election. Hague, for all his early promise and his performance as Tory leader, is simply not cutting the ice.

Even recently in The Sunday Telegraph, he argues for strengthening the international institutions, writing:

Unless we have a more representative Security Council, a more dynamic EU, a more cohesive Nato and a strengthened international effort against nuclear proliferation, the crises of coming years might well be impossible to resolve. Such goals should be at the top of the list of the objectives of British ministers. Otherwise, there is a grave danger that international institutions will not be able to find solutions to 21st-century challenges.

From Rwanda to "oil-for-food" and Darfur, the UN has proved a dismal failure, corrupt, self-serving and incapable of reform. The pages of this blog have constantly recorded the failures of the EU, not least the negotiations on Iran, a failure also matched by the IAEA. And Hague wants a more dynamic EU and a strengthened international effort against nuclear proliferation?

Nato, struggling for a role, has not performed well over Afghanistan and is being constantly subverted by the EU. Its survival, much less greater cohesion, is not certain and it remains to be seen whether there is the political will to keep the organisation alive.

What we see here, therefore, is a total lack of new thinking, a failure to recognise that the post-war settlement is breaking down and, probably, the day of these colossal international dinosaurs is over. We need new paradigms, but we will not them from Hague.

As for Liam Fox, as a Tory defence spokesman, he has proved to be a major disappointment. At one, going for the cheap soundbite while consistently missing the bigger picture, his interviews seem to lack coherence and he seems to have no idea of where the defence debate should lie. Furthermore, of the few semi-original ideas he has offered, he has shown no sign of understanding the complexities of what he is saying, or given us any idea that he would be in a position to deliver.

Perhaps, though, the Conservatives do not yet need a detailed defence policy. With more than two years to go (one assumes) before a general election, Liam Fox can happily wait until Cameron's policy commission has reported before he starts to deal with the detail.

That, however, is to ignore the opportunities presented by Labour activities. For instance, the MoD is fully committed to introducing the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES), a £14 billion re-equipment programme that requires a fundamental re-structuring of the Army and which is the main reason why so many of the traditional Country regiments have been abolished.

Few if any in the media are going to notice if Fox does not mention FRES but, so fragile are Labour's plans – and so uncertain is the system – that it represents an open goal, a huge target of opportunity that, if attacked, could score multiple brownie points for fox and his Party. Yet, on this issue, we get nothing but silence.

Similarly, there are huge opportunities open to Fox in attacking the government's record on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and especially its forward plans, which may lead to the expenditure of as much as £10 billion. Yet, despite seriously poor performance and some questionable decisions in the offing, once again, we get nothing but silence.

Fox has an agenda but, clearly, that does not include behaving like an opposition spokesman and attacking the government.

While he covers the big issues, though (or fails to do so), the failures at a lower level are just as important. Small issues may be crucial in the greater scheme of things but, in politics, it is very often those small things that can make or break a government (and opposition) – who can forget the War of Jennifer's Ear?

In charge of the defence procurement portfolio, however, is Gerald Howarth and he typifies the total ineptness of the Cameron experiment. For instance, whatever else could be said about the "Snatch" Land Rover issue, it was highly political, representing an egregious failure of Labour properly to equip our troops.

With Booker in the Sunday Telegraph, we went live with the story on 17 June and The Sunday Times picked it up a week later. But nowhere in these stories was there a mention of Gerald Howarth, which meant that the Tories were given no "credit" for pushing the issue. And the reason was quite simple. Although he had been given the details weeks earlier, including photographs of destroyed Land Rovers and the now famous RG-31 picture (above right), from him there had been no comment – no reaction at all.

When it then emerged that Lord Drayson was to supply troops with the dangerously fragile Pinzgauer Vector, full details were sent to Howarth who had thus a powerful story with which to approach the media.

But although in July he posted a robust piece on his website, his action was entirely negated by his visit to the Pinzgauer factory. There, he allowed himself to be photographed at the wheel of a truck (pictured here) for a corporate advertisement, praising the superb Pinzgauer.

When it emerged that four soldiers had been killed in a "water taxi" as they used the Shatt-al-Arab waterway for want of suitably protected vehicles, Howarth was informed. Response there was none.

When it emerged that the British Consulate was being evacuated and that British troops in their own headquarters were being subject to constant mortar attacks, yet no attempt was being made to procure counter-measures, Howarth was more than informed. He was invited to supply this blog with a 1000 word piece setting out the Conservative policy on this and allied issues – with a promise that it would gain a reference in the Booker column. Promise there was but response there was none.

When the ghastly story of the government's failure to supply adequate UAV surveillance emerged, Gerald Howarth was informed. Response there was none. And when it emerged that troops were at risk in Afghanistan through lack of thermal imagers, Howarth was informed. Response there was none.

Now, in a piece billed as an exposition of my view of what the (Conservative) Party must do to win the next election, I have been a long time coming to the point (or points). One thing which would now seem obvious as to what they must do – this is to fire Gerald Howarth.

As a shadow minister dealing with procurement, he is worse than useless. He has allowed one of the most dangerously useless procurement ministers in recent times, the Lord Drayson (pictured), to escape without tarnish, and even to enjoy pieces in the likes of The Independent, which today runs a long, highly laudatory "puff", about the minister, with the headline: Lord Drayson: Britain's top gun.

With the defence procurement goal wide open for innumerable "scores", if the shadow minister for procurement cannot even lay a glove on his opponent then it is time for him to go.

But, to focus on Howarth alone would be unfair. There is a broader issue at stake here: the Conservatives have forgotten how to campaign as an opposition. They have never really had to do so seriously and, over the eighteen years that they were in power, any skills they had have been long forgotten.

Going back to pre-Thatcher days, most knowledgeable political commentators will be aware that the rise of the Tories then owed much to the efforts of the Conservative party's research department but even more to the efforts of the Institute of Economic Affairs think-tank.

The core of that effect was, essentially, research – and the dissemination of the fruits of that research – of a calibre which, currently is no longer available. The research department has been broken up and there is no think-tank of any stature informing or guiding "team Cameron".

In opposition, however, research is also used to fuel attacks on the government and here, the Conservative effort is dire. The information which Howarth could have used – had he been able – was not supplied within the party machine. Unlike the US, where there are senior political researchers of some stature, that research function is treated as a job to be carried out by juniors, passing through to better posts – and paid accordingly.

The crucial issue here, though, is that research-driven information is best used indirectly, in servicing the media.

Bear with me on this one – I know what I am talking about. For a part of my career, I was responsible for doing the PR for an egg industry trade association, just after the start of the salmonella scare when producers were being branded killers of grannies and babies.

To get through to a hostile and uninterested media (uninterested in what we had to say, that is), we found the most effective way was to supply them with what they needed most – good, reliable information.

Then, there was a "market" for weekly information on food poisoning, which was difficult to get as the authorities had stopped releasing the figures. I was able to get it and ran a weekly service, collating and analysing the data and sending out a fact sheet to media operations. The information was not about eggs per se but it established our reputation as a trustworthy source and soon reporters were coming to us for comment and more information.

And that is how the Conservative Party needs to operate in order to win. The "big hits" by the leaders are all very well but what we need is the constant drip-drip approach with there never being a period when the Conservatives are not actually in the media, attacking the government. By contrast though, many shadow ministers produce nothing for ages and then churn out dire press releases about their agenda and expect the media to drop everything and publish it – bitching like mad when they do not.

To produce such research-based information though is actually beyond the capability of this party, dominated as it is by "team Cameron" who are only concerned with their own headlines. But then, that is of no concern to Boy and his acolytes. Winning the election is not their game. They have bigger fish to fry – the total destruction of the Conservative Party.

And that is the subject for the third and final piece.

COMMENT THREAD

Muppets' half hour

There seems to be something of a bandwagon effect running as more newspapers and the BBC join what is becoming a growing chorus of condemnation of British military equipment.

Some more issues were raised yesterday in The Daily Express, by reporter Padraic Flanagan, writing from Afghanistan. They were picked up, uncritically by the BBC and also by Matthew Hickley of the Evening Standard.

However, such is the ignorance of the journalists, their evident lack of research and their superficial approach to what is - as our readers will readily acknowledge - a complex technical subject, that the media activities have not taken us any further forward.

The reports in question feature Sergeant Stephen Brown of 45 Commando, second in command of the unit to which Marine Gary Wright belonged when he was killed by a suicide bomber last month, while riding in a "Snatch" Land Rover. From such a source, therefore, one might think that we could get some really pointed and searching criticism. But not a bit of it.

All we actually get is Brown saying that he doubted whether Wright's death could have been prevented. To the entirely unquestioning hacks he simply says that a better-protected vehicle could have stopped others in the vehicle becoming casualties, adding that the "Snatch" Land Rovers left troops exposed. "They are slow and offer no protection from improvised explosive devices," he says.

Now, Sergeant Brown is undoubtedly a good NCO, but one wonders whether he has seen the effects of a suicide bomb on the RG-31 (illustrated) – or indeed whether he even knows what an RG-31 is. Then, as our readers know, the Germans have the Dingo and the Dutch have the Bushmaster, both of which demonstrably offer considerable protection against mines and IEDs. Did Sergeant Brown know about these before making his observations?

More to the point, did any of the hacks know about them or, as always, are we just seeing them write down, totally uncritically, what they are told, with not a brain-cell's worth of questioning or analysis?

But, if they sell the pass here, it actually gets worse. According to the Express report, Brown then complains that a shortage of "Viper" (sic) and "Sophie" thermal-imaging equipment was hindering his troops in halting further attacks. The units, we are told, designed to work over different distances, work by showing the user a "heat map" of the body, and can reveal a suicide bomber by the tell-tale "cold spot" around the midriff shielded by a belt of deadly explosives.

Sergeant Brown is quoted as saying that the men in Lashkar Gah had barely a tenth of the imaging units they needed. "These units will save people's lives," he says. "They allow you to look at the potential threat and see him coming, but having to pass them around by hand and pick up your weapon – by that time he's on top of you."

Such is the fact-checking skill of the hacks, however, that none of them realise that the so-called "Viper" is in fact a Vipir. This is a small detail but another crucial piece of information which is missing is that the Vipir is a compact thermal imaging sight for the SA 80 rifle. It is a very nice piece of kit and it can be hand-held, but it is primarily designed as a rifle sight.

The relevance of this missing information will become evident in a moment but let us first deal with "Sophie". The complaint is so easily dropped in by Flanagan but "Sophie" is, in fact, a much larger piece of equipment than "Vipir". It is also fragile and expensive and, according the Army website, deployed at company level only. It would be entirely unrealistic for Wright to expect personal issue - and nor would it do his men any good. As you can see from the illustration, it is not possible to use "Sophie" and a weapon at the same time. For him to appear to ask for them gives the MoD a possible comeback and an opportunity to belittle the Sergeant.

But what is particularly interesting here - if the hacks were switched on - is that the equipment is obsolescent, scheduled for replacement (in the US Marines, at any rate) with a much better unit. If there is a complaint, it is that the British Army is not getting the up-to-date kit.

Ironically, though, the issue of thermal imagers was taken up during the lunch-time news on the BBC Radio 4 World at One programme. And it is here that the biggest mess was made of the issue. On the programme, the self-important Shaun Ley tells us that Brown's platoon is issued with three Vipir sights, when it needs 25. He then interviews the defence procurement minister, Lord Drayson and challenges him about the shortage.

Amazingly, the dreadful Drayson comes back saying that, "we've sent over 1400 sets of night vision goggles to Afghanistan…". These, of course, are totally different bits of kit – they are image intensifiers. They do not pick up infra-red radiation but simply intensify the available light in the visible spectrum. They cannot even be used in daylight, and would be useless for detecting suicide bombers.

The idiot Ley, however, clearly doesn't know the difference. "So as far as you're concerned," he says, "there's no issue of shortage either from the manufacturers or delay in issue at this end". "No there isn't," says Drayson, completely off the hook.

Something really, really does need to be done about these amateurs. The newspapers are bad enough but the BBC is in a league of its own. Yet, they are so full of themselves, they do not even begin to realise quite how full of crap they really are.

A start would be for their "flagship" news programme, the World at One, to be renamed Muppets' half hour.

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