Ok, the headline’s nothing surprising – back in 2002, Geoff Hoon refused to allow the MoD to purchase body armour before the invasion of Iraq, fearful that it would ‘give away’ Labour’s plans to tack on to GWB’s ego trip.
Today the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, gave evidence to the inquiry:
We made it absolutely clear to ministers that if we were not allowed to engage with industry … there was a serious risk that [equipment] would not all be delivered by the assumed start of operations.
The other area where we could have done better is in terms of enhanced combat body armour. We didn’t have enough of that in theatre at the time. And I think, in part for both clothing and body armour, the issue was it was all done so rapidly at the last minute. No one was quite sure who had what. For example, just before the start of operations, the clear message that we were receiving in the Ministry of Defence was that all unit demands for enhanced combat body armour had been met. But quite clearly not everybody who needed it in theatre got it.
Nondescript though it may seem, this is stunning stuff – the current, serving Chief of the Defence Staff publicly attacking the Government’s deliberate choice to ignore the chiefs’ warnings and to put troops’ lives at risk – all, in the final analysis, in the interests of political expediency. Need I say more?
Filed under: Armed Forces, Blogging, Defence, Iraq | Tagged: Armed Forces, Defence, Defence Procurement, Geoff Hoon, Iraq, Iraq Inquiry
[...] £35bn of unfunded cost overruns. Then about Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup’s rightly harsh assessment of the Government’s procurement planning ahead of the Iraq war. Together, those are condemnatory; Labour not only managed to put [...]
[...] of Labour party politics won’t miss him. Those who saw his pathetic, dissembling performance before the Chilcot Inquiry won’t miss him. And his colleagues, still outraged by his pathetic mini-plot against Gordon [...]