ninme

Telegraph - The battle of Basra

What began as unattributable sniping from anonymous Pentagon sources has turned into a full-throated, on-the-record whinge. Washington does not like what the British military is doing in Basra and doesn’t care who knows it. Retired General Jack Keane, the architect of the American “surge” in Baghdad, broke cover last weekend when he voiced his disappointment that the situation in Basra was “coming apart”. Lest Downing Street hadn’t noticed the outburst, he returned to the theme in an interview yesterday with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, when his language was even fruitier. Accusing the British military of a “general disengagement” from Basra, he complained there was now “almost gangland warfare” in Iraq’s second city and a deteriorating situation that would only get worse.

Such disobliging remarks from our closest ally cannot be ignored. General Keane at least had the grace to concede that, just like the American forces in central Iraq, Britain has never had enough manpower to protect the civilian population in its sector adequately. And that brought him to the nub of his argument. He said the United States had accepted that it needed to increase troop numbers on the ground - the British had to do the same.

As Colonel Bob Stewart points out on this page, Britain’s military overstretch is now so severe that the prospect of sending reinforcements to southern Iraq is preposterous - and Washington knows that. This is purely political. After last month’s Camp David summit, when Gordon Brown told George W Bush that he would extricate Britain from Iraq to his timetable, not Washington’s, the White House has decided to rattle the Prime Minister’s cage. And, as America’s involvement in Iraq limps towards its inevitable, ignominious conclusion, how very convenient it will be for Washington to be able to put some of the blame on the Brits for not pulling their weight in Basra.

Uh huh. The editorial board obviously didn’t care for what Con Coughlin had to say the other day, then.

So, okay, this business about the British armed forces being so over-stretched that they have to pull out of Iraq in order to go to Afghanistan,

The British Armed Forces however have the second highest expenditure (only behind U.S.) of any military in the world and this high spending on (relatively) small numbers of personnel, research, design and procurement of defence equipment means that they are one of the most powerful and technologically advanced forces in the world.

And

The United Kingdom fields one of the most powerful, technologically advanced, and comprehensive armed forces in the world. The UK has the second highest military expenditure in the world[41] despite only having the 22nd highest number of troops. It is also the second largest spender on military science, engineering and technology[42] Despite Britain’s wide ranging capabilities, recent defence policy has a stated assumption that any large operation would be undertaken as part of a coalition. Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq (Granby, Desert Fox and Telic) may all be taken as precedent - indeed the last large scale military action in which the British armed forces fought alone was the Falklands War of 1982.

At the peak of the invasion they had 46,000 total troops devoted to Iraq. They currently have 5,500 there. So they spend all that money, except they’re cutting a lot of it and howling with outrage at having to pay for some new submarines before Blair left, and 40,500 armed forces members have mysteriously disappeared, because they can’t bring back a handful of them to keep an eye on one city? And for this they spend so much money they’re only second to us? Obviously I’m missing something.