It Wasnae Me, Part 2

The military have been quick to react:

Former commanders accused Gordon Brown of deliberately misleading the Iraq inquiry after he blamed the military for failing properly to equip the Armed Forces for war.

Admiral Lord Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff up to the start of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, disagreed. “He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed,” he said.

Colonel Stuart Tootal, former commander of 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, said: “I am quite staggered by the lack of any sense of responsibility. He was the man with the purse strings.”

And the response of No. 10?

A No10 spokesman said: "The Prime Minister could not have been clearer in responses to repeated questions about military funding. Every request that the military commanders made to us for equipment was answered. No request was ever turned down."

Knowing the way these people work, there is a probably a sense in which that is strictly true - in that it could not be proved completely false, and therefore allows some room for spin and wriggle. Every request will have been answered - in one way or another. And no request will ever have been turned down - although that allows for a multitude of other responses, some of which could be completely inadequate from a military point of view.

The Prime Minister repeatedly expressed sorrow for the British and Iraqi deaths. He told the inquiry: “I think this is the gravest decision to go to war. It was the right decision and it was for the right reasons.”

Crocodile tears. And catch that heavyweight Brown bluster: not "I believe it was the right decision", or even The People's Tony's "I accept that people don't agree, but this was the way I saw things at the time".

It. Was. The. Right. Decision.

Agree with me or fuck off.