Gordon Brown’s cuts ‘cost lives of soldiers’

Gordon Brown’s cuts ‘cost lives of soldiers’

So says General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank who adds

Soldiers’ lives were lost in Iraq and Afghanistan because Gordon Brown failed to fund the Army properly when he was Chancellor, a former chief of the defence staff said yesterday.

The Prime Minister is due to appear before the Iraq inquiry today at 10am.

General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, who led the Armed Forces from 1997 to 2001, toldThe Times: “Not fully funding the Army in the way they had asked . . . undoubtedly cost the lives of soldiers. He should be asked why he was so unsympathetic towards defence and so sympathetic to other departments.”

The families of servicemen who died on the front line in lightly armoured Land Rovers are already demanding to know why the Government did not send troops out with more helicopters and stronger vehicles.

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In a withering assessment of the “doomed” state of the military, the recently retired Lt Gen Sir Graeme Lamb said that the SAS had been denied even Vietnam-era equipment that could have saved lives.