Mick Smith - Times Online - WBLG

Blair Confirms Navy Cuts

Having gone to Plymouth on Friday to hear the Prime Minister make his speech on the future of our defences, I read Saturday's newspaper reports, largely concentrating on his ludicrous and scarcely surprising attempts to justify Iraq, with dismay. It is perhaps understandable that Iraq grabbed the attention of the political writers, but the real story out of that speech was the lack of any short-term extra funding for defence and the effective confirmation of the stories about cuts to the navy.

British General Questions What US Forces in Iraq Are Doing?

General Sir Rupert Smith is reluctant to condemn the dispatch of 20,000 more US troops to Iraq without being certain of what they are going to do, but the very fact that it seems unclear to him ought to suggest that all is not right. Smith is widely seen as the best chief of general staff the British Army never had. He made his name in Bosnia, as a brilliant commander of UN forces in very difficult times, and his book The Utility of Force, published in America this week, is considered a must read for up-and-coming British officers.

British Troops Help a Republican Cause

In the early hours of the morning, President George W Bush confirmed that British troops will remain in Iraq as along as he is president. Yes I know it is at odds with the reports you have seen. I know that Bush said 20,000 more US troops would be going to Iraq, not British. I know some papers are actually running stories claiming that they can “reveal” that several thousand British troops will actually be out of Iraq by May. But the bottom line here is that for the sake of long-term Republican electoral chances the bulk of British troops will stay, and some of them inevitably die, in Iraq until the president finally leaves office.

Life Really Isn't Fair

The spin doctors at the Ministry of Defence are apparently extremely angry over our story on Sunday revealing that the real cost of the refurbishment of the MoD Main Building is three times the £746m they have always claimed, at a whopping £2.35bn. So upset in fact that a text message on my phone from a senior MoD official, parts of which I cannot repeat in polite company - we do have scruples on this website - tells me that the story is “utterly, shabby, second rate b*))*cks”. Except that of course it isn’t, it was revealed as true in a parliamentary written answer on 6 December. That response was written by MoD officials, who I assume knew what they were talking about, and it has since been confirmed as accurate by the MoD press office.

Why Can't Our Boys Get the Same Resupply the Taliban Get?

The myth of British control of the southern Afghan province of Helmand is exposed in unprecedented footage of British and Afghan troops fighting to regain the crucial town of Garmsir to be shown on Channel 4 on Monday 8 January. Sean Langan, the reporter on the film for the Dispatches programme, spent a week with the British troops leading the recapture of Garmsir from the Taliban.