Named and shamed

Army chiefs have laid the blame for the botched occupation of Iraq full square on the shoulders of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

In a devastating secret memo to the Iraq war inquiry, they say Mr Brown’s refusal as Chancellor to release vital funds for the Army played into the hands of insurgents.

The report, written for former Army head Sir Mike Jackson, also attacks Mr Blair for ‘uncritically’ accepting flawed U.S. plans for the invasion when he was prime minister.

And it reveals that British forces were so overstretched they had to use mobile phones during battles because army-issue radios did not work.

The 100-page dossier, Stability Operations in Iraq, will not be made public but its contents were leaked to a Sunday newspaper.

However its criticisms are just the latest in a long line of attacks from senior Army figures on Mr Brown, who was Chancellor when U.S. and British troops attacked Iraq in March 2003.

Earlier this month General Lord Guthrie, a former Armed Forces chief, said Mr Brown’s penny pinching in the earliest stages of the war may have cost lives.

Some 179 British troops have died in Iraq since the invasion, along with thousands of civilians.

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