He's Dannatt again (geddit??)

It is surely a joy without parallel watching the head of the British army, Richard Dannatt, putting his foot in it time and time again over the war in Iraq. First-off, he revealed to the Daily Mail some time ago that the presence of British troops “exacerbates the security problems” there - causing no small embarrassment for the Government as a consequence. Next, he was to reveal the rather inconvenient fact that the troops under the command of that body still referred to as the “Ministry of Defence” appear to have no capacity to actually defend the UK. As the Telegraph reported, in one memo Dannatt “told senior commanders that reinforcements for emergencies … are “now almost non-existent”:

“In the memorandum to fellow defence leaders, the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) confessed that “we now have almost no capability to react to the unexpected”. The “undermanned” Army now has all its units committed to either training for war in Iraq and Afghanistan, on leave or on operations.””

Another senior officer, cited in the same article, confirmed the meaning of Dannatt's comments:

“General Dannatt's appraisal means that we are unable to intervene if there is an emergency in Britain or elsewhere, that's self-evident ...

“But this is a direct result of the decision to go into Afghanistan on the assumption that Iraq would diminish simultaneously. We are now reaping the reward of that assumption.”

Well, brace yourself, because he’s just done it again. This time, in a speech recorded by Channel Four News, we hear the following from the lips of the General:

“Our opponents in the main are Iraqi nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs - jobs, money, security, hope. And the majority, therefore, I would suggest are not bad people.”

Going simply on the direct and explicit statements of the British army's commander, then, we can sketch an illuminating picture of what that army is currently doing. It is effectively emasculating the security of the general British population by over-stretching itself in foreign countries; one significant reason for this over-stretch is its current deployment in Iraq, where its presence “exacerbates the security problems” for the Iraqi population, while engaging in warfare against people “most concerned with their own needs - jobs, money, security, hope”.

And yet, for whatever bizarre reason, the British public seem less than enthusiastic about lavishing praise on their armed forces. Who would have thought it.

(You’ll note, incidentally, that that last article I linked to quotes directly from the same speech by Dannatt, but apparently deems his comments on the Iraqi insurgents unworthy of mention. Unfortunately, it is far from alone in this respect.)

UPDATE: Well, I thought it worth waiting until the next day to see if coverage of these revelations had improved, but the results are as they were last night: one brief mention in print (the Guardian), and one on television (yesterday’s Channel Four News). Most of the mainstream media are certainly reporting on Dannatt’s speech - they’re simply failing to give any attention to the most important bit.

Dannatt’s comments on Afghanistan, and the “Taliban” fighters we hear so much about, are also well worth mentioning. According to the Guardian:

In Afghanistan, he said, there was a lazy tendency for [our opponents] all to be lumped under the term “Taliban”. It was not as simple as that, he said. There was a hard core of Islamist extremists of varied ethnic and national origin, but the “great majority of the people we are engaged against are those who are fighting with the Taliban for financial, social, and tribal reasons.”