Hoon and war readiness ..... an everyday story of military folk.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,

R. Kipling. Young British Soldier

On considering the gormless Hoon's contribution to explaining the shambles of Afghanistan last week it was worth looking up -

National Audit Office Operation TELIC - United Kingdom Military Operations in Iraq
HC 60 Session 2003-2004: 11 December 2003 which reported on Hoon's time as Mister of Defence.

"A key issue emerging, however, is that, on a United Kingdom Government wide basis, the nature and size of the post-conflict task was extremely difficult both to predict and to plan for. There were gaps in both the coordination of the planning and in the capability to do more in the short and medium term than patch up the existing inadequate infrastructure."

".... had not fully anticipated the consequences of a total collapse of the Saddam regime and what the United Kingdom's obligations would be once hostilities had ceased."

" ... Reconstruction is not a simple task and a great deal remains to be done within the United Kingdom's area of responsibility in southern Iraq, as across the whole country."

Cost in Year 20002 - 2003 - £847 Mn. As at November 2003, the Department estimated that the cost of the Operation in 2003-04 would be around £1.2 billion.

Hoon remember, was the guy who knew Blair was talking bollocks abour 45 minutes readiness of WMD, and when asked why he had not corrected the wrong impression in the national press that Britain could have been attacked by Iraqi WMDs within 45-minutes, he replied: “I didn’t see those newspapers, so the question of a correction did not arise, as far as I was concerned.”

That sort of response must really cheer up the squaddies as they look at the 6 inert Lynx helicopters, unusable in the heat and dust.