CHESTER, ENGLAND – DECEMBER 03: A soldier of 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh waits for a Chinook to land during an exercise before deployment to Afghanistan. Members of 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh, who are based in Chester, are to be deployed following Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s announcement on Monday of an extra 500 troops for Afghanistan. Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.
The omnishambles at the Ministry of Defence is such that, astonishingly, it may have supplanted the Home Office as the government department least fit-for-purpose. This is no small achievement and, one suspects, owes little to any improvement on the Home front. It’s been apparent for some time that defence policy is being made on a reactive basis and that this owed as much to media pressure upon a beleaguered Prime Minister as it did to the Taliban’s efforts in Helmand Province.
Nothing about the announcement
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