{"id":3939,"date":"2010-03-16T22:16:07","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T03:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3939"},"modified":"2010-03-16T22:22:09","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T03:22:09","slug":"the-british-response-to-browns-testimony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/16\/the-british-response-to-browns-testimony\/","title":{"rendered":"the British response to Gordon Brown’s testimony…"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In general, the British Press wasn’t kind to Prime Minister Gordon Brown about his Chilcot Inquiry appearance. But their complaints were not like my own, they had a more concrete beef. In his testimony, he repeatedly denied ever withholding funds from the military effort. That’s where the Press and the public outcry was focused:<\/div>\n
\n
What the military chiefs said about Gordon Brown<\/strong><\/a>
Gordon Brown hit back at former military chiefs who accused him of starving the armed forces of funds when he was Chancellor. <\/sup>
Telegraph.uk.co <\/strong>
11 Mar 2010<\/div>\n

Mr Brown gave evidence last Friday at the Chilcot Inquiry into the war in Iraq, where he insisted he had always provided military commanders with the equipment they requested. The following day he made a visit to Afghanistan. But at least three former military chiefs criticised Mr Brown, branding his Chilchot evidence "disingenuous".<\/p>\n

Gen Sir Richard Dannatt<\/strong><\/u>, the former chief of the general staff, said defence spending over the period while Mr Brown was Chancellor was cut by more than £1 billion a year.<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

"I know that the Prime Minister ‘gets’ this now. But no amount of rewriting history can compensate for the years when he neither understood defence properly nor was persuaded to pay for it fully." <\/p>\n

General Lord Guthrie<\/u><\/strong>, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, said: "To say Gordon Brown has given the military all they asked for is simply not true. <\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n

"They asked for more helicopters but they were told they could not have any more…" <\/p>\n

"He cannot get away with saying ‘I gave them everything they asked for’, that is simply disingenuous." <\/p>\n

Admiral Lord Boyce, Chief of the Defence Staff up to the start of the Iraq war in 2003, said of Mr Brown: "He’s dissembling. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed. There may have been a 1.5 per cent increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds." <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
At the time of the Iraq War, Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer [analogous to the Treasury Secretary] and was widely held responsible for underfunding that cost British lives. Every article in the British Press I read about his Chilcot testimony talked about this charge – unconvinced by his denials. After testifying, he went to visit the troops in Afghanistan. That visit was viewed as an attempt to neutralize the general animosity towards his perceived underfunding the troops. If that was his motive, it didn’t work. The visit didn’t change any minds… <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In general, the British Press wasn’t kind to Prime Minister Gordon Brown about his Chilcot Inquiry appearance. But their complaints were not like my own, they had a more concrete beef. In his testimony, he repeatedly denied ever withholding funds from the military effort. That’s where the Press and the public outcry was focused: What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}