The Iraq War, the build-up, according Lord Drayson, Minister for Defence Procurement:

The military was considering and advising on elements of the equipment list. To order substantial numbers of further body armour pieces beyond the number held in stock—approximately 13,000 at the time, if I recall correctly—would have sent a clear signal about the particular type of operation being contemplated. With the political process as it was, it was judged that that was not the right thing to do.

The Iraq War, the fallout:

An inquiry into the death of Sergeant Steven Roberts, of the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, who died of a bullet wound in the chest on the fifth day of the war, said that he would have lived had he been protected by the special body armour.

Sergeant Roberts was the first British soldier to die in action in the 2003 Iraq war, on a stop-and-search operation at Az Zubayr in southern Iraq. He had handed his enhanced body armour (ECBA) to a colleague because the equipment was in short supply.

And what’s that ‘clear signal’ that Lord Drayson speaks of? He doesn’t say to who the government were worried about sending it. Was it Saddam or antagonists closer to home - MPs whose votes were needed but shouldn’t be told that war was already a done deal?

Still, that was back in 2003. Having gone tooled up to Serbia (1999), Sierra Leone (2000), and Afghanistan (2001), New Labour were still a little rusty about how to run a war, bless ‘em.

Fast forward to 2006 and the deployment to Helmand Province in Afghanistan which then Defence Secretary, John Reid hoped would go off ‘without a single shot being fired’. How had things changed since the politically-dictated sacrifices of 2003? Not by much.

Helmand, the build up, according to an army board of inquiry:

“Critically,” it said, “the secretary of state, [then John Reid] had delayed announcing the Helmand deployment because he wanted to ensure that the campaign could be won, that the 3,150 manning cap was not exceeded, and that Britain’s Nato allies were also contributing.” The board’s report continues: “The immediate consequence was that the two-month delay effectively froze the [urgent operational requirement] process and resulted in the [Helmand Task Force] deploying without much of the mission essential equipment that it had requested.”

Helmand, the fallout:

An Oxford coroner criticised the Ministry of Defence yesterday, accusing it of betraying soldiers’ trust by sending troops to Afghanistan without basic equipment.

Andrew Walker castigated the MoD at the end of an inquest into the death of Captain James Philippson, 29, who was killed in June 2006 during a gunbattle with the Taliban in which British troops were described as “totally outgunned”.

John Reid was then promoted to Home Secretary.

You can’t deny that New Labour have rewritten the political truisms, aphorisms and other assorted cliches. Under this government, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as tragedy.

(Via Alex.)