Airstrip One

Baghdad Squaddie

The government has made another mistake: cancelling the leave of the Black Watch without ensuring that the soldiers or their families were aware of their next deployment. Their needs were probably never raised with Hoon: a pol first, last and always.

There had been fears that the Black Watch were being sent to Fallujah, stronghold of the Tawhid wal Jihad group which murdered Kenneth Bigley a week ago. Last night the Ministry of Defence ruled out sending British troops there, but, asked about deployment to Baghdad, said that options were under consideration. A spokesman said: “Discussions are going on all the time with our allies about our deployment in Iraq.”

The need for security during the elections has provided a demonstrable 'need' for the 'hearts and minds' strategies of the Brits. Remember: we won Malaysia, they lost Vietnam.

(23.05, 15th October 2004)