Empty Condolences

A taxi to a death in Iraq

by Christopher Booker

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The tragic deaths of four British soldiers in Basra last week, when their boat was blownup by a riverside bomb, were naturally seized on by our anti-war press simply asfurther evidence of the price which is inevitably having to be paid for a foolish and unnecessary war. Of course the UK Defence Secretary, Des Browne, intoned a ritual reference to the "sacrifice made by the brave men and women ofour Armed Forces". But his Ministry of Defence officials have understandably been remarkably reticent about just why these three men and one woman died.

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They were not on "a routine boat patrol", as the MoD claimed. They were being transferred up the Shatt al-Arab waterway, from one British HQ to another, in "water taxis". This is because we have no transport helicopters for this purposeand no vehicles sufficiently protected against roadside bombs to transfer themsafely by road. But, as the local insurgents were well aware, in order to negotiate a pontoonbridge en route the boats would have to move in right next to the riverbank,rendering them just as vulnerable to a bomb as a Snatch Land Rover.

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These entirely predictable deaths might have been avoided (as my colleague Dr Richard North has argued on the 'EU referendum' blog), if the MoD had providedthe Army with proper mine-protected vehicles, such as the fleet of Mambas weused in Kosovo. But these were sold off, some to a security firm, Blackwater, which now uses them to good effect safely ferrying US generals and other topbrass from Baghdad airport to the city' s "green zone".

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Alternatively, the MoD could have supplied our troops in Basra withmine-protected RG-31s, as used with similar lifesaving success by the Canadiansin Afghanistan. But instead of paying £280,000 apiece for the RG-31s they had ontrial in 2003 (and could by now have in service in Basra), the MoD preferred tospend £413,000 each on 401 highly-vulnerable Italian-made Panthers, which in anycounter-insurgency would be useless.

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As the tragedy facing our hopelessly ill-equipped troops in Iraq fast comes to ahead (they were being bombarded more heavily in Basra last week than everbefore), the responsibility for this disaster lies four-square with the MoD. It has preferred to spend billions equipping our forces to play their part in a fantasy "European army" of the future rather than spend very much less to equipthem for the real wars they are actually having to fight now. This is apolitical blunder of the first magnitude, scarcely made more bearable by Mr Browne's empty condolences over deaths which should never have occurred.