I know!

About Afghanistan, he said: “It’s no good the Prime Minister one moment saying success is all important and then for the sake of a few extra helicopters and 200 men allowing the mission in Afghanistan to fail.
You can’t go to war in a penny-pinching way.”

His remarks are a fresh blow to Mr Brown, who is already accused of failing to supply enough men or helicopters.

Lord Guthrie, still Colonel Commandant of the SAS, says a fundamental rethink is needed of Britain’s defence capabilities in the light of the rise of Islamist terrorism and the end of the Cold War.

The four Trident submarines, which are due to be replaced at a cost of £20 billion – should be phased out and replaced with

“the cheapest possible nuclear deterent you could get away with,” he adds.

“Ideally – but quite unrealistically – you would fire it off the back of a Land Rover … There are different ways of delivering it.

If you look at Pakistan they haven’t got boats at sea, they strap weapons on to aircraft. They don’t tie up as much of the defence budget as we do.”

Warfare has changed dramatically in recent years, with the rise of al-Qaeda, he says. “In the Cold War there were rules of the game, we deterred each other. Nowadays it’s extremely difficult to deter some forms of terrorism.

Lord Guthrie says the lives of British soldiers are being put at risk . …

And when Alistair Darling says we will give the army everything it asks for, that is patently not true.”

” Mr Brown, he adds, has never “cared” about the armed forces.
“He said to me once: ‘you don’t think I understand defence, do you?’ I said ‘no you don’t’.”

“When we could have made a decent investment we didn’t. Gordon Brown focused on health and education rather than defence. That means we’re not prepared.”

ttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6727006.ece