USA - UK can afford nukes, but can't build a f**king fence?

By Ahwisati Brocks, Our Military Correspondent

bastionAmerican analysis of last year's Taliban attack on Camp Bastion has revealed that the British 'screwed up'.

"In fact, they 'royally' screwed up", said General John Wayne. "They provided a safe house for Prince Harry (who slept through it all), but were too wee, too poor and too stupid to build a fence round the base, or even make sure that the watch towers were manned."

BBC Scotlandshire can exclusively (because we read it elsewhere, but hope that you haven't) reveal that the US are laying the blame, for their largest loss of aircraft since the Vietnam War, on the UK.

The incompetence of both Britain's Ministry of Defence and the British commanders of Camp Bastion, who were responsible for securing both the British and American bases there, are highlighted in the US report.

At the time, reports to the gullible British public said that "Rockets and mortar were fired from outside, damaging buildings and aircraft. As well as the deaths, a number have been reported wounded [but that] Bastion had not been breached."

It now transpires that 15 Taliban fighters dressed in American uniforms simply walked past an unmanned watch tower and on to the airfield at Camp Bastion, where they opened fire with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. When the assault was quelled more than five hours later two US Marines lay dead, a further 16 soldiers were injured and eight American aircraft worth more than $200m had been either destroyed or damaged.

In response to the report, an MoD spokesman said that it would be looking into the US report’s conclusions. However, in an off the record briefing to me over a few pink gins he revealed that their staff had simply been too overwhelmed with work to consider the request to build a fence.

"As civil servants, our main responsibility is to the policy of the Government of the day - though it's been many years since the policies have been different, regardless of which party is in power.", he eventually slurred. "The most important thing is to keep the British independent nuclear deterrent (though that's a laugh since it's none of those), but it allows UK Ministers to pretend that they are still important and keep their seat on the Security Council. If that means squaddies don't get the equipment they need, well soldiers are expected to die for Queen and Country - and if we don't have to pay the pensions for the dead and wounded, that's even better.

nimrod"Then, we need to support the armaments industry. As well as spending billions on useless aircraft carriers, we need to carry 50 years of spares for aircraft we have already scrapped. That doesn't come cheap, nor does ensuring that our top people can easily move to jobs in the defence industry when we they retire.

"The biggest workload, though, has been trying to write that damned briefing paper to show that Scotlandshire couldn't defend itself better, for less money if they split from the UK. That's been a terrible task, as you just need to look at all the other countries of that size who do that perfectly well.

"Our suggestion that we would need to bomb their airports was one of our cleverer wheezes. Though planting the 'What if Scotlandshire was invaded by Afghanistan' question at the Abertay University debate was our masterpiece.

"As for Camp Bastion, the decision was political, though I admit we might have misunderstood it a little. When Ruth Davidson's 'line in the sand' policy was announced, we did assume that she had authority to speak for the PM. If a line in the sand was the best defence of the Union, then it must also be the best defence of Camp Bastion. If you look at the aerial photo, we had rather a neat line in the sand drawn round the camp."

At this point, he fell asleep and I could usefully dismiss this as the ramblings of yet another Whitehall inebriate.

Over a few Bourbons, a former US ambassador was equally forthcoming. "The Pentagon is publicly enthusiastic about a British renewal of Trident, because the Brits pay part of the development costs. But we often question the logic of the UK continuing to plough a large part of its budget into nuclear weapons when so much of its conventional spending is being pared back in budget cuts.

"It is expenditure on conventional capability, such as fighter jets, infantry and special forces, that proves useful to the US in operations such as those under way in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the UK Trident programme sucks up so much money that the British military is denuded of expeditionary capabilities that are far more likely to be used than nuclear weapons, the US military will not be happy about that.” 

Meanwhile, it has transpired that Rangers boss, Ally McCoist, while pretending to support our forces by having Armed Forces personnel join in community singing at ibrox, has actually been undermining national security. "I'm not surprised", said Neil Lennon.
 


 Related Articles

 Independent : Revealed - how Ministry of Defence penny-pinching led to disaster


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