Penny-pinching Brown comes under the starry-eyed gaze of the Iraq stitch-up as families demand to know why loved ones were sent to their deaths without proper equipment. Brown is set to snuggle up to Chilcot pals with denial written on his face and blood on his hands.
Warmongering Blair faced stage-managed Chilcot sham trials with smiles and "no regrets". No-one is taken in by Brown's grin after stitching up Chilcot with his placemen.
But families hoping the Chilcot whitewash will grill Brown are set to be disappointed. The canny politician is a dab hand at ducking responsibility, droning on with denials and reeling off meaningless tractor stats to fudge the facts.
Bunkered Brown has been forced to come out of hiding gambling he's nothing to lose this side of the election. Families expecting a last chance to hear the truth about the worst foreign policy disaster in recent times will be faced with a dodgy attempt to rewrite history.
But Brown cannot escape being a top member of Blair's war cabinet who helped push through the war. Going along with the plan to dupe parliament and people over an illegal war on the back of a pack of lies. And as chancellor he held the purse strings, holding back vital cash for equipment and kit for a war which happened on his treasury watch.
Whilst Blair was busy preparing to join pal Bush in Iraq, Brown was busy slashing the defence budget and starving the armed forces of funds.
Chilcot witnesses, including ex-defence secretary, Hoon, have accused the treasury of 'penny-pinching' over the Iraq war. Ex-top MoD civil servant, Tebbit, told how Brown "guillotined" military spending six months after the invasion.
Equipment shortages forced on the military as well as useless kit, such as the Snatch Land Rover dubbed “mobile coffins”, were a direct result of budget cuts. Troops were sent to war without enough transport helicopters, driven around in Land Rovers vulnerable to roadside bombs and suicide bomb attacks.
Time and again inquests have heard the sorry plight of troops sent to their deaths with a woeful lack of kit and equipment. This week an inquest into the deaths in a Snatch heard how troops believed vehicles were unsuitable but were told to make do.
The Times and Telegraph make a splash with ex-army chiefs gunning for Brown. Ex-defence chief, Guthrie, tells The Times a failure to properly fund the armed forces while Brown was chancellor has "undoubtedly cost the lives of soldiers."
The Telegraph reveals former special forces chief, Lamb, has warned the SAS are inadequately equipped with only basic equipment due to underfunding.
Thirty-six servicemen and one servicewoman were killed while on patrol in Snatch Land Rovers. Now families of troops killed in poorly protected Land Rovers are urging the Iraq inquiry to challenge Brown on his funding.
Why did Brown jeopardise soldiers’ lives by cutting funding and forcing them to travel in the unsuitable vehicles? Why were frontline soldiers' complaints not acted on?
Hand-picked Chilcot stooges, working to a tight Downing Street remit with plenty of wiggle room, say that the purpose of the inquiry is 'not to apportion blame'. But the more deception, lies, incompetence and dishonesty is revealed, the clearer it becomes that someone must be held accountable for the tragic number of avoidable deaths.
Sickening photo-ops of Brown PR stunts with troops are hard to stomach. Families deserve better than the sham of a Chilcot whitewash and the weasel words of a penny-pinching chancellor. It was Brown who supported the illegal war with one bloody hand while slashing the defence budget with the other.
The families of the dead have a right to the truth about an illegal war fought in their name. It is the verdict of those families on Brown's performance which will be most telling.
The deaths of all soldiers and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan is as much on the conscience of Brown as it is on Blair. Both are left with blood on their hands. Voters will now decide whether to back Brown's morally criminal government which put cheap politics above the safety of the armed forces.
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