UK puts troops on a budget of one battle a month

Daily Mail:

Ministers sent British troops into southern Afghanistan with such tough spending limits that they were only allowed enough manpower to fight one battle a month, senior commanders revealed today.

Brigadier Ed Butler, the highly-respected officer who led UK forces into Helmand Province in the summer of 2006, told MPs how a 'Treasury-imposed cap' left him with just 3,350 personnel to confront the Taliban.

That was only enough fighting power for 'one significant operation a month' - and not enough to cope with extra battles or unexpected strains, he told the Commons Defence Select Committee.

In the event his forces were besieged by hordes of Taliban gunmen, fighting for weeks at a time in what was later described as the toughest campaign the Army had seen since the Korean War half a century ago.

The public comments from the highly-decorated former head of the SAS are a severe embarrassment for the Government, as at the time ministers shrugged off accusations that they had put British soldiers' lives at risk by sending them to war with too little manpower and equipment.

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Perhaps this explains their lackluster performance in Afghanistan. Gordon Brown seems to be managing war on a budget that does not fit the demands of the situation. He was making a gift to the Taliban while continuing to spend on social projects like supporting terror suspects who could not be deported because of the EU's political correctness.