LONDON, Nov 23: Five former heads of the British armed forces fiercely criticised Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s treatment of the military, with one suggesting he treated them “with contempt” on Friday.

The five former chiefs of the defence staff — Michael Boyce, Charles Guthrie, David Craig, Edwin Bramall and Peter Inge — launched the unusually personal attack during a debate in the House of Lords on Thursday.

As lords, all five have the right to speak in Britain’s upper parliamentary chamber.

Boyce, who held the job between 2001 and 2003, joined a recent chorus of opposition politicians and top military men by saying he was concerned defence funding was not high enough to cope with deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“If you go to the Ministry of Defence today, you will find blood on the floor as the defence programme is slashed to meet the desperate funding situation,” he said.

He renewed his attack early on Friday, criticising Brown for failing to appoint a full-time defence secretary. The current incumbent, Des Browne, is also Scottish Secretary.

“When you have got people who have been killed and maimed in the service of their government and you put someone at the head of the shop, someone who is part-time, that sends a very bad message,” he told BBC television.

“And that is the message I get back from our soldiers, our sailors and our airmen. They feel insulted, they feel that he is treating them with contempt.” Guthrie said on Thursday that Brown “must take much of the blame for the very serious situation in which we find the services today.” He accused him of being unsympathetic to the forces in his former job as finance minister.

And Radley asked if it was not “immoral to commit forces that are underprepared and ill-equipped for their task”.

Defence minister Browne defended the government’s position on BBC radio on Friday, saying Britain had the second-highest defence budget in the world “in real terms”.

He said that the five were “not involved in these day-to-day issues, as I am” and, on his two jobs, added: “This is not an issue that has ever been raised with me by a serving soldier”.

“I would put my record both in relation to commitment and delivery up against anyone’s,” Browne said.

Britain currently has more than 6,000 troops in Afghanistan — a figure that will rise to around 7,700 by the end of the year — and around 5,500 in Iraq.

Prime Minister Brown announced last month that Iraq troop numbers would be cut by more than half to 2,500 by early next year as Iraqis assumed control of Basra province in the south.

The current head of the British army, Sir Richard Dannatt, warned of morale problems and serious overstretch among troops in excerpts from a high-level report published by this week’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He said the current level of operations was unsustainable and that troops were feeling “devalued, angry and suffering from Iraq fatigue”, the paper said.

The main opposition Conservative Party also frequently raises the issue and has accused the government of pulling troops out of Iraq to plug a shortfall in Afghanistan because of overstretch.—AFP