Missing the target

It has been a mixed week for Parliamentary Select Committees: they have regained some of their bite, but recent events have also served to remind us of their supine performances in the past. Yesterday it was the turn of the Defence Committee to seek our attention, briefing their latest report on the British military campaign in Helmand to the Sunday Telegraph. Under the headline ‘British Force Was Too Weak to Defeat Taliban’, we read of ‘a devastating report’ which is ‘deeply critical of senior commanders and government ministers’. But, the Committee have got some fairly crucial things wrong. They conclude that the task force was ‘capped at 3,150 for financial reasons’. This is untrue: more important than finances was the ongoing commitment in Iraq, together with the Army’s own ‘cap’ on the number of soldiers it could deploy on a sustainable basis across both operations. They also conclude it is ‘unlikely’ that the decision to deploy troops to Northern Helmand in summer 2006 was put to ministers, and argue that it should have been put to Cabinet.