Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 10:33 am Post subject: Army Morale At Rock Bottom - Dannatt
What is the decisive factor in warfighting?
Morale
Head of British army says Iraq and Afghan conflicts are damaging his forces
LONDON - The head of the British army believes conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are damaging Britain's armed forces, a newspaper reported Saturday.
Years of underfunding and excess demand have left British troops feeling "devalued, angry and suffering from Iraq fatigue," the Sunday Telegraph newspaper quoted Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt as saying in an official report.
The newspaper said it had received a copy of an official report in which Dannatt wrote that current trooping levels are unsustainable and increasing numbers of troops are disillusioned.
Simultaneous operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are damaging and "mortgaging the goodwill of our people," Dannatt allegedly said.
Dannatt rose to prominence in Oct. 2006, when he told a British newspaper that his forces' continued presence in Iraq "exacerbates the security problems" for Britain worldwide.
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iiUCcFkhbmHoBbfdK4MpiXby gO-Q
Paras' commander quits over breaches of Military Covenant
By Jonathan Owen
Published: 18 November 2007
One of the Army's brightest officers, marked by many as a future general, has resigned, it emerged yesterday, in protest at the Government's failure to honour the Military Covenant. Lt-Col Stuart Tootal resigned his command of the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, citing "appalling" and "shoddy" treatment of troops, particularly regarding issues over levels of pay, lack of training equipment and shortcomings in housing and healthcare.
In a statement issued by the Ministry of Defence last night, Lt-Col Tootal said: "There has been much speculation regarding my decision to leave the Army. While my reasons for doing so are many and varied, they remain a private matter." He went on to pay tribute to the "exceptional" men under his command. The MoD defended its treatment of soldiers, saying: "We go to great lengths to look after our people on operations," and thanked Lt-Col Tootal for "his loyal service over 20 years".
The 42-year-old, viewed by some senior officers as a controversial figure, who will leave the Army in a few months' time, was awarded the Distinguished Service Order earlier this year for his leadership of 3 Para during a fiercely fought six-month tour of Afghanistan's notorious Helmand province in 2006.
Speaking to The Independent on Sunday yesterday, his father, RAF Gp Capt Patrick Tootal OBE DL, supported his son's decision: "Of course I'm sad that he's gone but I understand his reasons and I respect them." From his home in Kent, the retired officer, who served for 33 years, attacked the Government over its failures to back the armed forces. "They're beginning to address some equipment issues but it's going to take time. There is no money in the budget and you wonder where the priorities are when you see £32bn, almost what we spend on defence, being spent on shoring up Northern Rock," he said.
"The thing that does worry me is that we're not supporting the war as citizens, what we are supporting is the troops that are doing the Government's bidding. We do not treat our servicemen with the respect that they deserve... when they are injured or wounded and have left the service there's not much follow up except from charities. The Government has got to realise that we are in a long-term war in Afghanistan. We're putting 18-year-olds out there who are fighting pretty much 24 hours a day for virtually six months and then they're coming back to grotty quarters. How are you going to sustain an Army which is like that?"
He is also critical of the job-sharing role of Des Browne, who acts as Secretary of State for Scotland and Defence: "What message does it send to armed forces when we've got a part-time defence minister? The Government needs to match its rhetoric with the funding that is needed to fight the war in Afghanistan. The fact is there is no extra money to produce the support that is required. When a chap comes back with no legs, a medal is very nice but it doesn't actually solve his housing problems."
_________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
By Des Browne
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 18/11/2007
Our forces are the best, and deserve the best. Few people can be more aware than I am that we are now asking a lot of the services and their families. Iraq and Afghanistan place huge demands on our personnel. Many have been wounded; some have lost their lives. Every death or injury saddens me greatly, although this of course can be nothing to the pain and loss suffered by the families.
I sense a growing public appreciation of the sacrifices that our forces and their families make. Last Sunday, I was proud to pay my respects at the Cenotaph as the nation remembered all the gallant men and women who have made sacrifices in the service of their country. Remembrance Sunday is a day to honour not only the dead, but also the survivors, especially the wounded. This year it was noticeable how many young people wore poppies. The nation - and the nation includes this Government - holds our forces in great esteem. All of us want to see that esteem grow and build.
But those who claim the Covenant between the Government and the Armed Forces is in any way broken are wrong. That does not mean that we, the Government, cannot do better. But the truth is that we strive constantly to ensure that the Armed Forces have the best possible package of care.
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The facts speak for themselves.
Our operational welfare package has been boosted with a tax-free operational bonus, more phone calls home, better internet access and a year-round free parcel service.
Healthcare provision for the Armed Forces is exceptional, whether it is in-theatre, at Selly Oak, or at Headley Court, where our rehabilitation is widely acknowledged as being world class. The care we provide now has undoubtedly saved many more lives than would have been the case even a few years ago. We have listened to concerns for more of a military environment for the wounded and have put this in place at Selly Oak.
We also take mental healthcare very seriously. A great deal has been done in developing our responses to the stresses of military life. A mental health team deploys to every sizeable operational theatre, and after deployment we try to ensure personnel get a "decompression period" to unwind. If specialist assessment and treatment is needed it can be carried out at any of 15 military Community Mental Health centres in the UK.
Veterans can use the Medical Assessment Programme at St Thomas' hospital where they will see a clinician with a background in military psychiatry. This scheme will soon be supported even further by military experts working with NHS mental health trusts. Treatment for qualifying war pensioners is organised by Combat Stress, to which we have greatly increased our funding. War pensioners are entitled to priority NHS treatment for any disability which is accepted as having been caused or aggravated by service.
Despite media reports, we are providing by far the best kit our forces have ever had - delivering more than £10 billions' worth in the past three years. We have initiated a rolling programme that is flexible, responsive and delivers good kit on time to the front line. We have spent over £1 billion on force protection, and more on new helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and weapons. We've just announced that we are buying 140 more Mastiff vehicles for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will do more.
The opinions from the people who really matter - those on the front line - are encouraging. On my recent visits to Iraq and Afghanistan, troops gave positive feedback on a range of equipment we have delivered: Mastiff, Bulldog and Viking vehicles, Osprey body armour, Challenger tanks and base security. As the senior British commander in southern Iraq, Maj Gen Jonathan Shaw, said in June: "I have never seen a theatre so well supplied with new kit… this steady trickle of new kit has had real and almost instantaneous impact."
So we are making good progress. But there is a lot more to be done. I would certainly acknowledge that some service accommodation is not up to standard. We are working hard to put this right, but it cannot be done instantly. This year, we will spend £870 million (up from £700 million last year), and we plan to spend over £5 billion over the next decade. This is a big project that will take time. We are dealing with a legacy of under-investment that goes back decades. We are also helping people to buy their own homes and look to do more in this area.
We keep these levels of support under constant review. The Ministry of Defence is working closely with other departments to make sure that Government as a whole delivers for our Armed Forces. The new Cross-Government Strategy on Service Personnel will let us examine our progress, take a fresh look at a number of areas and to set out our agenda for support in housing, health, education, skills or welfare. No government has done this before.
This Government is demonstrating how it values our forces and their families by ensuring it delivers the support they deserve.
I hope the public will support the forces just as much. I am confident they will.
Des Browne is the Secretary of State for Defence
Have your say _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 6:38 pm Post subject:
I spoke to an army mum earlier today who told me her relationship with her son right now is extremely uncomfortable. When she sees him on leave he won't talk about what he's been doing. Not because of official secrets, because he's ashamed.
Some good news on this front though....
The Royal British Legion schools' pack for 2007/8 http://www.abolishwar.org.uk/news9.pdf
Each year the Royal British Legion issues an information pack to schools. The latest pack has for the first time broken the boundaries in two ways: As well as covering information on past wars and the experiences of veter-ans,for the first time, students are in-vited to consider what they should do to actually stop war happening. They are then asked to explain their thoughts and ideas. This comes under follow-up activities in the 'Remembrance' section in the main foldout part of the new pack.
Also in the pack is a large poster about the work of the United Nations, highlighting the need to improve inter-national relations to prevent war. This too is a first - the UN has never before been mentioned in the schools' packs. MAW vice chair Christine Titmus, who began dialogue with the Legion in 2002, is delighted to see suggestions from those talks coming to fruition in the new pack.
From little acorns......?
To obtain a free pack, contact the Royal British Legion at 48 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JY or look on www.britishlegion.org.uk to order online
Published time: 24 Aug, 2015 13:08
http://www.rt.com/op-edge/313220-navy-facebook-whistleblower-uk/
Young people in Britain realize that nowadays the UK- lacks an independent defence policy – and is merely following the US foreign policy. That explains why Brits would rather face homelessness than be pliable American stooges, investigative journalist Tony Gosling told RT.
Last year saw a dramatic rise in ‘voluntary outflow’ with more than five per cent of the entire navy leaving for new shores. The MoD ministry has spent five million pounds on advertising, and released a promotional video to attract young Brits.
RT: According to a new survey, young people in Britain are reluctant to join the Royal Navy because they can't be both online on social networks and underwater while on service. What do you make of that?
Tony Gosling: This is just pure propaganda. The trouble is the navy has got a serious recruitment problem. It is the most difficult of the various forces - the air force, the army, etc. - to find young people to join it. They have got a recruitment crisis. Back in May we had morale survey, which said that the recruitment is 'sinking fast' in the navy. A quarter already in the navy want to get out. This is the highest figure they've ever had. This whole idea of this being the problem is just simply a bit of PR spin and more wasted tax payers’ money on trying to convince politicians and the public that something completely different is going on. The 16-24 year olds from which the Royal Navy recruits – their unemployment at the moment is the worst for 20 years. So that is 15 percent from that age range are now unemployed.
So you’d think that the Royal Navy would have not a lot of trouble recruiting people, but despite the removal of social security payments from young people of that age they are still having a massive problem. So it’s nothing to do with Facebook; that is just more propaganda and lies, I'm afraid, in order to convince the politicians that this is what is causing it. It’s not being caused by that at all; it is problem of a desperately bad morale.
RT: The issue is not only repelling new recruits, but trained specialists are leaving the navy. What do you think UK government, and the Defense Ministry in particular, should do to improve this kind of situation and make the Royal Navy more attractive to people?
TG: It’s quite clear that the people serving in the Royal Navy have worse conditions than the others from the survey reports. I would suggest it is probably because it is one of the more dangerous of the forces to be involved in - even in peace time - because you’re away for long period of time whether it is under water, away from home. At least, say for example in the Royal Air Force, you’ve got contact with people on the ground when you have leave. It’s actually relatively easy to take in a local town, city, or whatever, and the same with the army. But with the Royal Navy you’re stuck out in the middle of nowhere. So you've really got to have good morale, good atmosphere on the ships. I think what’s been happening though in the navy and another forces is that the promotion of ‘yes men’ that’s been going on - pliable people that will come up with the right sorts of answers for the politicians.
There is also the fact that young people are not stupid. Even if they are desperate to find work, they won’t join nowadays; they’d rather face homelessness than die for Uncle Sam. The matter of the fact is that Britain doesn't really have independent armed forces any more. What we are doing effectively is fighting not for Britain, but for America. Take, for example, Afghanistan, Iraq, now in Ukraine doing training for the Ukrainians. This is following a US agenda. That is why the morale is so low. There is a very simple answer to this recruitment: Britain needs to have its own independent defence policy; not an American attack policy, but British independent defence policy with the best people being made officers, the best officers leading their men, rather than pliable stooges, and you’ll find there will be lots of people happy to join such a force.
Another example of what’s been happening with that is referring to William McNeilly, who is a submariner who came out in May saying effectively that the Official Secrets Act was being used as a cover for incompetence and appalling lack of security. This is what happens when you get the wrong people being promoted; they just simply do not act on the signals or signs of things going wrong, and they are afraid to tell their political masters what is really happening. Effectively we've got slowly paralysed armed forces in Britain. Number one, because they are acting as an instrument of US foreign policy, not British defence policy, but also because the wrong sorts of people are being promoted. As for example, happened – this isn't new by the way- this happened back around the decade around 1900- in the French army with something called the Dreyfus Affair where there were attempts, they were very successful as well, to paralyse the French army by making sure the wrong sorts of officers were being promoted to the top. What it meant was that the army would give the right messages to the politicians, the ones they wanted to hear, but actually wasn't effective as a fighting force, and certainly not as a defensive force for the nation. It would be being used more abroad as an attack force.
We need to completely change the way Britain’s foreign policy is decided at the moment – by the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, which is effectively a private club, which sets foreign policy and that is mostly run by big multinational corporations, including American corporations. So we need to have an independent foreign office, and we need to get back our kind of democratic rights as a country and as politicians. Let our elected politicians decide what is best for us all, not private corporations through groups like The Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] in America and the Royal Institute for International Affairs here in London. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
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