To view Broon's testimony to the Chilcot Committee as a challenge to honesty falls into the battle of credibility that both the Prime Minister and the generals have used in their briefings, evidence and statements. Each side has tried to deflect blame on to each other, when it should be apportioned to all. This is not difficult.
The Ministry of Defence is notoriously incompetent in spending money and ordering equipment. The shortfalls in helicopters and armoured vehicles can be laid at the door of its procurement policy. The Treasury was rightly sceptical of certain claims emanating from such masters of special pleading. Yet this scepticism hardened into deafness, even when the critics were clearly those on the frontline, fighting a war without support from home.
Broon applied financial sanctions to the MoD to punish them for their ineptitude, even though the 'poor bloody infantry' were most likely to suffer from this constraint. Even then, it took years for the flaws in equipment to merit a response and money.
For any onlooker, Brown's refusal to bear any responsibility or share blame is evidence of his unfitness for office. That can be said of many to no avail and today, I say it of Brown. This has not prevented such candidates maintaining their power. It also does not mean that he feels genuine remorse for any soldiers who die on his watch. And that, extended further, means that he does not link his own actions with deaths in action. This is not vacuity. This is not cynical abandon. It is an unbalanced inability to thread the cause (Brown) and effect (MoD incompetence). He would gain my admiration of he had made a genuine effort to resolve the problems of the MoD. Instead, he allowed his contempt to shine through, appoint a part-time Minister in Des Browne and compounding the problems.