The Ministry of Defence has been accused of ordering a “truth blackout” over the war in Afghanistan amid warnings it is attempting to “bury bad news” during the election campaign.

British journalists and TV crews are to be banned from the Afghan front line once a date for the election has been set, while senior officers will be prohibited from making public speeches and talking to reporters.

MoD websites will also be “cleansed” of any “non-factual” material including anything containing troops’ opinions of the war, according to a memo leaked to The Daily Telegraph.

The edict comes as Gordon Brown was accused of using British troops as “political props” by visiting Afghanistan the day after giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War.

The war in Afghanistan is likely to be a sensitive political issue in the election campaign.

Last night the MoD confirmed a British soldier, from A Company 4 Rifles, was killed in a fire-fight yesterday bringing the total deaths since the conflict began to 271.

The Prime Minister has been repeatedly accused by former military chiefs of denying soldiers vital equipment.

In the memo, Nick Gurr, the MoD’s director of media and communications, says “embeds” for all British news broadcasters and national journalists will be prohibited during the campaign, expected to begin later this month.

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Gordon Brown was snubbed by badly injured Afghan veterans when they closed curtains round their beds during a hospital visit and refused to speak to him.

More than half the soldiers being treated at the Selly Oak hospital ward in Birmingham either asked for the curtains to be closed or deliberately avoided the prime minister, according to several of those present.

The soldiers, who have sustained some of the worst injuries seen in Afghanistan, described his visit as “opportunistic” and a “waste of time”.

Furious about equipment shortages and poor compensation for their injuries, one soldier said: “It is almost as if we are the product of an unwanted affair … he has done nothing for us.”

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Tony Blair’s place in history will forever be coloured by the war in Iraq.

The Iraq war and its aftermath have seen the most contentious decisions taken by any British Government since 1945. Tony Blair stands accused of leading the country into war on a false prospectus, subordinating British interests to George W Bush and showing gross negligence in failing to plan for postwar Iraq.

The only other event that comes close to earning a prime minister such ignominy is the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Anthony Eden lied to the House of Commons. In that short-lived conflict, 21 British servicemen were killed. By contrast, 179 British soldiers died in Iraq, and untold numbers of Iraqi civilians lost their lives as a result of the hostilities and the instability that followed.

Blair’s place in history will forever be coloured by the war. The Channel 4 drama, The Trial of Tony Blair, struck many as far-fetched when first aired in early 2007. Now a full public inquiry, so long in the offing, is upon us. Technically, Blair will not be on trial, but he will be forced to defend his actions in the full glare of the public arena.

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The father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan received a condolence letter from the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, almost two years after his son died.

Trooper Jack Sadler, 21, of the Honourable Artillery Company, was killed on December 4 2007 when his vehicle was caught up in a blast in Helmand Province.

But his father Ian said he only received a handwritten letter from Gordon Brown on November 17 2009, accompanied by a typed apology from an aide to the Prime Minister.

Last month, Mr Brown was criticised for spelling mistakes in a handwritten letter to Jacqui Janes, whose son Jamie was killed in Afghanistan.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4′s The Report, Mr Sadler, from Exmouth, Devon, said: ”Jack was killed on December 4 2007 and I received a letter of condolence from the Prime Minister with no date on it on November 17 2009.

”I have a letter apologising, not from the Prime Minister, but from Jeremy Heywood who is his permanent secretary, apologising that an administrative mistake resulted in my not receiving a letter from the Prime Minister.

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Civil servants working for the Ministry of Defence in Afghanistan are entitled to receive the same Operational Service Medal as front line troops.

The medal is presented to bureaucrats who have spent time at Camp Bastion, the British headquarters, by ministers at official ceremonies.

But critics said it was “offensive” that civil servants who work only at Army bases or accompanying ministers on walkabouts should be given the same medal as the troops who face the Taliban on a daily basis.

A total of 235 British forces personnel have died while serving in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001, but no civil servants have been killed.

The latest revelation comes after figures showed that MoD staff have been paid £47 million in performance bonuses so far this year.

MoD staff are being paid more than £8,000 a month for working in Afghanistan, nearly five times as much some soldiers on the front line.

It comes as Gordon Brown prepares to announce the deployment of a further 500 troops to take the British forces deployment to 9,500 in the war-torn country.

The circular silver Operational Service Medal replaced the General Service Medal in 2000 and has been handed out for service in Iraq, Sierra Leone and the Congo.

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The Ministry of Defence has been accused of “gambling with soldiers’ lives” by reducing the money it spends on developing surveillance systems that can detect roadside bombs in Afghanistan.

The cut is part of a significant reduction in the MoD’s research budget.

Next year, the MoD budget for developing new weapons and technology will effectively be cut by almost a quarter, leading to many planned projects being scrapped.

The MoD had originally allocated £544 million to its science innovation and technology budget for 2010/11. Cuts mean that the research budget will be only £439 million.

The MoD has now admitted that among the research being cut is work on “C4ISTAR” systems.

C4ISTAR refers to Command, Control, Communications, Computers – Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, a network of planes and unmanned drones that collect images and listen in on enemy forces, information that is fed back to battlefield commanders.

ISTAR can be used to counter the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that have killed dozens of British personnel and wounded hundreds more. Some estimates suggest around 80 per cent of British casualties in Afghanistan have come from IEDs.

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In the bitter aftermath of the Iraq invasion, Tony Blair was many times accused of sending British troops to war on a deceit.

Today’s leaked documents shed no new light on the most oft-rehearsed of those charges – that he lied about, or exaggerated, the threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. But they will make uncomfortable reading for the former prime minister in the light of some of his other claims.

In President George W Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union address, fresh from what then looked like a victory in Afghanistan, he ratcheted up the rhetoric against Saddam Hussein. He named Iraq as one of three states in an “axis of evil”, promising: “I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer.”

It was seen, correctly, as a statement of intent. The American people backed a war on Iraq. But in sceptical Britain, the idea threatened to cause problems for President Bush’s closest foreign ally.

Throughout most of 2002, Mr Blair’s consistent line was that – though military action could not be ruled out – no decisions had been made, no British military preparations were in train, and any action had to be pursued through the UN. That, today’s documents make clear, was not correct.

On July 16, 2002, he was questioned by the chairmen of all the Commons select committees. Donald Anderson, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee, asked him directly: “Are we then preparing for possible military action in Iraq?” “No,” said Mr Blair. “There are no decisions which have been taken about military action.”

GORDON Brown promised to study Ministry of Defence bonus payments yesterday after it was revealed the department’s civil servants had pocketed almost £50 million this year.

There was anger from troops’ families after the disclosure that bonuses for bureaucrats had reached £287,809,049 since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

They were described as an insult to soldiers fighting – and losing their lives – on the frontline in Afghanistan amid claims over equipment shortages.

But union leaders and ministers defended the bill, pointing out that many of the recipients were not highly paid.

The Prime Minister said: “If there are any questions over the bonuses, I will examine them.”

But he added: “I’ve got to say that some of the people who have received help have been working out in the field, and people that have been supporting people out there.

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Senior Foreign Office officials have claimed more than £90,000 in taxpayer-funded expenses in just three months.

Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent secretary, claimed almost £20,000 including more than £11,000 on a chaffeur-driven car while Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, submitted claims for more than £25,000.

The Foreign Office expense bills have been released for the first time in the wake of the MPs expenses scandals. The large sums being claimed by senior officials are likely to increase concern over the use of taxpayer-funded expenses by public sector.

The highest spender, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles spent £25,505 in three months from April to June this year. His expenses included visits to Washington DC, Tokyo and New Delhi.

The officials routinely fly business-class on journeys taking more than three hours despite it becoming increasingly rare in the private sector.

They also spent large amounts on government cars and taxis. Sir Peter Ricketts, the Permanent Under Secretary, spent £11,500 in three months, while Mark Lyall Grant, who recently became Britain’s Permanent Representative to the UN claimed for £6,028.

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More than 20,000 former servicemen are in prison or on probation or parole, double the total British personnel in Afghanistan, according to a new survey.

The study by Napo, the probation officer’s union, found that an estimated 8,500 veterans are in prison, almost one in 10 of the prison population, which is a rise of more than 30 per cent in the last five years.

It found that of 90 probation case histories of former servicemen, the majority had a chronic alcohol or drug problem, while nearly half suffered from post-traumatic stress or depression.

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The British Army has been forced to cut the number of new soldiers it recruits to save money, an official document shows.

The cuts in manpower are part of a £97 million package of spending reductions forced on the Army this year. Training for Territorial Army soldiers and the renovation of soldiers’ housing have also been cut to save money.

The reductions in training and recruiting have raised concerns about the impact on the Army’s future capabilities.

The squeeze on the Army’s budget has emerged in the same week that Gordon Brown announced he will send another 500 British troops to Afghanistan.

Ministers have insisted that the Armed Forces are properly funded, but an Army document drawn up this week shows that Army recruitment has been cut by 500 from January to relieve “pressure” on the manpower budget.

The MoD paper, dated October 13, is titled “ABN 57/09 In Year Savings Measures”. It outlines cuts drawn up by General Sir David Richards, the Chief of the General Staff and approved by Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary.

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While Afghan fighters naturally defend, the British “government” attacks…its own. Just who is the REAL enemy of the British Army?

Gordon Brown has been accused of trying to cover up a fall in defence spending under Labour despite the increasing demands placed on the Armed Forces.

The Prime Minister insists that the amount of money given to the Ministry of Defence has risen by more than 10 per cent over the past decade.

But military experts point out that the quickly rising price of sophisticated weaponry and transport means that “defence inflation” is higher than the general rate of increase.

Service personnel and their families are forced to stay in squalid accommodation while MPs have used their expenses to live in style.

As The Daily Telegraph disclosed, politicians have exploited the second homes allowance to refurbish houses at the taxpayer’s expense, buy designer furniture and pay off mortgages.

Many “flipped” the designation of their second homes from their Westminster flats to their constituency bases, allowing them to do up both for nothing. Others have rented or sold their properties at a profit after using public money to refurbish them.

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The Territorial Army has been told to stop training for six months to save £20m amid intense pressure on Government budgets.

Drill-hall instruction, weekend exercises and all other training associated with the TA are set to stop temporarily.

The move is likely to raise fears that operations in Afghanistan will be hit, as hundreds of ”weekend warriors” serve in the troubled country.

However, the Ministry of Defence insisted there would be no impact, because TA soldiers train with their regular army counterparts before deployment to Helmand province.

The size of the TA has fallen rapidly since Labour came to power, from more than 57,000 to a trained strength of around 19,000.

In 2003, 9,500 reservists, the majority from the TA, were mobilised to take part in Operation Telic, the campaign in Iraq. About 1,200 members of the TA continue to be deployed annually on tours of duty.

An MoD spokesman said: ”These are challenging times and like all Government departments, we have to live within our means.

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Yet the Foreign Office has given £12 million to Third World farmers, £3 million to Indonesia and £2 million to 150,000 Yemeni refugees. Clearly, the lives of British soldiers are not worth as much as farmers in the Third World, according to the Government.

ABOVE: the inevitable outcome of CHRONIC UNDERFUNDING in political adventures enforced by criminals, degenerates, thieves, war-criminals, liars…. in government.

WHY IS THE BRITISH ARMY SUPPORTING POLITICIANS WHO ARE EVIDENTLY GUILTY OF TREATING THE ARMED FORCES WITH UTTER CONTEMPT?  THAT IS NOT WHAT SOLDIERS  SIGNED UP FOR.

The pay and perks enjoyed by MPs throw into sharp relief the austerity of a life in the Armed Forces.

MPs’ starting salaries are four times that of soldiers. While new members are paid £64,766 a year, the lowest paid private in the Army must make do on £16,680.

Unlike their American counterparts, troops fighting in Afghanistan must pay income tax on their earnings.

They must also pay tax on a £15,000 loyalty bonus given to those who sign up for another five years after four years’ service. They also pay thousands of pounds a year in rent while living in Armed Forces accommodation.

By contrast, last year MPs were entitled to claim £24,006 in second home allowances tax-free.

Until recent changes to the system, MPs could spend £400 per month of this allowance on food, including a range of subsidised meals and drinks around Westminster.

Soldiers on the front line are given a ration pack containing freeze-dried curries, biscuits and other basic fare.

A parliamentary answer in 2007 disclosed that the daily food budget per British soldier in Iraq was just £2.49.

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ABOVE: F.A.O. British Army: Know your enemy

Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, has been accused of wasting £6 million on a research project that failed to evaluate anything.

Mr Ainsworth agreed to the £6 million evaluation of a drugs prevention programme in schools when he was a Home Office minister in 2002. There were claims last night he had been warned that the report may be unable to draw “any conclusions”.

The Home Office was piloting a new system of drugs education based on an American model called Star where parents, local media and other agencies would work in secondary schools in England.

Before the scheme began however, the Home Office had been warned that the effectiveness of the project “is not supported by published evidence” while the effects were “much more modest than those claimed”.

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While he wastes £6 million, soldiers, your comrades are dying in illegal wars due to underfunding and substandard equipment. Some “Defence Secretary”. Time to act? Would it not be better to replace him with a Major, or at least someone who had experience and inside knowledge of the British Army?

Ever since the invasion of Iraq the Ministry of Defence has faced accusations that it has failed to properly equip British troops on the front line.

A shortage of body armour became evident within days of troops entering Iraq in 2003. Sgt Steven Roberts died in March that year after the lack of protective vests prompted him to lend his to a colleague.

The complaints about equipment range from the quality of sunglasses to a lack of helicopters and safe vehicles on the ground. Soldiers said that even their boots were melting in the desert heat.

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Timeline shows MPs’ actions on expenses and inaction on troop equipment.

March 1 2003 War in Iraq starts.

March 2003 Tony Blair claims £6,500 for a new kitchen at his constituency home in Trimdon Colliery, Co Durham.

Sept 2 2004 Cpl Marc Taylor, 27, and Gunner David Lawrence, 25, killed in an ambush on a Snatch Land Rover.

Sept 2004 Hazel Blears checks into a boutique hotel while moving between two flats, both refurbished at taxpayers expense.

Jan 3 2005 RAF Hercules shot down over Iraq with nine RAF servicemen and a soldier on board. An inquest ruled that the men died because of “serious systemic failure”.

Sept 4 2005 David Miliband claims £9,015 for a John Lewis kitchen.

Sept 2005 Maj Matthew Bacon killed by a bomb while travelling in a lightly armoured Snatch Land Rover. He should have been travelling in a helicopter, but it had developed a fault.

Feb 5 2006 Shahid Malik’s £33 claim for two Remembrance Sunday wreaths is rejected.

Feb 2006 Pte Lee Ellis, 23, and Capt Richard Holmes, 28 killed by a roadside bomb in Amara, southern Iraq

Aug 6 2006 Bob Ainsworth, Secretary of State for Defence, claims £2,225 for a “Roma” corner sofa.

Aug 2006 – L/Cpl Sean Tansey, 26, is crushed to death while servicing a 12-ton Spartan armoured vehicle in Afghanistan, when its supports collapsed. Two wooden planks under the vehicle would have saved his life.

March 7 2007 Sir Peter Viggers writes to the fees office, submitting a claim of £18,522.59 including £1,645 for a “duck house”.

March 2007 Lance Bombardiers Liam McLaughlin and Ross Clark killed by a grenade. They were wearing the wrong sort of body armour.

June 2006 Labour MP Gerald Kaufman tries to claim £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.

Aug 2007 L/Cpl Kirk Redpath dies in a Snatch Land Rover near Basra in Iraq. His father, Colin Redpath said: “The soldiers were angry they hadn’t been given a Mastiff. It was an open invitation to be blown up. Kirk must have been terrified.”

April 10 2008 Margaret Moran claims £22,500 to repair dry rot at her partner’s house in Southampton.

April 2008 Trooper Robert Pearson, 22, of the Queen’s Royal Lancers killed when his armoured Viking vehicle drove over a roadside bomb.

June 2008 – Cpl Sarah Bryant, Cpl Sean Robert Reeve, L/Cpl Richard Larkin and Paul Stout from the SAS all killed in a Snatch Land Rover, trying to retrieve the body of Taliban fighter in Helmand, Afghanistan

May 7 2009 The Telegraph begins publishing a series of stories on expenses.

May 22 2009 Nadine Dorries says the publication of the expenses by The Telegraph is traumatic for MPs. “The last day in Parliament this week was, I would say, completely unbearable,” said Mrs Dorries. “This has got to a point now which is almost unbearable for any human being to deal with.”

May 22 2009 Fusilier Suesue Petero, of the 2nd Bn Fusiliers shot while on foot patrol in Helmand.

Major-General Andrew MacKay claims that he was asked whether he could delay an attack on a Taliban stronghold until after Gordon Brown had visited the country.

Gen Mackay, who is believed to have resigned over the Government’s handling of the Afghan war, said before he quit that Britain’s contribution to the war was being undermined by a “tragic failure of leadership”.

In interviews with the British Army Review and the book, Operation Snakebite, before he resigned, the 52-year-old said there was a “growing realisation that what we had taken on was in excess of what we had anticipated”.

“Wait until we’re out of the way, then butcher the innocents” -NEW LABOUR.

A total of 14,000 British soldiers have claimed compensation for injuries in just four years, new figures have shown.

The claims have been made since the Government’s Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) was founded in 2005.

The figure would be far higher if it included injuries suffered since operations began in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

Among the 14,000 are 279 who have been forced to appeal the level of their awards and are now involved in legal battles with the Ministry of Defence.

The soldiers who are appealing include some who have lost limbs or been paralysed.

One of them is Marine Ben McBean, 22, who lost an arm and a leg and suffered extensive burns in Afghanistan. The 22 year-old, who served with 40 Commando Royal Marines, was described as a “real hero” by Prince Harry.

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GORDON Brown has been urged by a grieving family to “stand up to the mark” to protect Our Boys in Afghanistan.

Relatives of Taliban blast victim Paul McAleese blame the PM for his death – and for leaving British soldiers horrendously exposed to enemy bombers.

In a devastating letter sent to Downing Street, they revealed how Rifles serjeant Paul told them – just before he and a colleague died – that he and his comrades were sitting ducks.

It said: “I believe they were not killed by the Taliban or the insurgents: they were killed by whoever sent them out there knowing that they did not have the equipment necessary to do it with any degree of safety.”

Paul – killed by a bomb while trying to reach a soldier hit by an earlier blast – blamed a chronic shortage of manpower, surveillance kit, vehicles and helicopters.

And the 29-year-old told how the situation was so dire that British troops were powerless to stop enemy fighters planting deadly devices just YARDS away from the gates of their base.

The letter to No10 was penned by new dad Paul’s furious father-in-law Stephen Minter with the support of the soldier’s widow Jo, mum Kim and sister Hayley.

Read on and to view the letter

The family of Serjeant Paul McAleese blame the Prime Minister for his death. His father John McAleese, a former SAS member who was involved in the dramatic raid that ended the 1980 siege on the Iranian Embassy said his son had said there were not enough troops to monitor areas cleared of explosives. “Top brass have repeatedly told Gordon Brown what they need, but he won’t listen,” he said, “The military must be allowed to get on with the job. If not, Brown should sack himself now.”

Sjt McAleese’s father-in-law, Stephen Minter, wrote to the Prime Minister earlier this month to say that the family was “extremely angry” because his death was “needless and avoidable” and the PM had a duty to ensure that troops had the best equipment available and that the operational tactics were “sound and sensible”…”Failing to ensure this will be seen as an act of neglect and should not be allowed to go unanswered”.

Thanks again to Guido Fawkes for this article

A charity which helps wounded soldiers has been dragged into an alleged smear campaign against the outgoing head of the British army, General Sir Richard Dannatt.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted to the Ministry of Defence, and uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, asks for publication of any correspondence between Gen Dannatt and Hadyn Parry, the chairman of the Help for Heroes charity.

It comes after Labour MPs and ministers were accused of using FOI laws to make trouble for Sir Richard by unearthing his expenses claims, after he publicly criticised the lack of resources given by the Government to the troops in Afghanistan.

Whilst the MoD would not disclose who was behind the Help for Heroes FOI request, which was submitted in June, Conservative MPs claimed it looked like fresh evidence of a smear campaign.

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said: “There is no target that Brown’s bullyboys will not pick upon to protect themselves or divert attention from their catastrophic management of the military. New Labour is now the most corrosive and corrupting influence in British politics.”

Whoever submitted the FOI request could have been seeking to find out whether Gen Dannatt had claimed expenses from Help the Heroes following his unpaid work on the charity’s behalf.

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ABOVE: this is how many see (what could rightly be perceived as private armies of the rich and powerful) Western armies and paramilitary police forces like GENDFOR.

British soldiers’ lives have been lost for an Afghan election that shows signs of corruption and fraud, the Conservatives have said.

Intensifying the Opposition’s criticism of the Afghan elections, William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said British troops“have paid a price in blood” for a political process that falls far short of proper democracy.

President Hamid Karzai is on course to be re-elected in Afghanistan after an election that international monitors have said was marked by significant ballot-rigging.

Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission, which monitored the polling process, on Thursday said that the results from 83 polling stations should be scrapped because of “clear and convincing evidence of fraud”.

Fifty-one of the cancelled results were in southern Kandahar province, Mr Karzai’s home district and electoral stronghold.

Despite growing doubts about the Afghan election, Western governments including Britain’s have kept largely silent, rejecting calls for a rerun of the voting.

Downing Street has said it would be “premature” to talk about a repeat of the voting, but the Tories have said new elections may be necessary.

The growing difference between the main parties on the elections is raising doubts about the wider cross-party consensus in support of the strategy of deploying British troops in order to bring democracy and stability to Afghanistan.

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Bob Ainsworth has said that voters do not want higher defence spending and some are calling for cuts.

The recent storm of protest against the “intrusive” nature of the ISA – which critics claim will discourage people from volunteering – could have been avoided if MPs had passed a better law, he said.

“I’m surprised that some of the concerns are now being expressed were not raised by the legislators at the time,” he said on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.

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Almost half the country believes the war in Afghanistan is doing nothing to reduce the threat of terrorism on Britain’s streets, according to a poll.

On the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, 49 per cent of people interviewed in a Populus survey for ITV News said military operations in Afghanistan were not reducing the terror threat in the UK.

A further 27 per cent said the war was reducing the threat of terrorism but did not justify the loss of UK service personnel, with just 17 per cent saying that Britain’s continuing military presence in the country makes a terrorist attack less likely and goes some way to justifying British military deaths.

The poll suggests a growing lack of support for the war in Afghanistan following a bloody summer which has seen the British military death toll since the start of operations in October 2001 rise to 213.

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