Once again, our unloved, unelected leader manages to wriggle out of pending trouble. Covering his pale flabby arse, as ever, takes priority over everything else.

This time around, he and his spin doctors have managed to twist a few arms, make a few threats, call in a few favours, and ensure that poor, innocent Gordon won't have to answer any questions about Iraq until after the general election.

At which time, of course, he'll be a teacher, or a nun, or in a fucking asylum, and therefore under no obligation to even pretend to answer any question honestly. Honestly, why fucking bother?

Fraser Nelson over at the Spectator Coffee House is well aware of this, and has suggested a few little questions that should be put to Brown right fucking now, before he gets clean away.

You should read the full, unedited list, but some of CF's favourites (with his own extra emphases) that he'd just love to hear Brown try to mumble his way through include:

• During the 2007 Tory Party conference you went to Iraq and said that 500 troops would be home by Christmas. This decision stunned the Ministry of Defence, and turned out to have been – how can we put this, Prime Minister – untrue. Can you explain why you made this claim, and why you decided not to clear it with the MoD?

• In Jan.'08 you also told the House of Commons that violence in Basra has “gone down by 90 per cent over the past few months”. Can you give a source for this figure? Or was it in fact concocted, to conceal from parliament and the public the scale of the butchery that you were knowingly leaving behind?  Given activity of the death squads then – so bad that the Iraqi army had to reinvade the city a year later – how could this have been true?

• Can you explain the process by which troops make requests for extra resources? Is it the case that the military is instructed never to make a formal request that they know will be turned down, so the Prime Minister can mislead the public by saying he has accepted every resource request being made?

• Did you raid the military accommodation refurbishment budget when the war started, rather then fund the war with fresh money required? Do you think it right to leave the families of servicemen to the type of squalor?

• Until he resigned, Tony Blair would have weekly videoconference dicussions with George W Bush due to the seriousness of our joint involvement in Iraq. How many such discussions did you have?
  

• What does the appointment of a low-ranking figure like Bob Ainsworth as Defence Secretary say about your opinion of the military?

So, come on MacCavity, let's be having you. Show some of that 'courage' you like to talk about.

Let's hear some answers, eh? Why not give us the truth, for the first time?

Yeah, right.

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What did the nation do, what did the poor bloody Army, Navy and Air Force do to deserve Bob bloody Ainsworth as Defence Secretary?

Seldom can any Cabinet post been held by a man of such astonishing ineptitude. And to make it worse, the hand that is firmly wedged up his arse, working him like the hopeless puppet that he is, belongs to our woeful and unelected Prime Minister. A fuckwit directing another fuckwit.

This has long been a disastrous situation, but yesterday the Fuck Up dial was twisted so violently to 'Full on' that it snapped off.

The Brown-Ainsworth axis has absolutely fucking  excelled itself this time.

Everyone's been saying we urgently need more helicopters in Afghanistan? Fine, say Bob 'n' Broon, you shall have them. 22 of them. Nice, eh?

But, they add, lowering their voices and looking shifty, we're .. err ... going to have to make massive cuts - well, actually, more massive cuts - in .. err ... just about every other area to pay for 'em.

And why exactly do we need to cut just about everything else to fund this political showboating? As Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, pointed out

“The new Chinook helicopters are of course welcome, but this decision would not have been necessary if the Prime Minister had not, against all advice, cut £1.4bn from the helicopter programme in 2004.”

But of course he did, Liam. He couldn't give a toss about the Forces. Didn't when he was Chancellor, still doesn't now.

Broon may well have gone on a lovely sleepover with them a few days ago, and tried on some of their hats, and he may well have bullied Ainsworth into providing these choppers, but that’s not because he gives a shit. Oh no.

That's because he's got a General Election coming up. Because he wants to give CallMeDave Cameron a hard time in every way possible.

So he makes Bobby sprinkle the promise of a few helicopters, just in time for Christmas. But what's the other hand doing? Why, cuts of course: an air base closed, an entire Harrier squadron scrapped, a reduction of 2,500 in the number of military personnel. And more; much, much more.

Do you remember Badger Darling saying last week that he was going to ring fence spending on schools, hospitals and the police? Yes, he did. But not Defence. Defence wasn't mentioned. And, lo and fucking behold, a few days later, the cuts begin.

So, yet a-fucking-gain, we see this woeful, dying Government breaking new ground. Doing something that has never been done before. Just - as usual - not in a good way.

As the Daily Telegraph points out this morning

"..this is first time in modern history that the Government has raided the budget of the Ministry of Defence to fund a continuing military operation"

Air Chief Marshal Lord Craig, former chief of the defence staff, is not impressed:

 “By cutting the fast jets again, the Government is reducing our ability to establish air superiority .. It doesn't matter how many helicopters you have if the other side is able shoot them down freely.”

“Does the Government think we're never again going to come up against an enemy with air power?"

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Defence Secretary himself, thinks

“.. It is deeply dangerous, never happened in the past and has the most ominous implications for the integrity of our armed forces.

Andrew Brookes, a former RAF commander doesn't think much of the Broon 'n' Bob idea either:

“If you cut back the premier league capability of the UK forces in order to just win a counter insurgency campaign against the Taliban, which has no air force and has no tanks and has no warships, when you finally do pitch up against a state that has those capabilities you could seriously end up losing a conflict"

So Bob, very well done. Your place in history is assured. You've fucked everything up.

But the best bit, the biggest piss take, the most audacious trick-we're-not-supposed-to-spot is that - oh, by the way guys - these fucking helicopters won't actually be ready until "at least" 2012. What?

Assuming the usual ineptitude, the standard levels of fuckups, the 'normal' delays, the helicopters won't actually be in service until 2013.

And guess what? According to Gordo', the poor sods who haven't already come home in a wooden box will be coming home then anyway.

Dear God.

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