Army chief speaks out, again.

Following yesterday's Daily Mail interview in which General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, spoke out against aspects of the army's involvement in Iraq, the Ministry of Defence pen-wallahs and their political masters have obviously been leaning on him, if not to recant, at least to tone down his remarks. Sir Richard has issued another statement,

"We have been in Southern Iraq for three and a half years and we have made significant progress, with two of the four provinces now handed over to Iraqi control and our responsibilities are much reduced in one other province. The point that I'm trying to make is the mere fact that we are still in some places exacerbates violence from those who want to destabilise Iraqi democracy.

"Currently Operation Sinbad is trying to make Basra better and a lot of British soldiers are doing a really good job. In that regard, their presence is helping but there are other parts where our mere presence does exacerbate and violence results.

"But that is not a reason for us to leave. I am on record publicly saying we're standing shoulder to shoulder with the Americans. I am on the record from a speech three weeks ago saying that I'm planning force packages in Iraq through 2007 in to 2008. I'm a soldier - we don't do surrender, we don't pull down white flags. We will remain in southern Iraq until the job is done – we're going to see this through."

Same point, different language.

Tags: Dannatt