Afghanistan highlights the two faces of Gordon Brown

Do you know what two things I dislike most about Gordon Brown? His face. The man isn't just incapable of telling the truth or giving a straight answer to a question. He's also unable to maintain a consistent position when he speaks to different audiences.

On Friday it was widely reported that Brown said Britain's military will stay in Afghanistan until the country's own security forces can fight the Taliban and al Qaeda without assistance, dismissing as the Wall Street Journal put it, a call from one of his government's defence aides to begin planning a pullout from the country. Yet from today's Independent on Sunday we learn that:

Gordon Brown has put the United States on notice that he wants to cut UK troop numbers from more than 9,000 to fewer than 5,000 in "three to five years, maximum", according to senior sources at the Ministry of Defence.

Our forces in Afghanistan are already overstretched and the training of Afghan security forces is not delivering the required results, but Brown's answer is to reduce the size of the UK force by nearly half. It's the clearest signal that the UK, having been effectively defeated in southern Iraq, is preparing to pull out from Afghanistan too.

Under Labour the size and capability of our armed forces has been slashed. Despite that our military has been sent all over the world to do much more in terms of operations with far less in terms of men and equipment. It's an insult for Brown to tell the British people that we're in Afghanistan until the job, whatever that might be, is done and at the same time tell the Americans we're going to run away again like we did in Iraq.

A Labour government put our men and women in harm's way without a clear mission and the Ministry of Defence failed them by buying unsuitable equipment for the task at hand resulting in deaths that were avoidable. The nation should be in a raging fury at the unnecessary deaths of too many of our soldiers, the incompetence of the MoD, and lack of leadership and weasel words we have witnessed from the government. It is a disgrace and a humiliation.