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THE BRITISH military, it appears, believes in the strategic doctrine of getting retaliation in first. In PR as in war. The leaking to the Sunday Telegraph, presumably by senior army sources, of hundreds of pages of secret “lessons-learnt” analysis and testimony of officers on their Iraq experience was a warning shot across the bows of a public inquiry into the war which is led by Sir John Chilcot and opens today.

The army’s message was clear: the inquiry should focus primarily on politics, the political leaders and their deficiencies. The ill-equipped soldiers on the front line were let down by political obfuscation on the purpose of the war, delayed, and poor or non-existent planning for both the invasion in March 2003 and its aftermath, and by shortages of key equipment.