Shadowplay

My Tigers are true soldiers who have never killed a civilian and never raped a woman. When I am with them in the field if they so much as steal a piece of bread I punish them. They are warriors and I am a warrior and warriors do not do such things. He said this with such sincerity that for a second I would almost forget about the volumes of evidence to the contrary.

Tell Slobo not to worry about The Hague War Crime indictment. We’ll make sure that they don’t come after him. He can even keep some of the money, but he has to understand that it’s over.

‘Bomb Kragujevac’ comes the order. ‘Where?’ Says the pilot. ‘Kragu…ah, forget it,’ says the controller, ‘just bomb Nis’.

I politely reminded him that this was forbidden under the Geneva Convention. He, less politely, reminded me that bombing factories, hospitals, apartment blocks and electricity supplies was also forbidden, then reminded me that NATO had broken its own constitution by attacking a sovereign state which was not threatening a NATO member.

Turning a radar on for more than 3 seconds risked the radar installation being blown up by NATO missiles.

That sort of work is done on a regular basis, even if the country isn’t in the news. It’s passed upstairs, because remember, just because the country isn’t in the news now, doesn’t mean it won’t be in a few years’ time. And we don’t want to start from scratch. The MOD has computer files of scenarios where Britain goes to war against a variety of countries.

‘Diplospeak’ - it’s what diplomats from most countries use when they write memos which might one day be made public, or if they are speaking to the media. They write or say things like ‘The Foreign Office does not, at this time, feel that Her Majesty’s Government needs to commit more resources to the region.’