Two former commanders of the British armed forces have described evidence to the Iraq inquiry given by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as 'disingenuous'.
The comments came as Mr Brown paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan today.
The Prime Minister flew to Afghanistan immediately after giving evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war at which he was challenged over the failings of the Snatch Land Rover and denied claims that he starved the military of funds as Chancellor.
In a swift tour, Mr Brown met and thanked some of the 4,000 British forces who took part in last month's assault on insurgent strongholds in southern Helmand Province in the opening phase of Operation Moshtarak.
Meanwhile, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Guthrie, and his successor, Lord Boyce, challenged Mr Brown's assertion that no request for military equipment was turned down.
The former head of the British army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, said that what Mr Brown said was technically true, but it was a narrow point and referred to an operation fought in Afghanistan last year.
General Dannatt, who is now an advisor to the Conservative Party, told the BBC: 'What the Prime Minister yesterday said about funding narrowly and precisely was correct, in so far as under Government rules agreed between the Treasury and Ministry of Defence the additional cost of operations has to be funded from the UOR (Urgent Operational Requirements) process.
'That was done, and indeed it would have been an outrage if it hadn't been done.
'What Gordon Brown didn't address yesterday and what Lords Boyce and Guthrie are getting at was the underlying underfunding that goes right back to the outcome of the defence review in 1997-98, when the Treasury didn't fully fund the outcome. It has gone on since then.
'Defence inflation runs higher than normal inflation so when additional money has gone to defence over the years, the spending power of that money has reduced.
'In 2003, the Treasury reopened an agreement on funding it had with the Ministry of Defence and effectively cut £1bn out of our budget year on year.'
