Five more years in Iraq

A confidential planning document drawn up by defence chiefs called the Operational Tour Plot, parts of which have been disclosed to this newspaper, reveals that troops will be serving on operations in the Gulf until at least 2012. News of the future operations can be revealed just three days after four soldiers, two of them women, were killed in a carefully planned ambush in Basra, taking the British forces death toll in Iraq to 140.

Almost 100,000 of the 180,000 members of the country's armed services have now served in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

The number lies:

If 100,000 have served in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 and (we know) a soldier serves an average of at least one year, we should then adjust the number of British troops serving in Iraq at any time to be of at least 25, 000 soldiers instead of the official lie of 7,200.