Falkirk MP Eric Joyce, a former army officer, has resigned as parliamentary aide to Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, questioning the government's strategy in Afghanistan. In his resignation letter - published below - he questioned Gordon Brown's arguments for keeping British troops in the strife-torn nation:
Finished With The War: A Soldier's Declaration
"I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of other soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
"I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
"On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise.
"Lt. Siegfried Sassoon, 3rd Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, July 1917."
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said that a place was being prepared in a mental institution for Mr Joyce, who was clearly suffering from Pre-Election Stress Disorder.
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