Prince Harry will not go to Iraq, head of the army rules

After agonising over the decision for months, General Sir Richard Dannatt has finally decided that Prince Harry will not be going to Iraq.

I always thought the decision to send him was a dangerous one, as he would have been a special target and make things especially hazardous for any other soldiers in his unit.

Specific threats to the prince "expose not only him but also those around him to a degree of risk that I now deem unacceptable", the general said. He insisted that though his squadron was willing to share those risks, he was not prepared to "export those risks to the families".

The royal family and the government had always said the decision was up to Gen Dannatt.

"It's an operational decision taken by the military which we of course respect," Downing Street added.

Gen Dannatt referred in his prepared statement yesterday to a number of "specific threats - some reported and some not reported - which relate directly to Prince Harry as an individual".

The general continued: "I have to add that a contributing factor to this increase in threat to Prince Harry has been the widespread knowledge and discussion of his deployment. It is a fact that this close scrutiny has exacerbated the situation and this is something that I wish to avoid in future".

So, Dannat has managed to throw some of the blame for the situation towards the media, as if a young Prince being sent into a battlefield is not news, and he's attempted to take the heat off the underlying truth that the army simply couldn't guarantee Harry's safety in Iraq.

Prince Andrew served in the Falklands and, even though he was a high priority target for the Argentineans, the Navy managed to keep him relatively safe. It would appear that the situation in Iraq is of a different measure, and that the Army couldn't offer the same degree of protection for a royal as the Navy could in the South Atlantic.

All of which undermines the attempts by many in Downing Street to portray the situation in Iraq as an improving one. It is obviously not, as only a few months ago, Harry's unit was being sent there - with him amongst them - in a blaze of publicity. Indeed, only a few months ago it was argued that not to send him would be to hand a victory of sorts to the insurgents:

The MoD was also acutely aware that a decision not to let him go could be seen as a propaganda victory for those who promised to track down the prince, notably elements of the Mahdi army, the Shia militia loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

A commander in the Mahdi army told the Guardian last month that Prince Harry would be a prime kidnap target for insurgents in Iraq. "One of our aims is to capture Harry; we have people inside the British bases to inform us on when he will arrive," claimed Abu Mujtaba, who commands a unit of around 50 men active in the Mahdi army in Basra.

The kidnapping - or worse - of the prince by the militia, or any other insurgent group, would have provoked an unprecedented crisis for the government as well as the army and given insurgents in southern Iraq a big propaganda victory.

Gen Dannatt now regards those threats as credible, though at the time defence officials dismissed them as rhetoric and propaganda, and attacked the media for publishing them.

It would now appear that this victory for the insurgency has been deemed preferable to the alternative, which is the capture of the young prince by insurgents and the taunting of the British government with videos of the third in line to the throne being tortured and God knows what else. Understandable though the decision is, it is undoubtedly a victory of sorts for the insurgency, as the British Army are now stating that things are so bad in Iraq that they cannot guarantee the safety of a single soldier within that war zone.

The decision not to send him has, nevertheless, angered the relatives of other young men and women who are going to Iraq.

Reg Keys, whose son, Thomas, was killed in Basra in 2003, said he found the decision distasteful. "It would appear that Harry's life is more valuable than my son or the other nearly 150 service personnel who've given their lives."

Rose Gentle, whose son, Gordon, was killed in Iraq, said: "If it's too dangerous for Prince Harry, it's too dangerous for the rest of the boys. They should all come home". Mr Keys and Mrs Gentle are both members of Military Families Against the War.

Prince Harry had always threatened to resign from the Army if he was left "sitting on my arse" whilst the rest of his regiment went to war, however Clarence House now say that the prince "fully understands and accepts" the situation and remains committed to his army career.

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