British Prime Minister Tony Blair's military policies were attacked on two fronts on Sunday as a leaked memo linked them with terrorism at home and his favourite general called the Afghanistan war "cuckoo."
Leaked cabinet documents published in The Sunday Telegraph apparently acknowledge that Britain's troop deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan countries have fuelled terrorism in Britain.
Presented to a cabinet committee on security earlier this month and circulated among ministers and security chiefs, the papers say that actions overseas must in future be designed to reduce the threat of terrorism.
Their contents undermine Blair's denials that Britain's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan trigger terrorist attacks against Britain.
The documents say that, in an ideal world, "the Muslim would not perceive the UK and its foreign policies as hostile".
They demand a "significant reduction in the number and intensity of the regional conflicts that fuel terror activity".
The papers then set out a list of perfect scenarios in a series of trouble spots 10 years from now.
They call for stability for Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel living in "peaceful coexistence" with its Arab neighbours and Iran devoid of nuclear weapons.
They also say that there should be "no new failed states, dictatorships or wars" in the Middle East and South Asia.
"If all or most of the above were in place, threats from other sources of Islamic terrorism (e.g Indonesia, Philippines, Nigeria) would be manageable or on the way to resolution," they conclude.
"Any remaining deployments of the British armed forces should be seen as contributing to international stability and security."
Actions should be designed to reduce terrorism, "especially that in or directed against the UK".
Blair's office declined to comment on the leaked documents, but said: "We recognise that people have used Iraq as an excuse for terrorist activity but clearly plenty of terrorist activity against the UK and its citizens has pre-dated that.
In an interview in The Observer weekly, meanwhile, General the Lord Charles Guthrie, a former chief of the defence staff, described the deployment of soldiers in Afghanistan as "cuckoo."
Guthrie also cast doubt on Blair's claim that he would produce all the extra resources the army needed.
"Anyone who thought this was going to be a picnic in Afghanistan -- anyone who had read any history, anyone who knew the Afghans, or had seen the terrain, anyone who had thought about the Taliban resurgence, anyone who understood what was going on across the border in Balochistan and Waziristan -- to launch the British army in with the numbers there are, while we're still going in Iraq, is cuckoo," he told The Observer.
Lord Guthrie was one of Blair's most trusted commanders before he quit in 2001.
But he suggested that Blair's good intentions would be difficult to fulfil.
"He is not dishonest," Guthrie said. "But there is no way you can magic up trained Royal Air Force crews, or trained soldiers, quickly.
"You can't magic up helicopters, because there aren't any helicopters."
Guthrie's comments follow those of General Sir Richard Dannatt, the chief of the General Staff, who called this month for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq "sometime soon" because they were contributing to Britain's security problems. Dannatt later toned down his remarks.