The head of the British Army during the invasion of Iraq has condemned America’s postwar policy in the country as “intellectually bankrupt” and “very short-sighted”.

In an unprecedented attack, General Sir Mike Jackson, former Chief of the General Staff, said that insufficient troops were deployed to control the country after Saddam Hussein’s downfall, and he criticised the decision to disband the Iraqi Army and security forces.

Sir Mike blamed Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary, for much of the fiasco and said that his claims that American forces “don’t do nation-building” were “nonsensical”.

He criticised the Bush Administration for handing control of postwar Iraq to the Pentagon, and claimed that Mr Rumsfeld discarded detailed plans for post-conflict administration that had been drawn up by the State Department. “All the planning went to waste,” he said. Mr Rumsfeld, who he labelled “intellectually bankrupt”, was “one of the most responsible for the current situation in Iraq”.

Iraq timeline: five years of conflict

From accusations that the weapons of mass destruction dossier had been sexed-up to withdrawal of British troops from Basra

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Sir Mike added that Washington relied too much on military power rather than nation-building and diplomacy in fighting global terrorism.

His outspoken attack, made in his forthcoming autobiography Soldier and reported in The Daily Telegraph, highlights the tension between British commanders and the Pentagon in the run-up to war and its aftermath in 2003. It is likely further to inflame tensions between Britain and the US over the war.

Mr Rumsfeld played a crucial role in creating the current situation in Iraq, Sir Mike claimed, by refusing to deploy enough troops to maintain law and order after the fall of Saddam. A combined force of 400,000 would be needed to control a country of that size, but even with the recent US “surge”, the coalition has barely half that number.

He wrote that he and other senior British officers were opposed to the Pentagon’s policy of disbanding the Iraqi Army: “We should have kept the security services in being and put them under the control of the coalition.”

Yesterday Sir Mike defended the record of British troops in Basra against recent claims made by American officials that they had failed. “I don’t think that’s the case at all,” he said. “What has happened . . . was that primary responsiblity for security would be handed to the Iraqis once the Iraqi authorities and the coalition were satisfied that the state of their training and development was appropriate. In the south we had responsibility for four provinces. Three of these have been handed over in accordance with that strategy. It remains just in Basra for that to happen.”

Two British Cabinet ministers also spoke out yesterday to defend Britain’s military record in Iraq. Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, rejected accusations made in the US that the British had failed in Basra and that the Government planned to withdraw troops prematurely. Writing in The Washington Post after an unnamed American intelligence official claimed that Britain had failed to stabilise the city, the two ministers said that the criticism was misplaced.

In Soldier, Sir Mike also writes that he and other high-ranking officers were concerned about the dossier on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction published by the Government in the run-up to war. Referring to the claim that Saddam could launch an attack within 45 minutes, he said: “We all knew that it was impossible for Iraq to threaten the UK mainland. Saddam’s Scud missles could barely have reached our bases on Cyprus.”

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