Once upon a time, a concerted attack on a Labour Prime Minister by superannuated generals and admirals would have been readily understood. Harold Wilson would probably have called it a conspiracy. His less excitable colleagues would have responded with the weary fatalism sane folk bring to the letters page of the Daily Telegraph.

Old politics. Left and right, establishment and upstarts, one definition of patriotism versus another, one notion of democracy and obligation versus a second. Above all, it would have been clear that a military elite's sense of ownership and entitlement was being ranged against bolshie - and no doubt suspect - elected politicians. In the 1960s and early 1970s, these contests were not uncommon.

Times have changed, but the idea that five former chiefs of the defence staff excoriating the government in the Lords are tribunes of the people is still a stretch. Regarding them as voices of the common soldiery also takes imagination. Believing that this fistful of bemedalled peers foresaw no problems with defence funding when they were in charge might well be beyond some people.

As combined ops go, though, the generals' coup (of the PR variety) was well-staged. The Prime Minister is a soft target, just at the moment. His Defence Secretary, Des Browne, is vulnerable to the charge that he cannot serve both the military and Scotland simultaneously. The departure of Lord Drayson from the post of Minister for Defence Equipment for a higher calling (fun) still sticks in a lot of throats. Above all, Tony Blair's legacy of two untenable high-intensity wars is perfect for the khaki lobby.

They have a point, in any case. At minimum, people expecting to face death are entitled to be well-fed, well-housed, well-led, well-paid and well-armed. If they are injured, physically or mentally, they are entitled to expect the best of care. If they are killed, their families are entitled to aid and respect and not, as Rose Gentle and others could testify, cynicism and lies. Yet even before Iraq and Afghanistan there were numerous examples of failures by successive governments to meet these criteria. Blair's wars, stretching the Army to its limits, have exposed old truths.

Some of those were true when the men who spoke in the Lords had command. Military housing did not become a slum estate overnight. The Army's medical services were not dismantled recently. Defence procurement, and the armed forces' internal ordering and accountancy procedures, did not become a shambles during the brief tenure of Lord Drayson. Competition between the service chiefs for multi-billion-pound trophy systems is not of recent origin. The government's accusers have form.

They are remarkably bitter, nevertheless, and their bitterness is remarkably personal. Lord Boyce, according to one report, "dripped contempt" on the Prime Minister. Lord Guthrie said Mr Brown was a Chancellor "unsympathetic" towards defence and only went near the MoD "to talk about the future of the Rosyth dockyard which was in his constituency". Other members of the ambush party picked the same target, saving a few rounds for "Two Jobs Des" Browne.

The accusation was straightforward. Brown the Chancellor, not Blair the war leader, failed to provide the funds to allow the forces to do the job. But these Lords did not say much - and why not? - about the job itself, or rather the jobs. Lord Boyce, meanwhile, pointed out that 57 Royal Navy ships have been disposed of since 1997, and that only eight have been ordered.

His lordship did not add that two of those vessels will be giant aircraft carriers, costing more than £4bn each, and that no-one, military or political, has explained why Britain needs these leviathans. Equally, Boyce did not examine the related questions of Trident, cost, need and defence funding. He might have explained why the Navy has not reduced the number of its admirals to match the number of its vessels (the former exceeds the latter), or why the defence staff entertain more lavishly than any other Whitehall department. An explanation of misconceived procurement projects, starting with the Eurofighter, would have helped.

Unfair? Possibly. It remains the case, nevertheless, that the rate of inflation as it applies to military spending always exceeds, as if by magic, the rate applying in the real world. Generals and admirals, particularly those who head the defence staff, have some relevance to that fact. The money doesn't spend itself. The politicians don't choose the designs for the dodgy rifles or the overpriced fighter aircraft.

They talk a different language. These days they fall over themselves, as the Prime Minister did yesterday, in their praise and admiration for the fighting man. As the bearer of final responsibility for war and peace, Mr Brown, doubtless sincere, could not do otherwise. Still, he knows a political battle when he sees one. Mr Browne, speaking on Radio Four's Today programme yesterday, was also circumspect, but he found time for a telling remark.

Britain, he said, has the world's second-highest defence budget, on a per capita basis, after the United States. How much more are we supposed to spend, and to what purpose? If the Lords Five believe we should get out of Iraq, or should never have been in Iraq, I wish they had mentioned it sooner. If they oppose the Afghanistan adventure they could say so now. They won't, though.

Like serving generals, who dislike unemployment, they do not quibble with a 30-year commitment to Afghanistan. Two wars are a bit excessive, they believe, but a stint on the north-west frontier is heritage warfare to these men. Their indignation over poor squaddies and defence funding is not, assuredly not, a critique of the armed forces' role and purpose. Taken to its conclusion, their logic says that we should spend more to fight more, and fight better, while taking better care of the casualities who were never an issue (and never well-served) on their watch.

It is not clear, in any case, how such an intervention in the Lords aids morale. The retired generals never tire of the subject, yet never admit that they, too, could be accused of spreading disillusionment. Nor do they concede a larger truth: retired they may be, but they are involving themselves in politics on behalf of serving officers. They are proxies and everyone knows it. An American habit - grumbles from the Pentagon reaching the airwaves thanks to old comrades - has spread to Britain, where once it was frowned upon. Something to do with democracy.

The elected government, meanwhile, promises "fast-track" NHS treatment in England and Wales (and presumably in Scotland) for veterans. Too little for many, too late for some. As we also report, their exhausted former colleagues, more than three in five of them, are meanwhile being denied adequate respite between tours of duty while the Army recruits but fails to retain troops. The Argylls are allowed only one-third of the "recommended time" away from the battlefield and become, by way of a rational response, the worst-manned battalion in the Royal Regiment.

The two facts are connected and bound up in the tragedy of two disastrous wars. Political crimes both. That does not render chiefs of the defence staff, past and present, dutiful innocents. Remember this: not one of those men ever resigned. They call that complicity.