As an ex-serviceman, firstly let me say that I personally believe the pictures printed in the Daily Mirror were fakes. I’m not condoning the behaviour if it happened, it’s just that those pictures are missing a certain something of authenticity. It’s easy to mess about with digital photography, and there are plenty of opportunities for bored squaddies or anyone else for that matter to mess about with images to produce pretty much what they want.

Having said that, I do believe there is always a loutish element to any organisation of blokes, and especially in the male-dominated, testosterone-fuelled confines of an organisation which is (or used to be!) trained to be "physical" on a lot of different levels. Mannish competition, especially in the circles of rugby-clubs and suchlike super-macho inner-circles, is ever-present, bringing with it all the implications of trying to outdo ones competitors. Naturally, this kind of behaviour is tolerated (even encouraged up to a point) within certain limits, and it is only the superior training and discipline of mid-ranking NCOs (troop-level sergeants and staff-sergeants) which sets those limits. Most NCOs I ever knew were of the highest standard in terms of integrity and discipline; I only ever recall 2 or 3 who deviated grossly from this standard.

Having said that; I agree with Libby Purves (The Times, this morning), especially when she says "Army morale has been chipped away by political correctness, a weaselling civilian safety-first culture, and a terror of ‘heritage’". To very briefly paraphrase her; what she says is that of COURSE there is going to exist an underlying current of fear and hatred for Arabs - after all, to the minds of relatively uneducated squaddies (and not all are gorillas; in fact only a very small proportion) it is these people who are deliberately threatening their way of life with terrorist attacks and so on. A little bit of simple propoganda via rags like the Sun and Mirror goes a long way. So childish revenge cannot be ruled out either.

I only hope the MoD investigations do not turn into a quagmire like Deepcut and produce some real answers - although it is too late to repair the damage done in the Middle East to our image, a thorough investigation with some concrete answers may help to redress the balance in at least a small way.

The attitudes of people going in are entirely different; the attitudes while they’re in are shaped by the reasons that brought them to the U.S. armed forces in the first place.

The cause is as the cause always was - and it’s a long-standing problem inside the American military, and every American knows about it. The problem is, we have a good laugh about what Army men are like when they’re out and about in civvies, but most Americans don’t think of the Army as a peacekeeping force.

At least now they know why it’s so poorly suited to the job.

The people torturing Iraqis are soldiers, people who are used to obeying orders and only using their initiative within the confines of their mission. When they committed these acts they must have felt that they were consistent with their view of their role in Iraq. I’m not going to claim that their acts are consistent with the US military’s view of their role in Iraq but clearly the messages the soldiers are getting are blurred enough to allow these soldiers to believe that torturing Iraqis was acceptable behaviour.

The problem, I think, is that the soldiers think that they are at war. They are not a ‘liberation force’ and they see Iraqis (and maybe arabs in general) as their enemy. This is generated by Bush’s rhetoric about being at war and the US military’s approach to dealing with opposition e.g. the bombing and shooting of residents of Falluja.

I know that there will be condemnation of these atrocities but court-martialling a few squaddies and a sacrificial officer will only tackle a symptom, not the cause.