According to the US Army report, the soldiers had not received specific training in running a prison. It says that some of the reservists who are also civilian prison officers had been giving advice and instructions to the others. This looks like a systemic failure to prepare the guards for their duties before flying to Iraq. Presumably failure to train the guards means that responsibility for their behaviour rests with someone higher up, although I don’t expect to see anyone outside that camp being charged with dereliction of duty.

As for Donald Rumsfeld, he told the US Congress that he took ‘full responsibility’ for the incidents of mistreatment. If that were really true, he would be prepared to resign.

One question about orders from a superior. Instead of refusing the order, can a soldier ask for it in writing to cover himself?

Nothing new in that, mate; all officers above the rank of Major (and I would imagine that a Camp commandant would be at least a full Colonel) are of the opinion that they are above such worldly considerations as work, duty, schedules and so on. British Army officers are exactly the same when they can get away with it.

You’re right about the standards of discipline in general though. In the US army people are often pally between ranks - something that rarely happens in the British Army. The general rule in the UK is one up, one down; that means that if you are for instance a Sergeant, then you can call people 1 rank above (ie; Staff Sergeant) by first names, as well as 1 rank down (Corporal). Privates can usually call Lance Corporals by name, but Corporals are usually referred to by rank (unless the Private in question has served for some years). Any further up or down the chain, and it’s back to the use of rank instead of first name.

While working with the US however, I have heard senior Privates telling Sergeants to wind their necks in, officers being on first name terms with Privates and junior NCOs, etc. Although to a lot of people this may seem much more comfortable and familiar than in our own regimented system, in fact it has the very opposite effect in a lot of cases. The old saw "familiarity breeds contempt" is perfectly apt here. That’s exactly what happens; officers, senior and junior NCOs all treat each other almost as equals, and before you know it it is almost impossible to directly order someone to do something (try it one day with one of your mates, they’ll tell you to get stuffed!) and there we have discipline going down the chute. I’m not trying to say this is what happened at Abu Ghraib; just an example of how lax their everyday discipline is. And of course in this case we aren’t even talking about regular soldiers but Reservists who are naturally going to have even less self-confidence and knowledge of the situations they find themselves in. So if some big hairy-arsed Sergeant-Major comes along and tells Private Nobody to stand and hold a dog on a leash and point and laugh, the fact that it is Sergeant-Major Hairyarse giving the order is good enough for Private Nobody - after all, he is a reservist in his early 20s whereas the Sertgeant Major has served for 30 years and has seen, done and knows everything; he MUST know what he is doing.

Then, of course, we have the bully types who like having power over people; the Intelligence people telling all the Private Nobodys that they are acting on orders direct from God; the CIA reinforcing that perception, and so on. Personally I feel kind of sorry for those reservists; although I don’t for a moment believe that they didn’t have the common sense to refuse what were obviously illegal orders (it is acceptable in certain circumstances for a soldier to disobey a direct order if he or she thinks that order is illegal; there are very strict guidelines), at the same time they are being made the scapegoats for things which had to have went much higher up the chain of command, possibly even the top (although of course I’m sure Don Rumsfeld didn’t give them the order personally!)

I have no direct experience of any armed forces, but from TV pictures and the report into abuse at Abu Ghraib it does seem that our forces are a world apart from the US Army when it comes to discipline. The camp commander left his post for 2 weeks without informing his superiors, for God’s sake.

However Colin also has a very good point - once again we have arrived at Government double-standards time. And wasn’t it just typical of Tony Blair to try to pull the patriotism card to get himself off the hook?!?!

"it is deeply disturbing that there are those prepared to casually vilify our armed forces without first establishing the facts".

Is this guy taking the piss? How about a Government who took us to war without ‘first establishing the facts’ ?