Can we put aside the revulsion for a moment and look at how we got ourselves into a situation where our soldiers, who are supposed to be “the good guys”, are doing things that we are more comfortable with attributing to Saddam Hussein’s troops.

We like to maintain this rosy view of what soldiering is all about but it is underpinned by two hard facts. The soldiers in the making must be

1. Brutalised to the extent that they can kill and maim without undue compunction. Think about it. We are placing these people in extremely traumatic situations and expecting them to not only cope but also be psychologically healthy afterwards. That is no mean feat and it is not something that comes without a cost. The cost is their empathy with those human beings with which they had shared the planet before they dispatched them.

2. Completely rule based and conditioned to follow orders without question. The progress of a military campaign would be impossible if your basic infantryman felt that, during a battle, he could engage in discussions on the wisdom of a particular approach with his superior officer.

We now place these individuals in a situation where the “enemy”, who they have no empathy with, is not following the rules of war as they know them by not wearing uniforms, engaging in subversive resistance and generally creating mayhem and we act surprised when their prisoners are maltreated.

If the said prisoners are kept in circumstances where their treatment is shielded from scrutiny, such as in Iraq, where the International Red Cross has been denied access since at least June 2003, it would be surprising if cases of maltreatment were not occurring. This is precisely why any country that cloaks its prisoner of war camps in secrecy is doing a massive disservice to justice, to the wellbeing of the prisoners and to the psychological wellbeing of their troops.

We are supposed to be in Iraq to do good, it would be helpful if the powers that be structured things in a way that facilitated that.