I noticed the disciplinary hearings for the soldiers involved in humiliating prisoners started last week. I hope the military courts do not just look for scapegoats but I'm arfaid they will. That is what the military always do.

The photographs of Iraqi prisoners being tortured that have appeared recently in the world's press are appalling by any standards. Such acts shame the regiments of the soldiers involved, their families and their nations. But let us not make the mistake of blaming the soldiers for bringing on our nations this shame for the blame lies upon governments and leaders responsible for sending those soldiers to war. The acts depicted and denounced by Donald Rumsfeld as Un-American are no such thing. Nor are they Un - British, Un - Iraqi, Un - German, Un - Japanese, Un - French or Un - anything else. They are in fact typical acts of soldiers in times of war. War brutalises and dehumanises everybody involved. It has always been so. Instead of watching the glossy movie "Troy" why not read Homer's Iliad. The events described may be fictional but it paints a vivid picture of how prisoners and hostages were treated at the beginning of civilisation. Now fast - forward to 1916, 1942 and 1969. During the wars in progress at those times atrocities were committed by both sides. Rape, torture and ritual humiliation crop up in every war throughout history.

To place all the blame on soldiers is wrong. Young men (and women now) sent to a foreign country to exist in terrible conditions, always with the knowledge that the next breath may be their last cannot be expected to do anything but abandon civilised standards. Their behaviour can be understood but not excused.

In a recent TV interview the athlete Michael Johnston, a modest, intelligent and articulate man and one of America's finest ambassadors said he was shocked at the level of anti - American feeling he had encountered since the invasion of Iraq. What Johnston learned was that the constantly repeated assumption of moral superiority by American leaders and media commentators really does rub up a lot of people around the world the wrong way. Are we to believe there are no rapists and murderers in America, no child molesters or wife - beaters, no racists, homophobes, bullies, no religious bigots? Can it really be that such acts are so Un- American they simply do not occur in the USA? So when American soldiers cross the lines that separates civilised behaviour from brutality why is it specifically Un - American and not simply inhuman as the acts of torture committed by British soldiers or Iraqi militia men are.

Americans, like any other national community are a pretty mixed bunch, the vast majority decent and honest in a million various ways, but a minority totally lacking moral fibre and prepared to do anything they think they can get away with to serve their own interests. That is nothing more than human nature of course. Fortunately the good vastly outnumber the bad. But no matter how civilised any of us in a situation where survival from minute to minute is the name of the game and who knows how we might act.

Just as the hypocrisy of Rumsfeld is intolerable so is the sanctimoniousness of Tony Blair. He righteously condemns the behaviour of British troops involved in torture while sweeping under the carpet the embarrassing bits of our imperial history. The record of the British in Ireland, India, Africa, the middle east and elsewhere around the world a few decades ago is a national disgrace. And yet our Prime Minister brushed aside the lessons of history in his headlong charge into a futile war neither the military nor the people wanted. When it all started to go pear - shaped Mr. Blair, ever keen to jump on the first bandwagon that passes cannot wait to criticise our soldiers for behaving like - well, soldiers.

At this time we should not pillory the young men and women caught up in this madness, we cannot understand what was going through their minds; few of us have been in similar situations. They deserve no hero's welcome but should be sent home and helped to rebuild their lives. Be sure the war they have fought will haunt them forever. Our contempt should be reserved for those men who cannot understand that what is truly Un - American or Un - British is to order an invasion of a foreign country without any moral or political justification. Saddam may have been bad, but what follows the coalition withdrawal looks like being ten times worse and no matter how many times the name of God or Allah is invoked it will not bring back those who have died or will die.

What has happened in Iraq is exactly what military and political commentators including myself predicted before the invasion. What none of us can now predict is how we will get out without unleashing the bloodbath that Saddam's tyranny kept at bay, as with no restraining force or common enemy the Sunni's, Shi'ites and the Kurdish nation clash. While we stay our troops serve the purpose the Ba'ath regime served. Perhaps that is why people who grew up on American and British soil, and were educated in American and British schools are behaving rather like Ba'athist political policemen.