I wonder if ever there were a war conducted honourably and decently -the sort of thing Biggles got involved in. I don't really think the nature of war itself makes that possible.

If you look at that famous proclamation that Pearse read out on the steps of the Dublin Post Office in 1916, there can be fewer more determined statements to conduct a war while retaining human decency.

And yet we end up with all kinds of horrors. No intention of winding anyone up by cataloguing them.

I think the evidence tends to suggest that its not the people - its the practice of war itself.

My dad was a gentleman, but I asked him onetime if he killed anybody in the war. He said , "yeh scores. We were there to kill them, they were there to kill us."

I suspect when you're in a situation where you've seen your friends, the guys you have trained with, blown up in front of your eyes - there is a shift in your perception of the enemy.

Anyway we have punished the men involved in the incident, thrown them out of the service. It's not a good situation. But maybe we're one up on military organisations who promote and defend their torturers.