The existence of Rules of Engagement may be a bit hard to accept for lower rank squadies like Keith and Dead Horse – usually decent uneducated people who have had to physically face down the opposition to their presence on the streets of northern Ireland over the years . Hopefully yesterday's brief MoD statement regarding the marines' arrest should show the importance attached by the UK military's higher ranks to standards and to the armed forces' own Rules of Engagement .

"These arrests demonstrate the Department and the Armed Forces' determination to ensure UK personnel act in accordance with their Rules of Engagement and our standards."

The army's rules of engagement are worked out according to the political ends of whatever emergency the military is involved in dealing with . Dead Horse and Keith should try to appreciate the fact that any army operates as a bureaucracy, and, like all bureaucracies , functions as two separate parts of a greater whole : one part being involved with policy-making decisions , the other with implementing those policies. The two ends of a bureaucracy work independently of each other and are largely kept in the dark about how the other side carries out its assigned role. That's how bureaucracy works -the lower ranks have no imput into policy-making and the higher rank rarely has to get its hands dirty .