It is a long time, for example, since the world came to understand that such a thing as "shell-shock" existed. But the countries each have a similarly long-standing tradition of doing their best, more privately, to distance themselves from the suffering of the servicemen who lose their reason rather than their lives. Yes, it shows a disparity of respect for the dead that is obscene. But to see really how much these two wealthy, powerful nations value the lives of the men and women who risk their bodies and their minds in pursuit of their respective governments' foreign policies, examine instead the reluctance of both to count truthfully the extent of the damage done to the surviving victims of battle.The man who perpetrated the act of brutality caught by an NBC cameraman that ended the life of a wounded insurgent is not a man who is likely to return home after the war to live a long and contented life. He has been dehumanised as thoroughly as those the world abhors for their own atrocities.

Caught in the act, ironically enough, he has a better chance of having a mental illness diagnosed and treated than all those who will go home to find that the horrors they witnessed or perpetrated cannot be left behind.Both the US and Britain have a long-standing tradition of publicly honouring and commemorating those who give their lives in combat. At the sharp end, it appears, this attitude is amplified by the acts of some members of the allied forces, who feel justified in torturing and murdering the captured and the wounded. For opponents of the invasion of Iraq, the fact that there is not, and has never been, any system for recording the Iraqi dead, speaks volumes about the American-led forces' contempt for those they think they are liberating. How astonishing that on the eve of the Parliament Act, Mike didn't bring up the subject of hunting. They've not just been eviscerated but decapitated.simoncarr75 hotmail More from Simon Carr. There is much more philosophical work to be done before Tories use the word "vulnerable", even in the privacy of their own bathrooms.The Tories should be campaigning as if freedom mattered.

The higher the level of tax the more extensive the right of the state to monitor those receiving the benefits This is a moral argument, one of many. from Oliver Letwin (Labour cheers, roars, hoots).Of course Mr Blair's quotation was at a level of dishonesty that would make you white with anger if it was anything to do with you, but in the absence of effective opposition that's what he gets away with Tories have to make the moral case for low taxation. That's where the argument starts, but its conclusions reach everywhere. The Government justifies the introduction of ID cards because it wants to check on benefit claimants. Every time they stop someone they have to fill out a seven-minute form. But Mr Blair finished with a long quotation praising the Government's policing plans and strategies ...