And so it has come to this. Just over a year ago, President George W Bush, in his premature announcement of victory, stated that "there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves" in Iraq. Now we learn of torture in the very same Abu Ghraib prison that became so notorious under Saddam Hussein. The defenders of the American and British invasion are reduced to saying that Abu Ghraib saw worse and more frequent torture under Saddam but that, while he was in power, nobody ever saw the pictures. The old regime, these apologists argue, used torture as a central instrument of state policy. The difference now is that torture is an aberration - a "breakdown in discipline", as the US army vice-chief of staff calls it - which will be duly investigated, punished and compensated and surely not repeated. All the better if it can be proved that the guilty interrogators worked for private contractors: privatisation is now the established way for politicians to evade responsibility.
Yet responsibility is not so easily shrugged off. It was the Bush administration that branded Iraq as a member of the "axis of evil", its leaders holding weapons of mass destruction that imminently threatened the west, and its regime complicit in the attacks on America on 11 September 2001. It was the Bush administration which decided that the Iraqi army and police force should be disbanded because anybody associated with the Ba'ath regime must be suspect. It was the Bush administration, and its allies in London, that portrayed resistance to the US occupation as the work of Saddamist remnants, terrorists, members of al-Qaeda and dangerous fanatics who were beyond reason. It was the Bush administration that kept Abu Ghraib open, rather as the Soviets kept Buchenwald open after the conquest of Germany in 1945.
Should we be at all surprised that soldiers and interrogators thought they were dealing with deadly enemies who had forfeited all human rights? Should we be surprised that governments which seem so careless of civil liberties at home among their own people should be even more careless overseas? As Kevin Toolis points out (page 8), human rights abuse is historically the norm rather than the exception among occupying powers. Conquering armies expect to take trophies. And if their colleagues in other sections of the armed forces can kill and maim thousands of civilians from a distance with bombs and shells, why would any soldier think it wrong to use broom handles, dog chains and cold water at close quarters?
Once Saddam had been shown not to possess WMDs, only two justifications for the invasion remained. The first was that the Iraqi people deserved liberation from his odious tyranny. With the revelations of torture by Americans, the allegations of murder by Britons, and the growing evidence of devastation and death in Fallujah, the "liberation" looks increasingly like a fraud. The brutality of Saddam's rule has been succeeded by the brutality of anarchy. The fear of arbitrary detention and abusive treatment remains. A majority of Iraqis may say that they welcomed Saddam's overthrow and that they are optimistic for the future - these people are well used to giving the answers and repeating the slogans expected of them - but they are clear that they want the occupation to end. Though sovereignty will be handed to the Iraqis on 30 June, power will not. The occupation, and almost complete control over economic policy, will continue.
If President Bush and Tony Blair were prepared before the war to act according to what they assumed to be the Iraqis' wishes, despite all the risks, why are they so reluctant to accede now to their wishes, with a different set of risks? The ancient justification for colonialism has returned: without benevolent western rule, the natives will just fight among themselves or fall under another awful tyrant. Who cares, given such perils, about a spot of torture? How sad that Labour leaders, whose predecessors worked so hard for colonial liberation in the mid-20th century, should implicitly subscribe to such a view.
The second justification for the invasion was to bring democracy and stability to a strategically and economically important area of the world. In fact, democracy has taken a step backward in the Middle East, partly because its associations with the US give it a bad odour, partly because the growing popular revolt in Iraq makes Arab rulers even more nervous of reform. In countries such as Saudi Arabia, the very small concessions to human rights made in recent years are being withdrawn. And after the revelations from Abu Ghraib, the US is hardly in a position to protest.
Such a gent
How the English love a toff. The Duke of Devonshire, who died last Monday, was the country's biggest private landowner. He tried to use parts of the Peak District for open-cast mining; said he would defy the law if fox-hunting became illegal; benefited from nepotism to become a Tory minister; once demanded £12m from the Treasury to keep open rights of way in Yorkshire; and, while turning his home, Chatsworth, into a lucrative brand, passed it off as a charity in order to reclaim tax. But never mind about all that. He had good manners - even Anne Scargill, wife of the miners' leader, found him "such a gent". He donated to good causes, invited the masses to tea, apologised for his grandfather's treatment of ramblers, and joined the Social Democratic Party. We must, in our deferential English way, be grateful for a rich, privileged man who had "the grace" (Phillip Whitehead, ex-MP, Labour) sometimes to behave decently.
