In a previous column, Walter cautions us, “Don’t idealise the soldiers fighting this unjust war.”

Do you think that Tony Blair would feel it necessary to state and restate that civilian casualties will be kept to a minimum if he were not conscious of the outrage that would otherwise result? Do you think that officers would keep briefing their soldiers on the need to treat prisoners according to the laws of war, if it were not for the scrutiny of the dissenters back home?

It is all very well to hear about how vulnerable and heroic our troops are, but we should not forget that the truly vulnerable people are not the healthy young men who chose to join one of the best-equipped armies in the world, but ordinary Iraqi people who did not choose to be caught, utterly defenceless, between a tyrant and a destructive army. Independent/UK