But that is what really happened on Monday, and although the sound of the exploding bar-mines should presumably be music to the ears of everyone who supports the rule of law, a number of important questions lie unanswered in the rubble of what was, until Christmas morning, the headquarters of the Basra serious crimes unit. A witty military press officer suggested that the name related to what the 400 associated police officers did rather than what they prevented. But he did not make clear how long the British authorities have known that, among their regular activities, they crushed prisoners' hands and feet, electrocuted them and burned them with cigarettes. You will recall that one of the reasons given to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq was the obligation to save the people from that sort of atrocity. It now appears that, at least in al-Jamiat police station, the arrival of what is bravely described as democracy has not made much difference.

According to the official statement, the army had "clear directions" from Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, and Muhammad al-Waeli, Basra's governor, to "dissolve the unit". That, at least, is a relief. But what about General Muhammad al-Musawi, Basra's chief of police? He was reported to be "furious" at what he described as "an attempt to stir up trouble". Are we to continue working with this man? If he knew what was going on at al-Jamiat police station, he is too corrupt to head the Basra police force. If he did not know, he is too incompetent to hold down the job any longer. His importance lies in his status as physical embodiment of all that is wrong with the Iraq occupation. The place is unmanageable in part because nobody can be sure who is on whose side. The confusion of loyalties highlights the cause of the continuing horror. Most Iraqis did not want US and British troops there in the first place. Many of those who did changed their minds when they discovered that the number of murders had gone drastically up and the supply of water and electricity down since the liberators arrived.

The nature of the dilemma - faced by the coalition because of the boneheaded stupidity of the Washington neocons who dreamed up the invasion - is made clear by the proud boast that Basra's governor is on the side of the occupying coalition. Six months ago he supported the serious crimes unit at al-Jamiat, but Iraq is a nation of shifting alliances and the governor (a member of the Fadhila party) has been persuaded to change his ways by the Shia-led national government. I do not suggest that he will necessarily change back again halfway through 2007, but no one can have any doubt that the crosscurrents of inter-communal and religious disputes will continue to make the behaviour of Iraqi politicians unpredictable. It is all a very long way from the anticipated scenario of streets lined with grateful Iraqis waving stars and stripes and brandishing pictures of President Bush. Nor do pointless barbarities such as the planned execution of Saddam Hussein have any prospect of winning the occupation the popularity that has always eluded it.

Yet only last week one of those Washington free-enterprise "thinktanks" - which usually spend their time explaining that global warming is a myth and that widening the disparities of wealth is the best way to help the poor - suggested that America could solve the Iraq crisis by sending in another 200,000 troops. Putting aside the logistical problems that such a deployment would involve, one thing has to be said in favour of the strategy. All pretence at liberation has finally been abandoned. The sort of people who guided the coalition into the quagmire have decided that the only way to get out is to impose the will of the western powers by force on a reluctant - or downright hostile - people.

Of course, the new plan has no better prospects of success than the old. Everything that happens in Iraq confirms that we should not have gone there in the first place. That message was underlined by the unfortunate press officer who explained - or tried to justify - the delay in ending the torture and organisation of terror groups and assassination squads that was common practice at al-Jamiat police station. "First", he said, "we had to be sure of the police."

Nearly four years after US-led forces invaded and President Bush declared victory, the British headquarters in Basra could still not be sure where the police's loyalty lay. And General Ali Ibrahim, an Iraq army commander in the area, denounced the decision to clear out the serious crimes unit as illegal. Do we still believe that an orderly transition of power to a genuinely democratic Iraq is possible within the foreseeable future? The gloomy answer to that question is why, although the demolition of al-Jamiat police station is, in itself, a matter of rejoicing, the news also increases the general despair we should all feel about the catastrophe of Iraq. Thanks to George Bush and Tony Blair we are actors in a tragedy that seems to have no foreseeable conclusion. To pull out is to leave the people to the mercies of a hundred other serious crimes units. To remain is to intensify the hatred and bitterness of much of the law-abiding population. The worst diplomatic blunder since Suez? By comparison, Suez had a happy ending.

Four Marines were charged with unpremeditated murder last week, and face life imprisonment if convicted. The man who led a series of deadly house-to-house raids that day, Staff Sgt Frank Wuterich, is personally accused of murdering 12 people. Four others, including Capt McConnell, face an array of lesser charges, including failure to report the incident properly, failure to conduct an appropriate investigation and general dereliction of duty.

Many critics have argued that the Haditha incident might have been written off as business as usual, were it not for graphic Iraqi documentation of the massacre that made its way into Time magazine last spring. The military initially claimed, erroneously, that the roadside bomb killed 15 of the Iraqis, and nominated Staff Sgt Wuterich for a medal for bravery.

Responding to the charges against his client, Mr McDermott said the top brass was well aware of what had happened, but condemned it only after it became glaringly public. "A lot of lieutenant colonels and colonels and generals knew what happened that day, and nobody said, 'let's do a thorough investigation of what happened'," he said. "By the end of the day, [my client's] superiors recognised the situation was so significant that they brought in air support.

"There were Harriers dropping 500lb bombs on buildings. If they're dropping 500lb bombs without knocking on the door first, how can you argue the troops on the ground did anything wrong?"

The Haditha case could not come at a worse time for US morale, as the White House pushes for a "surge" of extra troops to secure Baghdad and Sunni-controlled Anbar province against the better judgment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all but 12 per cent of the US public. President George Bush's administration has even talked about expanding the overall size of the US military.

Haditha was front-page news across America on Friday, forcing officials sharply on to the defensive. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, said the cost in US lives and money in Iraq had been "worth it". President Bush, she insisted, would never ask for further sacrifices "if he didn't believe, and in fact I believe as well, that we can in fact succeed".

The new Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, gave a similarly positive - if unconvincing - assessment as he made his first trip to Iraq in his new job. "I believe, based on what I have heard and seen both from American commanders and the Iraqis, that things are moving in a positive direction."

Clousing told that story and more about his appalling Iraq experience in a speech at Guilford College a few weeks before his court martial for desertion from the Army was scheduled to begin at Fort Bragg. That was in October. The trial ended with a plea agreement: Clousing was found guilty of being AWOL and was sentenced to serve three months in a military prison before receiving a bad-conduct discharge from the Army.

With good conduct, Clousing will be released this Friday or Saturday morning, and he'll head for Raleigh at midday Saturday to be greeted by human rights supporters at the Raleigh Friends Meeting House, 625 Tower St. (the street behind the Cameron Village Post Office). His reception is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., before he catches a flight from RDU back to his hometown of Seattle, Wash.

"Any friends of peace and G.I. resistance are welcome to share in the spirit of this courageous voice against injustice," says Chuck Fager, the director of Quaker House in Fayetteville and one of the event's chief organizers.

Quaker House provided a videotape of Clousing's talk at Guilford to the Independent. What he experienced is almost a parable of what the country's gone through since 9/11. Clousing, now 24, joined the Army in 2002 out of a combination of youthful idealism and a then still-forming spiritual faith. He thought America would be doing good fighting Al Qaeda. Instead, he ended up part of a military wrecking crew in Iraq that saw itself bound-in his view-by no rules of conduct, morality or even good sense.

The disconnect between Clousing enlisting to do good and his Iraq deployment was all the greater because after he was tested and found to have a facility for foreign languages, his training was extended over a period of 18 months, including a stint at the Army Language School in Monterey, Calif. Soldiers in training are kept away from the news, so when he learned that President Bush was invading Iraq as part of the war on terror, it was "weird" to him, but he didn't second-guess it, because what did he know?

But then he did know, because he was assigned in Iraq to be a front-line interrogator, not in a prison, but as part of an Army tactical human intelligence team-the guys who kick in the doors and arrest the terrorists. Except, as Clousing quickly discovered, the units had no idea who the terrorists were, so when bombs went off, they broke through whatever doors were close at hand.

Most disturbing to him-and I could see his eyes clearly on tape-was the reaction of his commanding officers when he tried to report the atrocities he saw.

The occupants of a house arrested without a shred of evidence then held incommunicado for months because the Army didn't know what to do with them? Soldiers getting their jollies sideswiping Iraqis' cars with a Humvee? A farmer's livestock shot and killed for sport? It didn't matter, Clousing found: "The command just swept [his reports] away like they really weren't a problem, which was really a testament to me of like, wow, nobody really cares."

And, of course, the unwarranted killing of the driver. The Army's attitude about such things, Clousing says, wasn't "That was somebody's son we killed." Instead, soldiers are taught to depersonalize things, and say "That sucks, just somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time."

But Clousing, by his own admission, just couldn't get with the desensitization process. And after wrestling with his conscience about whether he could truthfully claim to be a conscience objector and deciding that no, there were wars he would fight for his country, he simply up and left Fort Bragg in mid-2005 after he returned from his first Iraq tour and was awaiting assignment to his second.

He went home to Seattle and discovered that the Army's lack of accountability when it came to other soldiers' misconduct also applied to his. He wanted to turn himself in, be found AWOL, and be discharged. But until he forced the issue, speaking out at a Veterans for Peace rally in Seattle, neither his command at Bragg nor the ones his lawyer called at Fort Lewis in Seattle seemed to want anything to do with him.

The story of what it took for him to finally get arrested at Bragg is almost comical-his calls to Lewis were bucked to Bragg and vice versa; he was told his records were lost, but suddenly were found after he spoke out publicly against the war; and even then, he had to find his own way back to Bragg and knock on a bunch of different doors before a soldier finally did him the service of detaining him.

Fager, who counseled Clousing after he called the G.I. Hotline at Quaker House (not knowing his name at first), says what finally pushed Clousing out of the service was a promotion that had him training other soldiers at Bragg to be interrogators once they were sent to Iraq.

Now, it wasn't just a question of violating his own conscience, which was bad enough. Clousing was going to be a cog in a military operation that, far from doing good in-and for-Iraq, was making more and more Iraqis hate Americans every day. "The stupid self-destruction of it finally got to be too much for him," Fager says.

"When I visited the intelligence department at al-Jameat police station, I found prisoners stiff with fear, bound and gagged," Stephen Grey, the journalist, wrote in the New Statesman.

No crime seemed too extreme for the unit, based at the police station in a once-pleasant middle-class neighbourhood. Its officers were blamed for death squad killings, extortion rackets and smuggling weapons from Iran.

They worked with the Tharallah criminal network to carry out contract killings and deadly roadside attacks on British forces using sophisticated imported technology.

By last year, dozens of Iraqis were being dragged from their homes, shot in the head and their bodies dumped in operations blamed on the unit.

The discovery of a body on the outskirts of Basra in April last year provided hard evidence that these police were out of control. The dead Iraqi had been arrested on suspicion of smuggling and gun-running. An examination of his remains showed that an electric drill had been used to penetrate his skull, hands and legs.

Britain ordered undercover troops to mount surveillance. The intelligence-gathering operation went wrong when two officers became involved in a shootout with plainclothes Iraqi police. The pair were arrested and taken to al-Jameat in September 2005. Under interrogation they were punched and kicked. This time the British forces would stand for no nonsense; they bulldozed the side of the police station. The men, who had been moved to a different location, were freed.

A 50-strong "al-Jameat Gang", operating from the centre under cover of police uniform, was intimidating the remaining officers, who were too scared to inform on them.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Fartusi, a leader of the Shia Islamist al-Mahdi Army, had links to the group and was believed to provide them with protection in return for bomb-making equipment. He was seized by the international forces last year, part of a wave of arrests described as based on specific intelligence.

In an open letter to local people in January, John Cooper, commander of the British-led force in the south, described those arrested as "the most dangerous and corrupt people in Basra". He said the Interior Ministry had "instructed the chief of police to remove the most dangerous and most rotten elements from the police".

A year later, all hope of reforming the unit by weeding out rotten apples has been abandone

"It's an absolute disgrace to military medicine," said Bridgette Wilson, a former Army medic who is now an attorney in San Diego serving mainly military clients. "I see it over and over again, the dramatic misuse of personality disorder diagnosis. It's a fairly slick and efficient way to move some bodies through."

Military records show that since 2003, 4,092 Army soldiers and another 11,296 men and women in other branches of the armed services have been discharged after being diagnosed with the disorder.

A government worker at Fort Carson in Colorado who has access to personnel records and who spoke on condition on anonymity for fear of losing his job said Army psychologists there have diagnosed some soldiers with a personality disorder after a single evaluation lasting 10 minutes to 20 minutes.

Several soldiers at Fort Carson interviewed by Cox Newspapers said they have been given or offered the diagnosis in a handful of meetings lasting less than an hour.

The personality disorder diagnosis can result in a soldier getting an honorable discharge within days, which can be appealing for many returning from Iraq.

The timing of many of the discharges, in some cases within months after soldiers have returned, appears to violate the military's rules, which say a personality disorder diagnosis should not be made if a soldier is experiencing "combat exhaustion or other acute situational maladjustments."

Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said he is unaware of any related discharges within three months of a deployment and has "full confidence in our medical personnel in their decision-making."

Nonetheless, he asked Army surgeon general Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley two weeks ago to review complaints of inadequate mental health care at Fort Carson. He said it was begun before Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri wrote a letter asking him to investigate such concerns after they were raised in a broadcast on National Public Radio.

"I'm concerned with any allegations that suggest we may have not taken the steps that we need to take to ensure that people are properly cared for," he said, adding that soldiers are receiving the best mental military health care in history.

Proper evaluation

A personality order is defined as a deeply ingrained, abnormal behavior pattern that appears during childhood or adolescence.

Critics say that many soldiers returning from Iraq who are tagged with that label actually have post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from their combat experiences. A review of four soldiers' medical records at Fort Carson and records from a soldier at another post show that they were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder before or after their discharge.

Recommending a discharge on the basis of a personality disorder is a faster process than discharging someone for mental health problems of another nature. It requires only one military psychologist's finding, and the paperwork usually takes only a couple of days.

A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, on the other hand, must be handled by a medical review board, which must confirm that the condition stems from combat, a process that usually takes several months.

Dr. Joseph Bobrow, a former chief psychologist at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, said a personality disorder is one of the most difficult diagnoses to confirm, particularly when there is cumulative trauma.

"I think it's ludicrous to make a diagnosis of personality disorder in a 20- to 40-minute interview," he said. "Even if you do a complete battery of psychological testing and intensive and informed clinical interviews over a week, some of those results can be and are contested in a court of law."

Some of the soldiers at Fort Carson say they had been told by Army psychologists that the Department of Veterans Affairs would take care of them if their troubles persisted. A personality disorder, however, is considered a pre-existing condition, not one related to a soldier's service, and Veterans Affairs can treat but not give disability benefits in these cases.

Many soldiers who sought mental health counseling after returning from Iraq, like former Spc. Donald Schmidt of Chillicothe, Ill., say they learned only after their discharge that they must repay part of their re-enlistment bonus based on the portion of time they did not serve - more than $10,000 in Schmidt's case.

He and many other soldiers interviewed by Cox Newspapers, lawyers and veterans groups also say they were not cautioned that a personality disorder diagnosis could damage their job prospects because prospective civilian employers may request access to their discharge papers. Those records usually describe anti-social traits and behaviors they are said to probably possess.

In her 13 years in practice, San Diego attorney Wilson said she has seen dozens of Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton and soldiers from other posts separated for a personality disorder when the real reason, in her view, has been to punish a soldier, avoid paying disability benefits for a more serious condition or get rid of someone deemed undesirable.

Though some of her clients have personality disorders, she said, most who received the diagnosis and discharge had minor behavioral problems or were diagnosed with bipolar disorder or severe depression by either military or civilian psychologists.

About three-quarters of her clients who have been diagnosed with a personality disorder, she said, weren't given any psychological test. Rather, she said, the diagnosis was based on a roughly 45-minute interview.

Lynn Gonzalez, a counselor at the San Diego Military Counseling Project, an information and support organization for active-duty personnel having problems with the military, said the quick tagging of soldiers with the disorder has happened "enough that what we tend to do now is push guys to go to a private psychiatrist so they have more information for a proper diagnosis."

Col. Steven Knorr, chief of psychiatry at Fort Carson's Evans Army Community Hospital, said it would be rare for a doctor to diagnose and discharge a soldier for having a personality disorder in just one session, as asserted by some soldiers.

Besides examining a patient's medical history and sometimes doing psychological testing, he said, psychologists normally will talk with soldiers about how they're coping and how they feel about military service and get their commander's assessment.

"The vast majority of people I've seen separated with personality disorder are pleased with that," Knorr said.

Altering diagnoses

For nearly a year after his return from Iraq in August 2005, former Pvt. Jason Harvey had gone without any follow-up evaluations at Fort Carson after screening positive for possible post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury, his records show.

After a suicide attempt in May, records show that the 23-year-old was diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but in late June the Army tried to discharge him with a personality disorder. Harvey said he was told by a staff psychologist in a joint meeting with his commander that if he did not agree to an honorable discharge, the commander would pursue a punitive discharge.

"They played me like a fiddle," Harvey said, adding he was wrongly told the medical retirement fell under the same category as post-traumatic stress disorder. In fact, it is a nonmedical discharge.

Also at Fort Carson, after two tours in Iraq, Schmidt, 22, told a psychologist he was feeling violent impulses as a result of marital difficulties. The decorated soldier is on guard constantly and "quick to anger" when he had not been that way before, said his mother, Patrice Semtner-Myers.

Schmidt said his Army psychologist, Dr. Michael Pantaleo, made the diagnosis after several meetings lasting between 15 and 30 minutes each and never asked him questions about his behavior before joining the Army. Pantaleo did not return calls seeking comment.

Schmidt was discharged "without a dime in his pocket," his mother said.

"The soldiers are often too stupid to know what they've done" when they accept the disorder or seek it, Wilson said. "They go out and discover the state police department really isn't interested in someone discharged with a personality disorder or find they have trouble getting security clearances."

Some military psychologists appear to be violating guidelines in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the psychiatric manual used by the military.

If a soldier complains of mental problems after returning from combat, a personality disorder is supposed to be ruled out for an unspecified amount of time because some of its characteristics, such as problems interacting with others and substance abuse, overlap with some of the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Pentagon "is not familiar with the rules, or they are choosing to ignore them," said Paul Sullivan, director of programs for Veterans for America, a Washington-based nonprofit.

Knorr said it's possible for soldiers at Fort Carson to be diagnosed with mild post-traumatic stress disorder but be discharged for a personality disorder, but he thought that would be rare. An extremely low number might be later diagnosed with a disabling case of stress disorder, he said.

Dr. Bob Scaer, a neurologist and trauma expert in Boulder, Colo., who worked at Fort Carson as an unseasoned resident clinician 41 years ago, said commanders back then would send him soldiers that they wanted to remove from service.

"I'd rubber-stamp the discharge," he said. "This was an excuse for discarding soldiers who didn't fit in."

He said he has seen a few soldiers from Fort Carson recently who were misdiagnosed with a personality disorder after having initially been diagnosed by Army psychiatrists with stress disorder. The military, he said, is making problematic behavior among some returning soldiers "out to be a personality disorder, and it's not. It's well-known as a symptom of trauma."

Determination of personality disorder

Medical guidelines for each service:

Army: Requires a psychologist's findings.

Navy: Vague language; not clear that determination must come from a mental health professional or command.

Marines: Similar to Army rules but two forms of documents required. Same doctor must render findings on a Marine's impairment and on written nonmedical evidence to show examples of inability to function in the corps.

Air Force: Alone in requiring oversight where commanders fail to act on appropriate findings. Commander must have decision reviewed by discharge authority.

Personality disorder discharges

Year Army Air Force Navy* Marines

2001 805 Unavailable 1,389 443

2002 734 1,523 1,733 460

2003** 980 1,496 1,316 328

2004 988 1,307 1,253 414

2005 1,038 928 1,176 475

2006 (through Nov.) 1,086 1,085 1,076 442

Totals 5,631 6,339 7,943 2,562

The Bush administration has described the two Iranians still being held late Tuesday night as senior military officials. Major General William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for the U.S. command, said that the military, in the raid, had "gathered specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities against Iraqi civilians, security forces and coalition force personnel."

Caldwell made his remarks by e-mail, in response to a query about the raids, first reported Monday in The New York Times. "Some of that specific intelligence," he said via e-mail, "dealt explicitly with force-protection issues, including attacks on MNF-I forces." MNF- I stands for Multinational Force-Iraq, the official name of the U.S.-led foreign forces there.

U.S. officials have long said that the Iranian government interferes in Iraq, but the arrests, in the compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite political leaders, were the first since the U.S. invasion in which officials were offering evidence of the link.

The raids threaten to upset the delicate balance of the three-way relationship between the United States, Iran and Iraq. The Iraqi government has made extensive efforts to engage Iran in security matters in recent months, and the arrests of the Iranians could scuttle those efforts.

Some Iraqis questioned the timing of the arrests, suggesting that the Bush administration had political motives. The arrests came just days before the UN Security Council passed a resolution imposing sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.

The Bush administration has rejected pressure to open talks with Iran on Iraq.

The Iraqi government has kept silent on the arrests, but officials spoke Tuesday night of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations by Iraq's government and its fractured political elite over how to handle the situation.

The Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, had invited the two Iranians during his visit to Tehran, his spokesman said on Sunday, but by Tuesday, some Iraqi officials had begun to question if Talabani had in fact made the invitation.

"We know when they caught them they were doing something," said one Iraqi official, who added that the Iranians did not appear to have formally registered with the government.

Some political leaders speculated that the arrests were intended to derail efforts by Iraqis to deal with Iran on their own by making Iraqis look weak.

But the U.S. military seemed sure of what and whom it had found.

At about 7 p.m. last Wednesday, the military stopped a car in Baghdad and detained four people - three Iranians and an Iraqi. The military released two of them on Friday and the other two on Sunday night, Caldwell said. The Iranian Embassy confirmed the releases.

But the more significant raid came in predawn hours of Thursday morning, when U.S. forces raided a second location, the general said.

The military described it as "a site in Baghdad," but declined to release further details about the location.

Iraqi leaders said last week that the site was the compound of Hakim, who met with President George W. Bush in Washington three weeks ago. A spokesman for Hakim said he had not heard of a raid on the compound.

A careful reading of Caldwell's statement makes it clear, however, that the location itself was of central importance. The military gathered "specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities," it said.

The crimes were against Iraqi civilians, security forces and Americans.

In that raid, U.S. forces detained 10 men, two of them Iranians.

They seized documents, maps, photographs and videos at the location, the military said. The military declined to say precisely what the items showed, nor did it specify if the Iranians themselves were suspected of attacking Americans, or if the Iraqis arrested with them were suspected, or both.

Some Iraqis questioned the U.S. motives, saying that the operation seemed aimed at embarrassing Hakim, the driving force behind a new political grouping backed by the United States to distance militants from the political process.

The allegation, if true, would mark the first time since the U.S. invasion that Iranian military officials were discovered in the act of planning military action inside Iraq. U.S. officials have long accused them of supplying arms and money from Iran, but never of traveling to Iraq and actively taking part in plotting violent acts here.

An official in the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad said that its diplomats had tried to see the detainees but were not allowed to, a refusal that violated international rules, the official said.