Historic Allegations are the New Welfare Claim Forms

Britannia should be dashed proud of having armed forces full of people who do a dangerous job for money and thus do not in the least resemble miners, aid workers or prostitutes, according to Mad Tessie's latest moral eructation. The dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK was lecturing reporters in New York about allegations of murder, abuse and torture having been carried out by the soldiers of Albion during the late crusade in Iraq. Although the Conservative Party does not believe all Iraqis are liars, any more than it believes all immigrants are parasites or all poor people shirkers - or any more than it once believed all single mothers were scroungers, or all gay men were corrupters of children, or all wogs were niggers - the fact remains that some people are abusing the system; which in this case means exactly what that particular fact always means in the Conservative Party, namely that it's time to put the boot into someone. Mad Tessie has vowed to kick out the "industry of vexatious allegations" which, among other things, wants the Ministry of Wog-Bombing to come clean about its orders to the troops on the ground regarding acceptable methods of interrogation. As always, Her Majesty's Government will allow its soldiers' reputations to be tarnished only as a very last resort, viz. when the only foreseeable alternative is the likely exposure of some non-fighting, non-dying, slightly overweight men in suits to the inconvenience of public scrutiny.