Oh yes! Oh yes! You're gonna get it. Yes, naughty little boys. You little fuckers, you little fuckers. Die. Ha Ha.

A video published by News of the World on Sunday shows British soldiers abusing Iraqi children. The video was taken in 2004, one of the soldiers was apparently taken into custody Sunday evening. (The Guardian article)

Already facing a couple of accusations over abuse cases, the British Army seems to take up the American defence line of accusing individual soldiers and their direct supervisors of wrongdoing. But this "black-sheep" argument is insufficient: Britain is both participating in the human-rights breaching torture actions of the United States (as the HRW report shows) and part of the occupation of Iraq that can be upheld only through force.

In the broader context of governmental human right violation policies and military occupation, it's an almost surreal move of the Army to depict the abusing soldiers as the black sheep of a clean armed force. Abuse cases can hardly be seen as exceptions when the overall policies and institutions see human right abuses and military occupation as a necessairy means.

Stating that the overall majority of soldiers behave well, as the Army did, is a highly unfair move towards the soldiers. The frequent outbursts of violence (be it intentional or unintentional) is an almost logical result of the British politics of violence. And when those outbursts actually get known to the public it's highly hypocritical to shift the responsibility of those who helped forming the politics of violence (like PM Blair) to a few low-rank soldiers.