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Telegraph | Opinion: “Army allegiance

Sir - Those who serve our Commander-in-Chief - Her Majesty the Queen - will never understand why her government has subjected them to legislation based upon treaty obligations between her first minister and many foreign governments to whom they owe no allegiance, and whose armed forces they may one day be called upon to fight (Letters, July 26).

Lt Col J. Swabey (rtd), Chalfont St Giles, Bucks”

The Daily Telegraph Letters

26 July 2005

Sir - One thing worse than terrorism is a police state.

Anthony Plunkett, Loughborough, Leics
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Soldiers rewarded with prosecution

Sir - I don’t think I have ever felt so angry as over the politically motivated persecution of our active Servicemen by the present administration (Opinion, July 23). Could you not name those government officials and lawyers behind the prosecutions so that they can be subject to public approbation?

Lord Vinson, Alnwick, Northumberland

Sir - The treatment being meted out to Col Jorge Mendonca and other soldiers who have served under extremely difficult circumstances, in a conflict of which many of them may disapprove, but which none the less they have prosecuted with decency, honour and courage, sits strangely with a Government where the principles of ministerial responsibility seems a far-distant memory.

Ministers seem oblivious to their own mistakes and shortcomings and seldom accept that they may have erred. They have been rewarded with further preferment, in some cases redundancy pay and re-instatement, continued use of grace-and-favour houses by a Prime Minister who has relied heavily on the commitment and loyalty of the Armed Forces to prosecute a foreign policy which a large proportion of the electorate finds distasteful.

Christopher Suter, Dorchester, Dorset

Sir - The soldiers in Iraq have endured for two years the tensions that the Metropolitan Police chiefs have been under for approximately three weeks.

Should the marksman who fired the shots be prosecuted? If not, shouldn’t Sir Ian Blair be prosecuted? Isn’t he more culpable than Col Mendonca? Sir Ian approved the policy and the garb under which the marksman operated.

Col Mendonca in making decisions had to bear in mind that scores of his men had been badly wounded by gunfire. Sir Ian, thankfully, had no such burden in respect of his men.

R. Carty, Wallasey, Wirral