YOU can almost understand it. Tense British troops, not knowing whom the next roadside bomb would account for, had been subject to numerous petty attacks before they managed to get their hands on some of the gang who had been stoning them.

This was the outrage that broke the camel's back. Beatings were administered to release the tensions and to pay back every other confrontational situation encountered in a six-month tour.

But their training - cool and detached and able to make the right decisions under the most deadly of fire - is meant to stop them behaving in this way.

Randomly dragging people off the street and beating them is something only tyrants and dictators do.

The reason British troops are in Iraq is that we are supposed to be better than Saddam Hussein. We abide by democracy and the rule of law - we cannot, then, dispense summary justice with fists and boots.

Of course, our politicians are right: these incidents should not be blown out of proportion. There have been 80,000 British troops through Iraq, and there have been only the smallest number of problems.

But let's look at it another way. When the Iraqis returned to their mothers, the stories of their beatings would have spread like wildfire among those resentful about having armed foreigners boss them about in their own homeland.

As the stories were told, the innocence of those beaten would have been exaggerated; the nature of their injuries would have become more and more savage.

The British would have looked the same as the Americans, who are guilty of abuse from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay.

To us, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Pakistan all look the same. To those in the Middle East, America, Britain, Denmark, Norway must also look the same.

In such tense circumstances, a petty attack leads to a disproportionate response.

A stoning leads to a brutal beating - 42 blows in a minute.

A cartoon in an obscure Danish newspaper leads to a riot - flags are burned, embassies are torched.

You can almost understand it.