The depravity at work in Abu Ghraib evokes Ronald Merrick in Jewel in the Crown.

One remembers a passage from the moving speech given by Lieut. Col. Tim Collins to the Irish Regiment on going into Iraq last March:

"If you harm the regiment or its history by over-enthusiasm in killing or in cowardice, know it is your family who will suffer. You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest for your deeds will follow you down through history. We will bring shame on neither our uniform or our nation.

* * *

Wonder what reservist Lynndie England's parents thought when their interview defending her as a "paper-pusher" in "the wrong place at the wrong time" hit the wires simultaneous with a new photo of her holding a leash around the neck of a naked prisoner?

Cat heads and simulated rape? How could this have been countenanced? What accounted for the total breakdown of discipline that allowed such grotesque behavior to go unchecked?

Because we have an open society, these questions will be aired in public, as they should. And the Arabs and anti-Americans will howl in selective indignation.

It will be a shame if the brutality of a few in the American military overshadows the service of the majority. Imagine if nobody remembered the 9/11 sacrifice of the NYPD, but only remembered Abner Louima.