Having served in my time as an officer in both the Sri Lankan Army and the Australian Army, I have always had sympathy for, and an empathy with, the men and women who serve in the armed forces of their countries.

So it was with relief that I read the news on Thursday of the Iranian government releasing the 15 British service personnel (seven Royal Marines and eight sailors, including one female, from the British Navy frigate HMS Cornwall) who were captured on March 23rd . These men and woman were arrested by the Iranian coast guard after their boats allegedly entered Iranian waters; they remained in captivity for the past 12 days, while the British government sought the support of its allies (from the Americans to the European Union) to obtain their release. Meanwhile photographs and television footage of the captured personnel were shown repeatedly by the international media. These included TV Clips of the sailors appearing comfortable in captivity, eating and smoking — and also admitting their guilt, using large wall-maps to demonstrate that they were in fact trespassing within Iran’s maritime boundaries. The British Defence Secretary Des Browne meanwhile condemned all this, claiming it was "completely unacceptable to parade our people in this way".

Watching all this on TV, what struck me was what a difference there was between the Iranians’ treatment of their captured prisoners — and the treatment meted out to prisoners of war by other so-called civilised nations. History has recorded innumerable cases of the inhuman treatment that was inflicted during the last century to captured enemy personnel — from the Katyn Forest massacre by the Soviets of over 21,000 Polish prisoners in 1940 to the more recent massacre by the LTTE of our own Sri Lankan soldiers who surrendered at Mullaitivu on July 19th 1996.

While British newspapers last week persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine television footage of the captured personnel and conclude that the only woman in the group, Leading Seaman Faye Turney, appeared ‘unhappy and distressed’, L/S Turney herself wrote to her family that she was being treated respectfully and comfortably. Even if she was writing what she was told to write, there appeared no evidence to the contrary if one judged from what one could see.

What a contrast, I thought, to the treatment meted out to Iraqi prisoners by the Americans who went to Iraq, in the words of George Bush, to "restore democracy" to that ancient country. Unlike what the Americans did at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq, there was no sign of the Iranians putting hoods over the heads and masking tape over the mouths of their prisoners. There was no evidence of electric shocks being applied nor signs of beatings nor degrading photographs of naked prisoners hung upside down or placed in humiliating positions.

Maybe the Iranians, whose civilization goes back a few thousand years, don’t understand western values yet. Maybe George Bush will find an excuse to invade that country so he can send in his troops — including the 372nd Military Police Company — to get rid of President Ahmadinejad and restore Florida-style democracy to Iran. His soldiers could then deal with captured prisoners and repeat some of the ‘sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses’ (I quote from the US Army’s own 2004 report by Major General Antonio Taguba) that were perpetrated on Iraqi prisoners in American custody.

For myself, if I ever had to choose between becoming a prisoner of war of either the Iranians or the Americans, I know to which soldiers I would surrender.

And it certainly would not be to those from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.