Soldiers aren’t social workers, Mr Cameron. Remember that before taking on hopeless wars

The ghost people, the letter people. The ones we hear about in court but never call by their real name; instead, Baby P and Girl A. And now Marine A. They remain hidden from us for reasons which are, one supposes, rational and sensible, but somehow this non-naming magnifies our shame or abhorrence at whatever has befallen them, or what they have done. It must be bad if we’re to strip them of their identities, no? Eventually they shuffle off the stage, after some sort of justice has been dispensed, still in some cases anonymous, shrouded.

Shuffle off, indeed. Marine A dispatched a Taleban insurgent with a bullet to the chest and a quote from Shakespeare which he had usefully expanded and modernised: ‘Shuffle off this mortal coil, you cunt,’ he said as he pulled the trigger. Marine A’s job was to dispatch Taleban insurgents with or without recourse to Hamlet; but not, of course, when the insurgent is a prisoner of war, which this one was.