One aspect of the war in Iraq that needs thorough evaluation at the end of hostilities is the role played by women in the armed forces of America and Britain.

The nauseating images coming out of the Abu Ghraile prison took my mind back 60 years, when the world was shocked to discover the extent of the involvement of German women in the depravity and killing that was going on in the concentration camps of the Third Reich.

Many of them were in positions of authority, working under the camp gauleiters and were remarkably unrepentant at their subsequent war trials.

We know that the American general in charge of prisons in Iraq was a woman, as was the person who was shown humiliating male prisoners.

Militant feminists in America eventually succeeded in pressurising their government and military establishment into agreeing to a fully integrated training and deployment system for both men and women, even to the extent of using women in the front line with all the risks of capture and worse that might be involved.

In Britain similar arrangements were introduced by the current Labour government. Since then the media have had a field day titillating us with stories of testosterone-fuelled sexual immorality in the Armed Forces.

Apparently, the officers of the Royal Hussars, which used to be one of the crack regiments in the British Army, spend much of their time betting on who will be their next female conquest. Whatever happened to the honour of the regiment?

The Navy has allowed women to go to sea alongside men and, surprise, surprise, a similar pattern of behaviour has emerged. The RAF still appears to have a clean bill of health.

The people I feel sorry for in all this are the wives left at home. The stupid decision to allow female soldiers to go to Iraq will act as a religious affront to most Muslims and is likely to inflame the local population against the coalition.

We should go back to only allowing women to be used in support roles in units such as the ATS, WRENS and WAAFs, which have recently been disbanded. They have served the nation with great distinction since before the Second World War.

Any self-respecting country must do all it can to protect its women folk in times of war, not allow them to be brutalised or degraded. Having made these remarks, I would like to pay tribute to all the British and Coalition forces fighting so gallantly for a better Iraq.

-Alan Nunn, Hove