The torture memos show how illegal wars turn even the nicest people bad

[CHIMO]

Something is wrong. A ­sensible, clean-living chap such as David ­Miliband wants nothing more ­sinister than to lead the Labour party, yet he finds himself consorting with spies, lawyers, rendition merchants and torturers. His only ­experience of coercion was waterboarding British school teachers with targets and red tape. Now he must defend the interrogators of Guantánamo and explain away the bloodstained cells of Pakistan and Morocco.

Whatever plaudits were due to ­Foreign Office lawyers during the ­Chilcot inquiry have been expunged by this week's revelation of their antics in trying to conceal details of post-9/11 ­torture by British agents. The security services were clearly implicated in the brutal questioning of the Guantánamo inmate, Binyam Mohamed – treatment so bad as to render his trial unsafe and force his release.

Papers revealed by the high court depict a Foreign Office running about stamping on a stream of embarrassing disclosures, largely because Miliband was desperate not to seem a wimp in front of his hero, Hillary Clinton. We now know that both Miliband and the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, told an untruth in asserting, as the latter said last October, that British security services do not practise torture, "nor do we collude in torture or solicit others to torture people on our behalf".

While the definition of torture is moot, at least five relevant incidents in Guantánamo are admitted. On Wednesday, Miliband was forced to hire the maestro of Whitehall autocracy, Jonathan Sumption QC, to demand that the Master of the Rolls censor his damning judgment of Miliband to avoid giving further pain to ministers. We must assume that Miliband did not trust his own lawyers to do this dirty work. All this is because Britain believes that publishing details of what interrogators did to its residents would lead Washington to retaliate by not warning of an ­impending terror attack on London. The belief is absurd.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/11/miliband-mi5-terrorism-war-chilcot

[Solly Mack]

1. Miliband deserves to go to prison same as the rest of them.

(Blair, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, Bybee, etc.. fairly long list)

" told an untruth " Snort...he lied...and he did so to hide the crimes.