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From: Linda on 25 Jul 2008 19:37
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/21/torture/index.html

Leaders of the free world
(updated below)
Glenn Greenwald

In Britain, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons has
just issued its Human Rights Annual Report (.pdf). It concluded that
America's word can no longer be trusted when it comes to claims about
torture, rendition and human rights abuses. From The Guardian
yesterday:

Britain can no longer believe what Americans tell us about torture, an
MPs' report to be published today claims. . . .

In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign
Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value
statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that
America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting
it used "waterboarding". The interrogation technique was unreservedly
condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to
torture.

A change in approach would have implications for extradition of
prisoners to the US, especially in terror or security cases, as the UK
has signed the UN convention which bars sending individuals to nations
where they are at risk of being tortured. . . .

Today's committee report said there were "serious implications" of the
striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to
believe the Bush administration when it denies using torture. "The UK
can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and
we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in
the future," said the committee. "We also recommend that the
government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of
current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information
as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US."

The BBC noted that the report also concluded that the British
Government must not trust the word of the U.S. Government in light of
prior deceit with regard to rendition:
The MPs also challenged the government to check more actively that
Britain had not been used by the Americans for so called "rendition"
flights -- when detainees are taken to countries where bans on torture
may not apply.

The UK had repeatedly accepted assurances that it had not, but it was
discovered earlier this year that two rendition planes refuelled on
the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Earlier this year, the British Government suffered substantial
embarrassment as a result of this:
Britain's denials that its territories have been used for
"extraordinary rendition" were dramatically undermined last night
after the United Nations claimed that Diego Garcia has been used as a
detention centre to hold US suspects. . . .

The revelations raise fresh questions about the island's role in the
process of extraordinary rendition -- moving suspects to interrogation
centres in third-party countries where they are held outside the law
-- and why the UK government was apparently unaware that its ally was
operating a prison on Diego Garcia to house so-called "high-value
detainees".

If Britain -- one of America's closest allies during the Bush era --
is openly proclaiming that it cannot trust the word of our government,
then who can? Moreover, Britain has hardly been a standard-bearer of
human rights itself over the last seven years. Indeed, while our
political class in the U.S. is busy covering-up and immunizing our
Government's lawbreaking and human rights abuses, members of both the
British Left and Right are joining together to demand investigations
into what appears to be compelling evidence that their own
intelligence officials abducted British citizens and turned them over
to Pakistani security services in order to be interrogated and
tortured:
MPs are calling for an investigation into allegations that British
intelligence has "outsourced" the torture of British citizens to
Pakistani security agencies after hearing accounts of people being
abducted and subjected to mistreatment and, in some cases, released
without charge.

John McDonnell, the Labour member for Hayes and Harlington, and Andrew
Tyrie, Conservative member for Chichester, say the allegations should
be examined by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), the
Westminster body that oversees the Security Service, MI5, and the
Intelligence Service, MI6. . . .

However, details of three new cases have raised concerns among MPs.

McDonnell says he wants to know whether British officials colluded in
the abuse of one of his constituents.

The man, a medical student, said he was abducted at gunpoint in August
2005 and held for two months at the offices of Pakistan's Intelligence
Bureau opposite the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi. The
student, who has not spoken out before, has described how he was
whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep, threatened with execution and
witnessed other inmates being tortured.

He was questioned about the suicide attacks on London's transport
network in July of that year, and says that after being tortured by
Pakistani agents he was questioned by British intelligence officers.
He was released to his father, who says he received a personal apology
from the director of the Intelligence Bureau.

For the British, of all countries, to conclude in a formal Report that
the U.S. is essentially an untrustworthy rogue nation when it comes to
human rights abuses -- "The committee's conclusions amount to saying
we can no longer rely on assurances from a US administration that
purports to uphold the civil and political standards of behaviour," as
MP Andrew Tyrie put it -- is about as potent an indictment of how far
we've fallen as one can imagine.

UPDATE: I'll be on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman tomorrow morning,
along with University of Chicago Law Professor (and Obama adviser)
Cass Sunstein, to debate Sunstein's views on matters such as torture,
FISA, and whether Bush lawbreakers should be prosecuted (I referenced
some of his recent comments on those topics here). Our segment will be
between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. EST tomorrow and I'll post the exact time
once I know it. Local listings and live audio or video feed are here.

When I wrote over the weekend about Sunstein's remarks urging that
Bush officials not be investigated or prosecuted for their crimes, I
was relying on Ari Melber's (accurate) report in The Nation about
Sunstein's Netroots Nation panel. As amazing as I found Sunstein's
remarks based on Melber's summary, they're even more amazing when
heard in their entirety, which one can listen to here (the whole Q-and-
A session, beginning at 38:00, is what is so instructive -- John Dean
is seated on the left and Sunstein is in the middle. The first several
questions from the audience are superb and the answers from the panel,
from Sunstein in particular, are . . . not superb).

[I'll be on Democracy Now beginning at roughly 8:00 a.m. EST to
discuss first the funding issues surrounding the Democratic National
Convention (discussed here), and then, roughly at 8:20 a.m. EST, the
discussion with Cass Sunstein will begin. The segment will be posted
to the website later today].

-- Glenn Gr
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