The Independent have Jack Straw well and truly cornered:
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Craig Murray, who was sacked as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2004 after alleging that Britain used intelligence obtained by the CIA under torture, said he attended a meeting at the Foreign Office where he was told that “it was not illegal for us to use intelligence from torture as long as we did not carry out the torture ourselves” and claimed this policy came directly from Mr Straw.
The former Foreign Secretary said: “At all times I was scrupulous in seeking to carry out my duties in accordance with the law. I hope to be able to say more about this at an appropriate stage in the future.”
I hope so too, and I hope that the appropriate time is either at the Old Bailey or The Hague.
Straw has climbed down a bit from his days of power and glory, when he told the House of Commons, immediately after sacking me, that there was no such thing as the CIA extraordinary rendition programme and its existence was “Mr Murray’s opinion.” He no longer claims it did not exist and he no longer claims I am a fantasist. He now merely claims he was not breaking the law.
His claim of respect for the law is a bit dubious in the light of Sir Michael Wood’s evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry. Wood said that as Foreign Office Legal Adviser, he and his elite team of in-house FCO international lawyers unanimously advised Straw the invasion of Iraq would be an illegal war of aggression. Straw’s response? He wrote to the Attorney General requesting that Sir Michael be dismissed and replaced. And forced Goldsmith to troop out to Washington and get alternative advice from Bush’s nutjob Republican neo-con lawyers.
Jack Straw did not have any desire to act legally. He had a desire to be able to mount a legal defence of his illegal actions. That is a different thing.
Should any of us live to see the publication of the Chilcot Report, this will doubtless be clear, though probably as a footnote to page 862 of Annex VII. That is how the Westminster establishment works.
The SNP has weighed in on the side of the angels:
Revelations by the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan of the UK’s knowledge and acceptance of torture must see those involved answer questions on what happened.
In an article in the Mail on Sunday, Mr Murray reveals that he attended a meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office where he was told that “it was not illegal for us to use intelligence from torture as long as we did not carry out the torture ourselves” and revealed that this policy came directly from Jack Straw.
Mr Murray also reveals that “there was a deliberate policy of not writing down anything… because there should not be evidence of the policy.”
Craig Murray also states that “for the past year the British Ambassador in Washington and his staff have regularly been lobbying the US authorities not to reveal facts about the UK’s involvement in the CIA torture programme” and claims that is one of the reasons the full Senate report has not been published.
The SNP has called for a full judicial inquiry to be set up as a matter of urgency to get to get to the truth of who knew what and when.
Commenting, SNP Westminster Leader Angus Robertson MP said:
“Mr Murray’s revelation of the attitude taken by then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw only adds to the urgency with which we need a full judicial inquiry.
“Craig Murray’s article lifts the lid on the UK’s role in the human rights abuses that the US Senate has reported on and there can be no more attempts to avoid answering the tough questions that have been posed.
“Clearly answers are needed just as much from the politicians who led us at the time as from those directly involved in what was going on. The need for an independent judicial inquiry is now clear for all to see.
“It is also long past time that the findings of the Chilcot inquiry were published and there can be no more delays to that report being made public.
“There needs to be a full judicial inquiry to get to the bottom of the UK’s involvement in rendition flights that passed through UK territory and the UK’s wider knowledge of the abuses that the Senate has revealed.”
Craig Murray’s revelations can be viewed on page 25 of today’s Mail on Sunday
But with Malcolm Rifkind being promoted everywhere by the BBC to push his cover-up, it remains an uphill struggle.
Ian. 11 30am
Spot on!
In the real world, as the redacted report on the CIA makes even clearer, we have also become aware that in a significant number of cases people were tortured not so they would tell the truth but so that they would tell valuable lies, which could serve as “evidence” that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden.
What Craig did in his evidence was to articulate – more clearly than had been done before by a person who had handled false “evidence” procured by torture – that complicity is not just feeding questions to the torturers and/or sitting in the same room when the torture took place. What is fundamentally immoral is, as Craig expressed it, that “we are creating a market for torture”
From the dock Bliar will be able to tell us, maybe sooner than we expect, about the usefulness of such “valuable lies” when you are spinning yarns that further elite agendas.
We owe it to all those who have been at the destructive end of our tax revenues to push for international and domestic laws to be upheld.
We owe it to ourselves and our soldeirs to turn our society’s armed forces into armed defensive forces and reallocate the budget to socially beneficial uses.
…
Peacewisher. 11 09pm
“I think he is worse than his predecessors in that respect.”
Fair enough. Certainly in the scale of destruction he brought about Bliar is up there with the greats.
But, there’s a long list of countries which have seen British military action between WW2 and Bliar’s time as PM. India, Palestine, Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Cyprus, Egypt, Borneo, Vietnam, Yemen, Oman, Dhofar, Northern Ireland, and the Falklands.
How many more, like Vietnam, had unacknowleged UK military actions?
http://aangirfan.blogspot.ie/2013/12/vietnam-war-secret-uk-involvement.html
How U.S. Torture Led to the Rise of ISIS
From Washingtonsblog
Nice Job Creating Terrorists, You Morons …
We’ve previously noted that many members of ISIS were members of Saddam Hussein’s secular Baath Party who converted to radical Islam in American prisons.
And we’ve documented that torture creates new terrorists.
Indeed, the head of ISIS (al-Baghdadi) spent 4 years as a prisoner at the U.S. Bucca Camp in Iraq.
snip
Indeed, many of the top ISIS commanders – including Abu Ayman al-Iraqi and Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi – were high-level Iraqi officers under Saddam Hussein who were imprisoned at Camp Bucca by American forces.
There was unquestionably widespread torture at Camp Bucca …
Allen Keller M.D. – Assistant Professor of Medicine at the NYU School of Medicine, attending Physician in the Bellevue Hospital Primary Care Medical Clinic, and a recognized expert on torture – documents in the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine various forms of torture at Camp Bucca … including surgeries without anaesthetic, rape and various types of beatings (search for the word “Bucca”).
The Red Cross and 60 Minutes reported that prisoners were shot at Camp Bucca.
The Seattle Times reported in 2004:
A U.S. resident who was held prisoner by the United States in another detention center in Iraq last year says prisoners there were also beaten and sexually humiliated.
Hossam Shaltout said widespread mistreatment by soldiers in Camp Bucca detention center in southern Iraq was as inhumane as that depicted in recent photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
He described Camp Bucca as a “torture camp,” where soldiers beat and humiliated prisoners. He said he saw soldiers tie groups of naked prisoners together. He said they hogtied his hands and legs and placed scorpions on his body.
“American soldiers love scorpions,” Shaltout said in an interview arranged by his U.S. lawyer.
snip
The Washington Post reported in 2004:
On May 12, four soldiers from the 320th Military Police Battalion, based in Ashley, Pa., were charged with beating prisoners after transporting them to Camp Bucca. MPs from a different unit reported the incident, saying the legs of prisoners were held apart while soldiers kicked them in the groin.
The rise of ISIS confirms what we’ve been saying for years … torture reduces our national security:
A former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture turns people into terrorists
A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, says:
Torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/u-s-torture-program-created-isis.html
Giyane @ 11.55 am – Thanks for that reply. However, it leaves one question unanswered and adds another line of argument which I find confusing.
First, as you told me @ 8.18 pm on 16 December, “… I have accused you of a very serious crime, but your FCO mind does not recognise it as a crime.” Further down, you added: “You are a proper nasty piece of bent power”. I AM STILL WAITING FOR YOU TO SET OUT THE PRECISE CHARGES AGAINST ME.
Second, your analogy between the USA’s changed rules of engagement for the War on Terror and the new rules that qualified electricians must abide by from a specific date seems to me to confuse the precise rules and skills of a professional craft and the fluid (and often black) arts of statecraft and diplomacy. Perhaps your analogy was designed to make just that point; if so, I apologise for my dyslexic literality failing to catch your tone of heavy irony.
Again, as Craig told the Joint Committee on Torture :
“What you say about the government’s position is true, but it has done everything possible to disguise its position. I received an email from the Bishop of Bath and Wells who had written to a government minister to say he was worried about the possibility that we were using intelligence from torture as highlighted by the Binyam Mohamed case. He got the reply that was always given which was to refer to the first part of the government’s position that you cited—the bit about condemning torture unreservedly—but not the second part. The government do not volunteer the fact that they very happily accept this information. I make it absolutely plain that I am talking of hundreds of pieces of intelligence every year that have come from hundreds of people who suffer the most vicious torture[2]. We are talking about people screaming in agony in cells and our government’s willingness to accept the fruits of that in the form of hundreds of such reports every year. I want the Joint Committee to be absolutely plain about that.” [Q 104]
On the whole, the Government does not make an effort to disguise its position on new electrical installation regulations.
Judges may be fallible, but at least evidence given to a judge-led inquiry is made under oath and can be tested under cross-examination. Even for practised liars and perjurers, the risks are considerable that they will be exposed. What you get from a politician-led inquiry will be be the easy toleration, by one set of statescraftmen to another set, of ministers and officials being on the austere side of “economical with the truth”.
Iain Orr (and Courtney if you’re there) and anyone else
As you have an interest in islands I thought you might like Dady Chery’s latest article about the struggle of Haitians to return to democracy since the US imposed its puppets there, Martelly and Lamothe. Lamothe has been forced to step down and hopefully Martelly will follow soon. It is time to kick out the Clintons.
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2014/12/15/haiti-time-for-clinton-and-co-to-pack-and-go/
Mary
“Sofia I often recommend that book, The Blood Never Dried. It should be a school text book.”
Perhaps it should, but to balance trot historian John Newsinger’s work (which I have not read, but would imagine focuses entirely on everything bad the British did during centuries of rule across the continents – whilst ignoring any good that might have come out of it – neatly packaged into chapters and presented as a history of the British Empire), would it not be stimulating for young, impresssionable minds to also read an altogether more devastating work, concerning the hundred or so million deaths caused by leftist ideology in the last century alone?
Regrettably, John Newsinger hasn’t published such a book, so perhaps you would like to recommend something for the curriculum?
It does make me wonder where people heads are at. And really highlights the disparity of how we’re meant to act, and they do.
‘If you see a crime, don’t just ignore it. Take part’
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said most of the allegations against British soldiers were “entirely without merit”.
A Litany of Facts from doctorsforiraq.org:
September 2003: Baha Mousa dies in British Army custody in Basra. Inquiry finds death was caused by factors including lack of food and water and stress positions used by British troops.
Dr Abdul Majeed reported the abuses of which these are typical:
Basra family man had face, back and stomach lesions reportedly made me sit in a kneeling position with his head pushed downwards and beaten by soldiers.
Another Basra resident suffering from heat exhaustion and lesions reported while hooded he was left to kneel in the sun for 5 hours. He told Dr Majeed, “If I moved position and bent my head forward at all, a soldier would come and kick me hard.”
A 15yrs teen told medical staff he was sexually abused saying, “The soldier put his boot on my chest and pulled my trousers down. I was shouting and was curled up against the wall. Then the soldier pulled me by my legs away from the wall. He turned me over on my stomach. He started rubbing his penis on my back, while the other soldiers watched. Then I felt him ejaculate on my back. I was trying to move away but another soldier came and pressed his foot on my legs.”
Doctors for Iraq sent statements to me by email. Their web-site has now expired but journals remain such as this report:
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-docs310805.htm
Is there any technical way of finding easily/rapidly posts from John Goss (containing the word “Malvinas”)without having to wade through every single comment made on every thread over the last six months or so?
Thanks.
Exactly Mark; We are of course not either expected to believe our own lying eyes, as there is no way “our boys” would do such nasty things, so this footage showing them inflicted GBH on stone throwing KIDS, as their Officers causally stroll about, must be more Iraqi “lying”;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox7dEq7vI4Y&list=FLXt3Jtv6OH0Z5WtTTOMIqhg&index=88
Ho, hum, Kempe. Think we can say that all grand schemes to enrich the few* at the expense of the many come with a cost in conveniently disposable lives, can’t we? Take globalisation, energetically promoted by ex-Trotskyist converts to corporate greed…
http://www.eldis.org/fulltext/Beaglehole_globalisation.pdf
http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article2342-injury-and-globalisation.html
(for Nevermind) http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/mar/10/globalisation-agriculture-industry-exacerbating-bee-decline
http://www.unaa.org.au/pdfs/Globalization%20and%20Borders.pdf
http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/55/1/3.abstract
f’r instance.
*Neither Stalin nor Mao starved to death in a tin shack.
“Is there any technical way of finding easily/rapidly posts from John Goss (containing the word “Malvinas”)without having to wade through every single comment made on every thread over the last six months or so?”
Have you tried a search-engine? Your “Noddy moments” are getting worse.
“You won’t find this because it does not exist. It comes from the imagination of someone unable to count on both hands.”
Wrong, John. Your original comment about “the indigenous population” of the Falklands, plus the ensuing argument, is on this page here
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/09/31406/#comments
It was in September.
And you now owe Habbakuk an apology. He’s not the one having “Noddy moments”.
Or, to save people scrolling, John’s original comment is here
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/09/31406/#comment-483010
“Is there any technical way of finding easily/rapidly posts from John Goss (containing the word “Malvinas”) without having to wade through every single comment made on every thread over the last six months or so?”
I know only one technique, but mostly it works for me.
Go to Google, and type in
site: craigmurray.org.uk followed by the text you are searching for, with the text enclosed within inverted commas. If this doesn’t work, throw in the name of the commenter as well (after the piece of text).
Fred
16 Dec, 2014 – 5:11 pm
“Sod your poll. Here in the real world I haven’t got a fully staffed accident and emergency department within a hundred miles because the SNP government in Edinburgh have been short changing NHS Highland to the tune of £11 million a year, they’re closing the maternity unit too…”
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
Can you provide anything to back-up that statement Fred?
Also, cuts to public spending in England are translated via a complex set of calculations called the Barnett Formula into cuts to the block grants of funding that go to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Cuts in spending in England will lead to a cut to Scotland’s block grant.
(i.e. less money to spend on public services).
Did you not know that Fred?
Great links n Insights Folks.
Aint this Blog a beacon of Light n Learning – Most of the time 🙂
i thought this was a gem, a few sentences from Noam Chomsky on ‘security’:
” There’s a standard line and belief in international relations theory, in public commentary, and so on, that the main goal of governments is to achieve security. But two questions are never asked. Security for whom, and security *against* whom?
[…]
But a primary enemy is *always* the domestic population.”
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Medialens/147079088662589?fref=nf
Mark Golding
In his interview on the World at One Mark Fallon deliberately tried to confuse the dropping of claims against UK troops because of lack of evidence with an admission by the Iraqis’ lawyers that the claims were untrue. He did it openly and unashamdely in a public broadcast. A judge would not have allowed him to get away with it for one second.
Similarly our Iain has tried to use the pathetic excuse that the FCO tried to conceal its post Blair and Straw policy on torture from its own employees.
Fuctati sumus. We are 100% fucked when employees of Her Majesty’s Government use weasel words and weasel thinking to shift the blame from their superiors on open record.
I have frequently pointed out on this blog that my local Deobandi Imam supports the Taliban. They were heard recently making prayers for the Taliban in Sham/Syria. But obviously that fact is denied.
How does it bode, in the light of the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham, and in the light of yesterday’s attack by the Taliban on innocent children in an army school, for that same imam to be granted a licence by Ofsted to educate children?
With my history of speaking out against government and my exposure of my ex-wife’s infidelities, I would not get a licence in this country to educate children.
That’s why I hope and suggest that yesterday’s attack on the children in Peshawar was a false flag. Tell me it wasn’t the same Taliban supported by my local imam. Tell me it wasn’t the same Taliban committing atrocities on a daily basis against Syria women and Children.
And I’ll tell you young man with so many reasons why, there but for fortune go you or I. I refuse to collude with lies for fear of other people’s lies getting smeared back onto me. Fortune is to possess the clarity of mind to refuse.
The troll’s little helper has done it again.
Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)
16 Dec, 2014 – 5:55 pm
“To be accurate, I said that my position on torture was that I was against it.”
……………………………………………………………………………………………
So not absolutely against it then Habbabkuk, only against it in some circumstances?
“The troll’s little helper has done it again.”
Done what, Mary? Told the truth? Pointed out that despite John’s extreme cockiness, he’s in the wrong?
Not something you would do, obviously. Your “us and them” mentality is so twisted, you would let any lie go unchallenged, as long as it came from someone on “your” side.
And I despise that attitude.
So far we have Guano (claiming) and Mary (insinuating) that the Peshawar attacks are a ‘false flag’ carried out by the West (Muslims are of course harmless, innocent little creatures incapable of any wrongdoing). Would anyone else like to step forward? Or perhaps it would be easier just to ask if anyone who doesn’t believe this could please indicate so.
The current source for these claims appears to be the Aangirfan blogspot, which is operated by a lunatic who believes Fidel Castro was a gay, Jewish, billionaire CIA asset who killed Hugo Chavez. And that’s one of his more moderate claims.
Chilcot – a little leakage?
One well-informed source told The Times that the report’s findings are far more scathing than expected, and have prompted a legal firestorm deep in Britain’s establishment.
“The lawyers are getting called in all over the shop,” he told the paper, emphasizing the report was “more punchy” than people had anticipated.
Former military officials central to the inquiry, who were embroiled in the planning and execution of the 2003 invasion, are said to be particularly irate.
http://rt.com/uk/215191-iraq-inquiry-shock-westminister/
OK, it’s RT. But it’s quite credible when damning the UK establishment, naturally enough.
Iain
The crime I am accusing you of is not having the faculty of imagination which Craig so openly displayed in the piece you quoted.
“I make it absolutely plain that I am talking of hundreds of pieces of intelligence every year that have come from hundreds of people who suffer the most vicious torture[2]. We are talking about people screaming in agony in cells and our government’s willingness to accept the fruits of that ..”
When you plan the wiring design of a kitchen , some customers have no visual imagination, they ask for things , you fit them, they see them, they go to Wickes and buy something else , you unfit the first thing and fit the second thing and they complain about the expense of it all.
It isn’t a crime obviously to lack imagination. But it sure helps to get to the bottom of things first time if don’t have to see things in front of you in order to imagine them. As I say you don’t even see it as a crime. So really end of story. End of story. I’m not going to discuss the abscence of imagination as a crime.
The Times is reporting something similar, but then we’ve been hearing this same story for at least the last year:
Whitehall shockwaves over Chilcot draft report
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4299548.ece
Anon
Guano wishing and hoping that this is not the same Taliban my local imam makes prayers for, sends young men to fight for or train with.
What I say is, please God let it be a false-flag by the West and not the miliary Islamic group supported by the majority of practising Muslims in Birmingham.
Giyane
What you said was:
“Aangirfan, spot on as usual about CIA false-flag terror against Muslims.
http://aanirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/cia-gangsters-attack-school-in-pakistan.html“
Why would military officials — as opposed to politicians and government lawyers — be central to the Chilcot inquiry?
Dreoilin; “And you now owe Habbakuk an apology. He’s not the one having “Noddy moments””
You’ve linked to this comment by John;
““Or was it the Brits invading Argentina…?”
No, like all the other imperialists that drove out or enslaved the indigenous population, they did that centuries ago to steal land and resources. Oil (petrodollars) is what they want to keep their greedy hands on now.”
Err, there’s no mention of ““Malvinas/Falklands” !!
I think the apology is actually due from you to John.
Habbabkuk saying he is against torture is absolutely meaningless. But everything else he says is meaningless also. That’s why I call him Bah! Humbug.
You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, …
Anon
Yes Sir. That was wishful thinking. How many times do I have to repeat it?