It is four years now since I was sacked as Ambassador for opposing MI6’s use of intelligence gained from torture and passed to MI6 by the CIA under the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Telegram.pdf
Yet with incredible hypocrisy, four years after I exposed the whole evidence, David Miliband continues to trot out the barefaced lie that the UK does not support or condone torture.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/05/guantanamo-miliband-torture
even while referring to yet another case that proves beyond doubt that the UK receives torture intelligence from the CIA.
Meanwhile parliament continues to behave as though this is a terrible thing they knew nothing about. I am still furious that I was called to testify before both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, while the British parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee refused to accept my evidence.
None so blind as those who will not see. The stinking hypocrisy on this issue extends beyond New Labour.
None so blind as those who will not see. The stinking hypocrisy on this issue extends beyond New Labour.
————
That’s as maybe but you have to start somewhere. Power corrupts and all that.
Yet, there are still people who will take the ‘well, he wouldn’t have been arrested if he hadn’t done something wrong’ view.
Oh dear, Craig, when you signed up you evidently forgot the old saying that an ambassador is someone sent to lie abroad for his country.
Aside from the hypocrisy, consider this.
Intelligence sharing is, apparently, at risk if it is revealed that America tortures captives.
Truth is, America has tortured captives. George Bush, it is openly admitted, authorised waterboarding. Mohamed Al Qatani was tortured at Guantanamo Bay. Susan Crawford, a Bush appointee and military lawyer, has stated as much.
So what exactly was the Government’s argument? That national security is at risk if we reveal America does something we already know it does?
Far more plausible it seems to me is that the US government has consented to our government using the national security threat argument in court. The argument, for reasons I outline above, is daft on the face of it.
But it does allow Nu Labour to continue to deny British complicity in torture.
Mission accomplished, no?
I often wonder whether or not Miliband’s father (Ralph) would have been proud of him and his brother.
Unlike the US government, (which from the beginning of the ‘war on terror’ was concerned about the legal ramifications of authorising torture and brutality, after all these things are illegal in the United States, and the Americans have signed international treaties prohibiting torture) the UK government has to be extremely careful about using or being complicit in the use of torture, because the UK is a member of the European Union, where the absolute ban on torture is taken very seriously, and the UK government has to deal with the European Convention on Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
So the consequences for UK citizens, politicians, civil-servants, police, security services and the military of taking part in torture, abuses of human rights, or helping others break international law, are potentially very serious indeed. Therefore pretending that the US doesn’t use torture, and surpressing evidence of torture and that the UK isn’t helping them out, might mean the difference between going to jail at some future point or being publically disgraced. It’s important that knowing or even suspecting that torture is taking place and doing nothing to stop it, ignoring it, is, in itself a crime under European and international law. The defence of saying ‘I was only obeying orders’ is not accepted as a real defence anymore, for obvious reasons.
No, there’s not much truth around in any field. As a senior-ish Engineer (now retired) for a very large British company, I reached a reasonable level but always looked for further progress up the ladder. At one career discussion I had with my then boss, who was actually one of the best bosses I have had (and not an Engineer), he told me very straightforwardly that I was too honest to make any further progress. “Particularly,” he said, “as you have so many dealings with Americans!”
“The stinking hypocrisy on this issue extends beyond New Labour.”
I’m not surprised about the Tories. What’s your view on how the LibDems are performing on this, Craig?
What is a man without his word?
If the law can sack a man for his words, and yet dismiss those words when politically expedient, then there is no reason for that man or those that share his predicament, to follow that law or its authority.
Today men are literally being presumed guilty until proved innocent, and the words of that proof falls upon deaf ears, plugged with quota filling bureaucracy.
Here on the Isle of Wight, the police are bragging about their “operation” to target a few “known criminals”, in order to reduce the crime in Cowes; ensuring the reader is only given the annual statistic change and not the actual number of crimes in a small rural town!
Insurrections are dangerous bloody things; but then so are tyrannies.
I’ve just hear an arrogant, ignorant, bastard, on the radio going on and on about torture and how the liberals assume naively that the prisoners taken by the Americans are innocent, when we all know they are violent and evil men, who wish to attack and kill us… because they are evil and violent men… effectively for no real reason at all. They want to kill us for no reason… other than they are bad men.
But does this kind of argument make any sense whatsoever? Is there any evidence, any historical example one can point to, where ‘terrorists’ have travelled far from their homes, around the world, declared war against a state, a people, are ready to kill innocent people they don’t know, are ready to die themselves, for no reason? Are ‘terrorists’ really that frivolous? One could, I suppose make the case that they want to kill us for no reason, but that they’ed kill and sacrifice themselves for no reason, seems far fetched and it really doesn’t stand up to rational analysis. Then there is the terrible revenge they know we will take on their countries. For every without reason death they impose on us, we will rain down death and destruction on them a hundred, or a thousand fold.
Then he went on, such a conceited prick, a guy with an agressive and hectoring persona, a mini-demagogue of the airways; he went on to bring up the old chesnut of ‘what would you do if you knew that torturing a terrorist prisoner, who knew where a bomb was hidden, could save thousands of innocent lives? Come on leftie-liberals, answer me that one!’
Now, as far as I am aware, this particular scenario has never been encountered in the real world. It is a totally fabricated, theoretical, construct, cleverly designed to excuse the use of torture. But this argument is full of holes. It only exists in the mind as a shabby trick to cloud the minds of the gullable and those who don’t think clearly. It’s pure manipulation.
What happens if one goes down this slippery slope using torture and the prisoner still won’t answer? Yet somehow one knows, somehow with 100% certainty that he knows where a bomb is hidden. Does one then, in order to save thousands of lives grab his wife and begin to torture her? What about torturing his child, is that acceptable? After all what is one life compared to the lives of hundreds or thousands?
But of course we then begin to use precisely the same kind of logic, cynicism, brutality and methods employed by the terrorists who we condemn as evil men, don’t we? If one is prepared to do evil in the service of good, does that make ones actions any less evil? Is there ‘good’ torture and ‘bad’ torture? Is there, as this prick, who has a show on British radio five days a week, thinks, a moral argument that justifies the use of torture?
To hear this kind of fascim on the radio is hard to take. The Nazis used this kind of argument too. All totalitarians do it, all the time. The argument of what is expedient. One has to be prepared to get ones hands dirty in order to protect our way of life, but then our way of life becomes dirty and tainted to be the use of these methods, doesn’t it?
In the real world torture isn’t used to get useful information because everyone knows that people will say whatever it is they think you want to hear. The quality of the information obtained through torture is rubbish. The truth is, we don’t torture to get useful information, but to terrorise the enemy, torture is a tactic, not dissimilar to terrorism, in fact it is a form of terrorism. So in order to fight terror, we use terror and we become terrorist ourselves.
Speaking of torture, does anyone recall how at the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal it was glibly reported on the telly that the reason a bunch of ill-educated crackers from the US were sexually humiliating Arabs was because this was the best way to break an Arab’s resistance. All delivered in a ‘well everyone knows that…’ fashion. We were all meant to nod and the next day at the water cooler were meant to say, ‘Yeah well, that is the best way to break Arabs…’ like we knew what we were talking about.
I don’t know about anyone else but I didn’t nod. I was too busy thinking Huh?! Who the hell knew that? Where did that come from? As if a bunch of nascar-watching blue collars were going to know how to break Arabs? Best I can tell, Americans can barely tell Sunni from Shia. Americans all thought the Arab world’s most secular leader was in cahoots with the Arab world’s most extreme fundamentalists. Like that ever made a lick of sense.
But it seems that somebody knew that sexually humiliating Arabs was the way to go. Somebody out there was an expert in the precise way to torture and break Arabs. And these somebodies not only told the US military that this is how things are done but also had the media tell us too. Mind you, I’m pretty sure the media didn’t need to be told to deviate from what was written on the autocue. They can always be trusted to say whatever it is they’re told to, as if it was true. As if the media would ever say ‘As if’.
Before Eddie lobs in and starts using his chief weapon of anti-Semitism, let me cut him off short and say no, it wasn’t the Israelis. The IDF is the most moral army in the world. Ehud Olmert said so, and he wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true. And whilst he didn’t say that Mossad is the most moral spy agency in the world, I’m perfectly certain that they’re precisely as morally unimpeachable as the IDF. Ain’t that so Eddie?
I think Eddie#s gone off in a huff.
Can’t this Ethiopian just be put up against a wall and shot?
‘I think Eddie#s gone off in a huff.’
‘Can’t this Ethiopian just be put up against a wall and shot?’
Looks like Eddie just changed his name.
There’s an infamous book, called, if I remember correctly, something along the lines of ‘The Arab Mind’ written by an American, which has become highly influential in right-wing and military circles, especially in the United States. I can’t remember who wrote it, sorry.
The books attitude to Arabs, their culture and psychology is deeply flawed and deeply rascist. The book is almost a blueprint for many of the methods used to humiliate and break Arabs in the American Gulag system.
The Americans – who think they know everything about everything and commonly know very little about almost anything – are good at producing this kind of trash [usually written from some bigoted religious perspective]. A classic example in the 1950s was “The Naked Communist” by W. Cleon Skousen [Google him]. This became the political bible of ‘moral crusaders’ such as Mary Whitehouse.
anticant
Really doesn’t help if you treat Americans as a group. Just like treating Arabs as a group, Jews as a group, British as a group. Utterly pointless and sheds no light on anything. There are good Americans and there are bad. There a intelligent Americans and there are unintelligent. Judge them by what they write as individuals.
“Sudan: Israel arming Darfur rebels”…
http://tinyurl.com/b6plto
“The Americans – who think they know everything about everything and commonly know very little about almost anything”
I confess I think like this quite often. But Ron is right, and it’s mainly the far-right-wing, the Christian fundies, and many of the military who fit the above. I was directed to a blog that would scare the pants off you if you thought there were many of these folk around. Apparently they’re mostly military and ex-military, and this is borne out in the comments, if you care to read some. If you poke around, you’ll see they promote genocide of Palestinians, and see no double standard there when the laud the “IDF” (‘Israeli Heavily-Armed Forces’.)
http://nicedoggie.net/2009/
Craig the real question I kept asking myself is why did Paxman Snow etc not mention your book and the clear evidence that they were colluding in torture. Just finished you new book and its a great read now when is your guide for a new Foreign policy for Scotland. Hugh Kerr
Agreed. Ron, but for my money there are far too high a proportion of noisy boneheaded chauvinistic American bullshitters to give me much confidence in the US of A.
Obama’s books “Dreams from my Father” and “Audacity of Hope” are thoughtful, very well written and in places inspiring. But I judge people by what they do – not by what they say – and so far, the Obama presidency has not drawn the clear lines in the sand which many of us were hoping for. It’s already pretty obvious that he isn’t going to say “boo” to the pervasive Zionist lobby, and that Bush’s fatally flawed Middle East policy is set to run and run.
anticant.
“judge people by what they do – not by what they say” contains a very interesting scenario: E.g. if someone says I promise you a 10% pay rise, but ratifies only a 7% pay rise, then that makes them a peddler of false statements right? I don’t think actions alone curry favour exclusively.
The problem is of course the intention for 10% may have been there yet the mechanics of 10% weren’t possible. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t proclaim stuff, but should be aware the potential for malicious abuse by hiding behind such a defence.
Promises aren’t actions until they are performed.
I enjoyed the pasting Shami gave the war criminal Buff Hoon last night on QT. Strangely there was no mention of the CIA jets that were whizzing in and out of this country with their cargoes. I am ashamed to be British. Rendition and torture – what horrible words for very evil acts.
If there’s anyone around still willing to defend the Bush/Blair Middle Eastern policy, they [and the rest of you] should read “The Spiders of Allah” by James Hider: one of the most deeply depressing books I’ve read lately.
“The stinking hypocrisy on this issue extends beyond New Labour.”
Conscient that the mass media are in their pockets, they are using the big lie technique. Who controls all this, Craig ?
Tony Blair is poised to become the first President of Europe
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1138757/President-Blair-Former-PM-set-EU-chief-Sarkozy-battles-win-post.html
In the comments, the war criminal Bliar gets a pounding:
“This has to be the final slap in the face for Britain. Not only did he destroy the country, seeminly yet again Blair is to be rewarded for his acts. That Britain is to be forced to be part of this European superstate nonsense is an insult; that Blair should head it is flat out disgusting.”
– Stewart, Toronto, Canada, 07/2/2009 23:21
So now you have in your hands the skunk who engineered your present situation. Well what are you going to do about it ?.
– wpo, warsaw n.y., 07/2/2009 23:19
Secret police unit set up to spy on British ‘domestic extremists’
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1138755/Secret-police-unit-set-spy-British-domestic-extremists.html
Torture is OK for the ragheads and coloureds right? That seems to be the message I’m hearing. And as soon as the public become conditioned to that, we start torturing our “domestic extremists” and denying that too.
Also – UK intel is apparently immune from prosecution if they have the OK from FCO. Even torture-loving SIS types would surely have got written approval for torture…so lets the see paperwork then. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear…or is the reason it is being covered up is that the FCO/Foreign Sec etc were too yellow-bellied to sign off on torture, fearing exposure if the docs were ever leaked deny. Anyone complicit should be in jail.
In his wonderfully shocking and uplifting book Murder in Samarkand and later campaigning Craig Murray has done the greatest service to our country and the world. By showing some of the the ways that ostensibly “democratic” governments (including our own) abandon morality in the name of expediency he shines a searchlight onto today’s politics. As a long retired ex-Intelligence officer, civil servant and company director, I can only hope that a new generation of public servants and politicians will be inspired by his example to cleanse public life of the rottenness Craig Murray exposes
In his wonderfully shocking and uplifting book Murder in Samarkand and later campaigning Craig Murray has done the greatest service to our country and the world. By showing some of the the ways that ostensibly “democratic” governments (including our own) abandon morality in the name of expediency he shines a searchlight onto today’s politics. As a long retired ex-Intelligence officer, civil servant and company director, I can only hope that a new generation of public servants and politicians will be inspired by his example to cleanse public life of the rottenness Craig Murray exposes
Thanks for your honesty, John Arnold.
Did you see “The Plot Against Harold Wilson (2006) (TV)” ?
Did you help expose rottenness too or was the conspiracy and corruption only visible higher up in the hierarchy ?
What woke you up to the corruption ?