Weasel Words 723


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.


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723 thoughts on “Weasel Words

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  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Very quiet here – apart from me, of course! 🙂

    Is it tea-time in Britain, are you all scoffin’ and troughin’ away, droopy chops working away frantically, bellies burstin’ out of waistbands?

  • Republicofscotland

    “Ah! Yes any old excuse to resume bombing women and children again.”

    “Quite a weighty, meaty thought there! LOL”
    ……………………………….

    Habb=itual Liar

    But nonetheless true.

  • nevermind

    Ho Ho Ho

    Its decision time, more of the same skinny rant abuse here, or a habfree 2015?

    Sadly the choice is on us, not on Craig, he seems to have a loving relationship with this cyber stalker, mind, he endured Karimov and Liberian rebels, not to speak of watered down drinks and fairies in the FCO, so our local Eintaenzer is not really registering on the Richter scale.

    Ho HO HO

  • Republicofscotland

    “If Scotland had voted Yes, Salmond would right now be facing his first major economic crisis and a devastating shortfall in revenue.“ says the unionist press.

    No he wouldn’t, you imbeciles. If Scotland had voted Yes, independence negotiations would barely have even begun. The oil price, and the revenues derived from it, would “right now” still be Westminster’s problem. Scotland wouldn’t have been independent until spring 2016 at the earliest, and Unionist commentators like Martin insisted that in reality the process would have taken years.

    If the oil price is still in the doldrums 18 months from now, the No camp will have a small, if still unseemly, degree of political justification for gloating over the job losses and potential economic consequences. Until then, drawing any sort of link between the oil price and the economic case for independence is empirically idiotic.

    Throughout the campaign Scots were told time and time again that the UK’s “broad shoulders” would protect them from such fluctuations in oil revenue. Yet the price has only been falling for a few weeks and we’re told that the entire industry is already “close to collapse”, with tens of thousands of jobs set to be lost.

    But one oil-producing nation that’s unconcerned by these developments, of course, is Norway. Sitting on an oil fund now in excess of half a TRILLION pounds, Scotland’s neighbours across the sea could afford to sit out the current slump for decades.

    http://wingsoverscotland.com/oilmageddon/

  • fred

    “Just friendly advice, Fred.”

    You can stick your friendly advice up your fat arse.

    I post what I want when I want and if you don’t like it that’s all the better to me.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    KOWN

    “..you mentioned the Great Leap Forward so many times..”
    ____________________

    You must be working on a scale hitherto unknown to the world, KOWN. Perhaps the “KOWN scale”?

    “So many times” – twice.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Fred

    “I post what I want when I want”

    __________________

    Of course you may, Fred, you old curmudgeon.

    BTW, what was the crude oil price at 18h00 GMT today?

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    RepublicOfRavings

    “But one oil-producing nation that’s unconcerned by these developments, of course, is Norway. Sitting on an oil fund now in excess of half a TRILLION pounds, Scotland’s neighbours across the sea could afford to sit out the current slump for decades.”
    __________________

    Relevance to Scotland, which has no oil fund?

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Republicofscotland

    I hope you have your own, personal “oil fund” for when the eagerly awaited (by you and your ilk) collapse of the UK happens.

    Just hope you haven’t been investing it in rubles (or reals, rupees or renminbis)

    Chump!

  • Kempe

    “Scotland’s neighbours across the sea could afford to sit out the current slump for decades ”

    Norway’s oil fund is ring-fenced to pay pensions which is why they have a gross national debt nearly as large as the fund.

    The real danger is if the oil price falls below a level where extraction from the North Sea is no longer economic and the oil companies remove their rigs and platforms, cap the wells and leave. Restarting production at anytime in the future will cost a fortune.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Actually, I doubt that the oil price will stay at its current level for a long time (I mean months/years, not weeks).

    But the whole episode should perhaps make those who vaunt the glowing economic prospects of an independent Scotland pause for thought.

  • Resident Dissident

    @Sofia

    “Here’s a link to a thoughtful and informed article on why the people of Donbas are just in the way.”

    So you agree with his central thesis that Ukraine cannot be an independent state because its economy is so tied in with Russia and that the majority of Ukrainian people do not understand where their true interests lie?

    Perhaps you might wish to apply the same arguments to Scottish independence or is that ok because of who they are separating from. Perhaps Nevermind might wish to reflect as to whether economic interconnectivity should be allowed to trump Ukrainian independence and democracy. And even at the pure economic level he might wish to reflect on the success of the Russian gangster capitalism model in generating the internal investment in industry that Ukraine and much of Russia desparately needs – as opposed to generating massive capital outflows year after year when resource prices are high. It is of course at times like this that the true patriotism of the gangsters around Putin comes to light – the acceleration of capital outflows now being such that Putin is begging them to return their ill gotten gains with amnesties and the like, the effect of which will be to further accelerate the outflows.

  • Peacewisher

    That’s some thread, Technicolour…

    Can’t see the truth coming out, but then again I didn’t expect to see a black US President.

  • Resident Dissident

    Glenn

    I think the rather weak response to your demand for liberal progressives to stand forward and to demand all human rights abuses for what they are regardless of the perpertrator doesn’t surprise me one bit. There has long been a split within the British Left between the libertarian left and the anti western imperialists, who latch onto a variety of despots seeking to set up their own colonies and monarchies. You should remember how people like Orwell and Hitchens, and those like myself who have a history of supporting East European Solidarity campaigns were always hated by the fellow travellers and useful idiots, who many years after Stalin’s faults came to light were still taking their subsidised holidays in the Eastern bloc and boring us all rigid with their lies about this being socialism in action during the course of their infiltration of Western socialist and social democratic parties. If the Left is to progress again within Western democracies we surely need to cleanse ourselves of these parasites once and for all.

    Might I suggest a little research into the politics of E H Carr who has been praised by one of the contributors here – there are not many who managed the trick of appeasing both Hitler and Stalin.

  • Resident Dissident

    @Mary

    “Divert, distract, destroy. Over and over.”

    That is a little unfair – you do occasionally make some informative posts you really should encourage others to do the same.

  • Peacewisher

    @RD: This is interesting, but comes from a different era. Interesting that your supported the soviet dissidents and the collapse of the Soviet Union must have got you wetting your panties. That was 23 years ago, for goodness sake.

    Now the world has another despotic empire, and you are such a champion of freedom of speech, etc., I’d have thought you would be supporting the dissidents, like Edward Snowden perhaps?

  • Mary

    R2D2 My comment was about your friend’s activity on here as you well know. Being disingenuous does not become you.

  • glenn_uk

    @Habbabkuk: No misrepresentation was intended, I may have summarised a bit hastily, but your original notion was included in full when I started the whole thing at 18 Dec, 2014 – 2:07 am

    The clarity of the original drifted along the way. In any case – a number of highly respected regulars have been kind enough to humour me and weigh in, they have made it very clear that they don’t support those old devils Mao and Stalin. A disappointing amount of sermonising from others, or silence, but nobody stepped in to declare admiration for these two.

    Not as overwhelming as I was hoping, but surely you recognise this as something of a result? Perhaps, in the spirit of xmas and solstice, peace & goodwill and all that, you might concede a lot of us lefties on here aren’t quite as bad as you might have thought.

  • Sofia

    Well that was a waste of time. 🙂 Thanks mods.

    I’m still not going to answer stupid questions.

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