Absolutely spot on.

A country where the Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Head of MI6 can simply refuse to appear in front of a joint parliamentary committee to answer questions, then use the media to immediately dismiss and bury that committee’s findings and recommendations, without actually addressing the points that it has raised, isn’t a seriously-functioning constitutional democracy, it’s a sad joke of a shithole.

Why backbench MPs just accept this is an indictment of their spinelessness. Why anybody in our mainstream media has any respect for themselves and their trade, I can’t fathom.

PS Craig Murray posts well on this at http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

including posts “Famous Liar Says Britain Not Complicit In Torture”, “Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights Calls For Public Inquiry on UK Complicity in Torture”

I know this is a strange question – but what exactly does “complicit” mean?

I can’t help but think in order to not have any involvement in any torture at all, we’d have to give up having any links to any foreign intelligence groups. And as such we might as well disband MI5 and MI6.

So presumably complicit doesn’t mean that.

But then is there not some grey area between that and actually torturing people that is or isn’t OK?

There are two issues.

(1) can we / should we close our eyes to intelligence acquired unethically?

My answer: probably not.

(2) should our intelligence services answer properly to parliament?

My answer: damn right they should. Their arrogance and MP’s spinelessness leave me breathless.

I know this is a strange question – but what exactly does “complicit” mean?

In many of these cases, it means “Handing them over to a country with a reputation for torture, along with a list of questions you’d like answered (nudge nudge, wink wink) and then occasionally popping by to see how it’s going and supply more questions.”

Which is pretty damn complicit, if you ask me…

Margin4Error,this is worth reading.

I think a distinction can be drawn between,

1. Foreign intelligence known to practice torture has said, “we have obtained this information, but through torture” and we think, “jebus… but we can’t just ignore it”; and,

2. We pass on intelligence of wherebouts of particular individuals (or allow rendition flights etc) to foreign intelligence known to practice torture, y’know, just on the off chance that they are interested, not because we want any information obtained via torture, god forbid.

And I think asking foreign intelligence known to practice torture to in turn ask questions of their victims prisoners is pretty dodgy too.

“I know this is a strange question – but what exactly does “complicit” mean?
I can’t help but think in order to not have any involvement in any torture at all, we’d have to give up having any links to any foreign intelligence groups.”

Specifically we would have had to give up the special relationship with the CIA and the UK-US intelligence-sharing agreement. If we’d shown any principle we should have severed the special relationship anyway by refusing to go into Iraq & to tag along on Bush-Cheney’s extraordinary rendition programme. This stance – catastrophic beyond imagination to the establishment and a crooked coward like Blair – would in fact have been amazing for Britain’s reputation across Europe & the world, and made this country – including London’s tube system – an immensely better & safer place.

It would also have been possible to reinstate the special relationship at an all-smiles meeting with President Obama this year, although a future US President as intelligent as Obama would not have been specifically foreseeable at the time.

4. cjcjc. If you accept 1 , then I cannot see Parliament accepting it. Back in the days of the Cold War the threat was the Soviet Union and information came from fewer locations. Nowadays,potential threats can originate from many countries, verifying the way the information was obtained could very difficult. If an official from a foreign country says there has been several people from the UK, these are the names , who have been associating and possibly training with terrorists; how do we assess how the information has been obtained ? The events may not even be in the home country of the official who has provided the information.

If Parliament started lecturing MI6/MI5 about it’s souces and embarasses the source country, I can quite easily perceive them not passing on information in the future. There is the danger of Britain giving a moral lecture on how other countries should be run. I think it is time Britain stopped attemptig a moral imperialism.

“There is the danger of Britain giving a moral lecture on how other countries should be run. I think it is time Britain stopped attempting a moral imperialism.”

That wins my absurd quote of the week. That’s so madly wrong, on so many different levels.