On Thursday the spirit of George Orwell visited America, three times

I haven't posted about the torture revelations coming out of the United States and the release of various memos by Barack Obama.

Much has been writen but I would refer to this piece in Harper's magazine which came out over the weekend.

On Thursday the spirit of George Orwell visited America, three times.

The visits were

1.The four memoranda prepared by Bush Administration lawyers which gave the actual go-ahead for the use of specific torture techniques on specific individuals, thus demolishing forever the absurd contention that the torture lawyers were ever only engaged in some abstract exercise without any direct application to incidents of torture.

2.a statement issued by Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair in which he drew a stomach-turning comparison between Americans who sacrifice for their country in uniform and those who perpetrated war crimes under orders from higher ups in the Bush Administration. But perhaps the first lines of Blair’s statement were intended to send a signal of the deceit that lay within. “We will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos and those guidelines,” he says, because they acted in the wake of 9/11, whereas “read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, [the memoranda] appear graphic and disturbing.” Blair’s name echoes Orwell’s actual name, Eric Blair; his words remind one of 1984: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

3.straight from Miniluv, whose never-resting eye keeps watch over every enemy of the state, foreign or domestic, real or, far more often, the creation of paranoid delusion combined with political convenience.

Binyan revelations Britain is surely implicated

The interview that Binyam Mohameed gave to the BBC this morning is attracting a fair amount of coverage,not least for if true it more or less confirms British compliance in torture.

Michael White is quickly off the mark writing that

It all sounds ridiculous, but to my mind ridiculous enough to be plausible. As noted here before, crucial to the politics of Mohamed's campaign now is that M15 provided data to the Americans about him that led to him being sent to Morocco. Thus to the BBC today: "If it wasn't for the British involvement right at the beginning of the interrogations in Pakistan, and suggestions that were made by MI5 to the Americans of how to get me to respond, I don't think I would have gone to Morocco," he said.

This will once again bring to the fore questions to be raised about British entanglement with the war on terror as fought from Guantanamo bay.

The Economist sums it up nicely

Britain was the only western European country to be named as one that “facilitated” renditions. There are “consistent, credible reports” that British personnel have “provided intelligence or have conducted the initial seizure of an individual” for extraordinary rendition,