Andrew Rawnsley: The greatest moral failure of Tony Blair's premiership
[Andrew Rawnsley is the The Observer's award-winning Chief Political Commentator as well as being a best-selling author and critically-acclaimed broadcaster.]
Tony Blair was "appalled" when it was first revealed, some five years ago, that Iraqi prisoners were being tortured in Abu Ghraib. "Nobody underestimates how wrong this is or how wrong this will seem to be," said the then prime minister.
His brother in arms George W Bush claimed to feel "deep disgust" and declared that his White House would not stand for it. "I do not like it one little bit," said the then American president. "That's not the way we do things."
Oh, but it was the way they did things. And those things were done because they had been permitted and encouraged from the highest levels. Torture was sanctioned by George W Bush early in 2002 when he signed the now notorious memorandum declaring that the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to members of al-Qaida and the Taliban.
As for Tony Blair, he did underestimate how wrong it was. He was never quite appalled enough about torture to remonstrate publicly with his ally in the White House as the Bush administration betrayed the west's best values and the very causes of human rights and the rule of law that they were supposed to be fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan. If there is any evidence that Tony Blair used his private face time with George W Bush to protest about what was being perpetrated in the names of America and Britain, I have never come across it.
From those strokes of the presidential pen flowed the outrages in the cells of Abu Ghraib and the cages of Guantánamo, at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and CIA "black sites" in Europe and around the world. From that sprang "extraordinary rendition", the Orwellian euphemism for state-licensed kidnap, and "enhanced interrogation", the spin-torturer's way of describing his trade in pain.
We now have confirmation from the government itself. Barack Obama's attorney-general says America used torture. The armed services committee of the Senate, which recently delivered the most definitive official account of what happened, says America used torture.
Why America turned to the dark side was briskly explained by Joseph Cofer Black who for a time ran the CIA's counterterrorist centre. "There was a world before 9/11 and there was a world after 9/11," he told one hearing. "After 9/11, the gloves came off."..
Read entire article at Observer (UK)
Tony Blair was "appalled" when it was first revealed, some five years ago, that Iraqi prisoners were being tortured in Abu Ghraib. "Nobody underestimates how wrong this is or how wrong this will seem to be," said the then prime minister.
His brother in arms George W Bush claimed to feel "deep disgust" and declared that his White House would not stand for it. "I do not like it one little bit," said the then American president. "That's not the way we do things."
Oh, but it was the way they did things. And those things were done because they had been permitted and encouraged from the highest levels. Torture was sanctioned by George W Bush early in 2002 when he signed the now notorious memorandum declaring that the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to members of al-Qaida and the Taliban.
As for Tony Blair, he did underestimate how wrong it was. He was never quite appalled enough about torture to remonstrate publicly with his ally in the White House as the Bush administration betrayed the west's best values and the very causes of human rights and the rule of law that they were supposed to be fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan. If there is any evidence that Tony Blair used his private face time with George W Bush to protest about what was being perpetrated in the names of America and Britain, I have never come across it.
From those strokes of the presidential pen flowed the outrages in the cells of Abu Ghraib and the cages of Guantánamo, at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and CIA "black sites" in Europe and around the world. From that sprang "extraordinary rendition", the Orwellian euphemism for state-licensed kidnap, and "enhanced interrogation", the spin-torturer's way of describing his trade in pain.
We now have confirmation from the government itself. Barack Obama's attorney-general says America used torture. The armed services committee of the Senate, which recently delivered the most definitive official account of what happened, says America used torture.
Why America turned to the dark side was briskly explained by Joseph Cofer Black who for a time ran the CIA's counterterrorist centre. "There was a world before 9/11 and there was a world after 9/11," he told one hearing. "After 9/11, the gloves came off."..