Love-ins with Bush are over : Mail & Guardian Online: "He should go to Washington more often. Gordon Brown may have been dreading his encounter with George W Bush, knowing that every appearance Tony Blair made alongside the American president cost him votes by the crateload, but the recent joint press conference at Camp David actually did Brown a favour. There was Bush, alternating between two of his least appealing personas: either frat-boy, mocking Nick Robinson’s baldness, or cowboy, vowing his determination to track down the “cold-blooded killers” who do “evil”. By turns he was condescending, telling Brown he had “proved his worthiness as a leader” during June’s thwarted terror attacks, and rambling, eventually admitting that he was going on “too long”. Next to Bush, Brown had only to read his script to look like a master communicator"
Evidence of torture used in Iraq | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics : "The Foreign Office says the 'government, including its intelligence and security agencies, never use torture for any purpose' ( MI5 and MI6 to be sued for first time over torture, September 12). The evidence in the public domain from the court martial into the death of Baha Mousa and the serious abuse of 10 other Iraqi civilians is clear in establishing this is not true. UK armed forces went into Iraq with a written policy that allowed hooding, and with a policy of training interrogators to use hooding, stressing and sleep deprivation to gain intelligence. Iraqi civilians were routinely hooded in up to three sandbags - and even old plastic cement bags. When Baha Mousa died in September 2003, partly as a result of abuse while hooded, common sense dictates that at least at that point those in positions of responsibility within the civil service and military would have acted to change the poli...
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