US prepares to plug hole left by British troops - Telegraph: "Whitehall sources admit that there is a firm consensus among British military chiefs that maintaining a presence in Iraq after the control of Basra passes to the Iraqis in November is 'pointless'. But while British generals firmly deny that they have been defeated in southern Iraq, there is also an increasing acceptance that the mission is facing 'strategic failure' and that the war is a 'lost cause'. One senior officer, who has served on operations in Iraq, said: 'In terms of intervention operations, the military can never deliver success if the policy is wrong - and in terms of Iraq the policy of intervention was wholly wrong from start to finish.'"
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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