On torture and terror

The real question is: How much truth can I stand?
- Friedrich Nietzsche

What madness seized our leaders, after the carnage and horror of the September 11th attacks? The 'rules of the game' changed, the 'gloves came off' - but at what terrible, bloody cost?

'MI5 is not like Spooks. In Spooks everything is solved by half a dozen people who break laws to achieve results. I think that given that we actually work strictly within the law, it is potentially quite damaging for the suggestion to prevail that we are totally above the law' - Eliza Manningham Buller, 18 November 2007

I suppose it depends who is drafting the laws and who is passing them.

Do the British public even care if our intelligence services torture suspected terrorists by proxy? They damn well should care, for pragmatic and self-interested reasons, if not for moral ones. Torture does not lead to good intelligence. Torture does not save lives. Torture does not stop terrorists. In fact, it recruits them.

Those who think torture works should urgently read this: the account of Matthew Alexander, a US interrogator, published on November 30th in the Washington Post

'I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans...'

read the rest.

It is worth reminding yourself of the background to what has been brought into sharp focus this week. In the week that marks the fourth anniversary of the 7th July 2005 London bombings, the Guardian has published a lengthy and damning article by investigative journalist Ian Cobain. In it he covered how the UK has outsourced torture, been complicit in torture and how the authorisation of torture seems to go right to the top, writing that

'...there is mounting evidence that torture is still regarded by some agents of the British state as a useful and legitimate investigative tool. There is evidence too that in the post-9/11 world, government officials have been prepared to look the other way while British citizens, and others, have been tortured in secret prisons around the world. It is also clear that an official policy, devised to govern British intelligence officers while interrogating people held overseas, resulted in people being tortured.

The Guardian has established that Tony Blair, when prime minister, was aware of the existence of this policy. What he knew of its terrible consequences is less clear: he has repeatedly been asked, in a series of letters from the Guardian, what he believed to have happened to those who were subjected to the policy, but he has repeatedly failed to answer the question. There is a growing suspicion that Blair could not have been alone, and that other very senior figures in government may have been aware of the existence of Britain's secret interrogation policy. What did David Blunkett and Jack Straw, the ministers responsible for MI5 and MI6 at the time, know about the policy and its consequences for people detained in the so-called war on terror? They too have declined to say, stating that it is the British government's policy not to condone torture, but that they cannot comment further because of a number of forthcoming court cases.'

Lat at night on the 7th July, David Davis used parliamentary privilege to make an electrifying speech in which he revealed how the police and M15 sub-contracted the torture of Rangzieb Ahmed to the Pakistani ISI.

It is significant British-born Rangzieb Ahmed, rejected by his family as a teenager and left with his step-mother in Pakistan had been tortured before - by the Indian authorities, when he was picked up in Kashmir - and it is believed to be this early experience that led to his radicalisation. He was convicted of terrorist offences in December 2008.

It is not only wicked, but stupid to think this can continue unchecked. It is intolerable and it cannot be tolerated. It is making things worse. It is playing into the hands of our enemies. It is endangering innocent lives. It is jeopardising national security; that 'national security' is being invoked by those who signed off on torture as policy to try to hide their culpability is repellent, amoral and frankly, deranged.

Once again, well done to David Davis.

'I was told that it had been decided that as a matter of War on Terror policy we should now obtain intelligence from torture...'

(via Justin)
Former Ambassador Craig Murray needs your help. Craig writes...

'On Tuesday 10 March the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights will discuss whether or not to hear my evidence on the UK government's policy of using intelligence from torture. They discussed whether to hear my evidence on 3 March but failed to reach a conclusion.

The government is lobbying hard for my exclusion. I need everybody to send an email to jchr@parliament.uk to urge that I should be allowed to give evidence. Just a one-liner would be fine. If you are able to add some comment on the import of my evidence, or indicate that you have heard me speak or read my work, that may help. Please copy your email to craigjmurray@tiscali.co.uk.

Please also pass on this plea to anyone you can and urge them to act. Help from other bloggers in posting this appeal would be much appreciated.

The evidence I am trying to give the parliamentary committee is this:

I wish to offer myself as a witness before the Joint Commission on Human Rights on the subject of the UK government's policy on intelligence cooperation with torture abroad.

I appeared as a witness in person before both the European Parliament and European Council's inquiries into extraordinary rendition. My evidence was described by the European Council's Rapporteur, Senator Dick Marty, as "Compelling and valuable".

The key points I wish to make are these:

- I was British Ambassador in Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004.
- I learned and confirmed that I was regularly seeing intelligence from detainees in the Uzbek torture chambers, sent me by the CIA via MI6.
- British Ministers and officials were seeing the same torture material.
- In October/November 2002 and January/February 2003 I sent two Top Secret telegrams to London specifically on the subject of our receipt of intelligence gained under torture. I argued this was illegal, immoral and impractical. The telegrams were specifically marked for the Secretary of State.
- I was formally summoned back to the FCO for a meeting held on 7 or 8 March 2003 specifically and solely on the subject of intelligence gained under torture. Present were Linda Duffield, Director Wider Europe, FCO, Sir Michael Wood, Chief Legal Adviser, FCO, and Matthew Kydd, Head of Permanent Under-Secretary's Department, FCO.
- This meeting was minuted. I have seen the record, which is classified Top Secret and was sent to Jack Straw. On the top copy are extensive hand-written marginalia giving Jack Straw's views.
- I was told at this meeting that it is not illegal for us to obtain intelligence gained by torture, provided that we did not do the torture ourselves. I was told that it had been decided that as a matter of War on Terror policy we should now obtain intelligence from torture, following discussion between Jack Straw and Richard Dearlove. I was told that we could not exclude receipt of specific material from the CIA without driving a coach and horses through the universality principle of the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement, which would be detrimental to UK interests.
- Sir Michael Wood's legal advice that it was not illegal to receive intelligence got by torture was sent on to me in Tashkent (copy attached).
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf- On 22 July 2004

I sent one further telegram on intelligence got by torture, with a lower classification, following FCO communications on the subject. Copy attached.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Telegram.pdf
It was my final communication before being dismissed as Ambassador.

In conclusion, I can testify that beyond any doubt the British government has for at least six years a considered but secret policy of cooperation with torture abroad. This policy legally cleared by government legal advisers and approved by Jack Straw as Secretary of State.

Craig Murray
2 March 2009'

Liberty, justice, torture and bollocks

"We never used to accept that our foreign policy ever had any effect on terrorism...Well, that was clearly bollocks."

Lord West, security adviser to PM Gordon Brown, 27 January 2009

For the last three years I have been saying, on this blog and elsewhere, that there is a bloody obvious direct link between the growth of extremism in the UK, with the attendant danger of terrorist attacks from a tiny hardcore fringe of ultra-radicals who advocate horrific violence against civilians as a 'legitimate tactic', and an unethical UK/US foreign policy that outsources torture, allows the secretive and illegal 'rendition' of people to be held without charge, supports corrupt regimes and causes thousands of civilian deaths as a result of the invasion of sovereign territories, in defiance of international law.

Let's get this straight: I don't think we should change our behaviour, still less our foreign policy, to placate terrorists. I do think we should change our behaviour and foreign policy because it is the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, as well as the smart and sensible thing to do in terms of making us safer.

I have said, repeatedly, and so have many other people far cleverer and braver than me, that the whole strategy of the 'war on terror' is stupidly flawed and ultimately, self-defeating, that human rights and civil liberties are far too precious to be given up in its name - they are our best weapons against living in a permanent state of traumatised paranoia, danger and fear - and that we do ourselves no favours at all by abandoning the moral high ground and sacrificing our sweetest ideals, the very best that we are and can be - on the dubious altar of 'increased security'.

In fact, we are handing those who despise us a propaganda gift by behaving as unfairly and hypocritically as they paint us to be; our leaders have blood on their hands which belies the words from their mouths, and far from keeping us safe and secure, their actions in the last decade have actually increased the risk to the lives and liberties of the very people they are elected, and paid large sums, to lead and serve. There will always be fanatics, murderers and disgusting criminals amongst us. We do not have to stoop to beat them. We are bigger and better than that, or we should be. We damn well ought to be.

After three, nearly four long years of what has felt like banging my head against an establishment wall, I sometimes feel in danger of developing a permanent headache, (which is why I took time out from blogging), and yet it gives me little pleasure to remark that, all of a sudden, some of the establishment seems to have suddenly started agreeing with me, and with all those other people who have been saying what I have been saying.

Last month, Foreign Secretary David Milliband finally said that the war on terror is wrong, then this month he promptly found himself neck-high in the bloody aftermath of that particular eight-year demented orgy of self-justifying lies and violence, when appearing to attempt to hide the evidence of our government and security services' complicity in the torture of a British resident. Milliband actually claimed to a high court that there was a 'threat' by the US to withdraw co-operation in intelligence matters if documents about Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohammed were revealed, then back-tracked, leading to furious demands that the documents about the torture be released after all.

Well, of course they should be. And whilst we are at it, let's get all the horrors and injustices out into the open, have a proper independent inquiry into it all, apologise profusely, say 'never again' and start anew, turn over a new leaf and try to learn some lessons from this horrendous mess. Nobody can say there isn't the appetite for it, and it certainly wouldn't kill us to try it. But they'd never have the guts to try, this government, I expect, even as the tortured Binyam Mohammed steps back onto the soil of the UK, the land he took refuge in as a teenager and shames them all by having refused to die quietly of madness and despair thousands of miles away.

I don't know what he was planning when he left the UK a few years ago. If there was evidence enough to charge him with a crime when he was picked up and then give him a fair trial, then that is what should have happened. There is no excuse for - and no point in - torturing him, or anyone else. None. Ever. Torture is a complete waste of time as well as degrading and damaging us all when we condone it, or outsource it to people who will wield scalpels and tighten ropes whilst asking questions our spies prepared earlier. I can say this, and I wish I didn't have to say it, but when you are being tortured, tied up, humiliated, beaten, put in fear of your life and your sanity, you will say and do absolutely anything to get it to stop. You will say anything, tell any lie. That is the way it is and the way it will always be.

A few weeks ago I was asked to go on Newsnight again, and I said in my interview, pointing to furious comments left on a radical Islamist movement's website after a thunderous anti-Government article, that what was going on in Gaza was fuelling huge anger. Entirely legitimate anger in my opinion, and you don't have to be Muslim to feel it - but that anger was being used by radical groups who were busily recruiting on the back of it, and lo and behold, Hazel Blears then comes on, agrees about the anger-foreign policy-radicalisation link - and says

'I am very concerned indeed that the events in Gaza could well be used by those people who want to peddle pernicious extremist views to draw particularly vulnerable young people into that kind of extremism'.

So, finally someone in the Cabinet admits it: radicalisation does not come out of a vacuum, it is an ideology shaped by events, reactions to other actions, themselves undertaken because of policies, politics, power-dynamics, and there is such a thing as cause and effect.

But put away the party poppers, because this is not as good as it looks on the surface. When the government gets to decide who is an extremist, everyone had better be careful.

Yes, everyone. You, woman-who-doesn't-want-hundreds-of-planes-booming-over-her-house. You, man-who-has-lost-his-job because of the catastrophic financial incompetence of someone paid hundreds of thousands a year. You, who-used-to-have-a-pension-fund. You had better be careful with your reasonable and legitimate anger over the next few years. The police are expecting a 'summer of rage' in 2009, and all those shiny new those anti-terrorism laws, the ones that you thought were just there to deal with religious people, political people, angry people who are nothing like you at all - those laws are the ones that will be used to crack down on the people who take to the streets, who raise their voices in protest.

The same anti-terror laws have already been used to harass and harry protesters, poets, photographers, priests, students and parents and grandparents. They can stretch to accomodate you too, if necessary.

You thought they were carefully and calmly drafted, that it wouldn't apply to you? Nothing to hide and nothing to fear?

Wait and see. And pray you are right. Best pray privately and without raising your voice and stay well out of the exclusion zone outside the Houses of Parliament, just to be on the safe side. Don't email friends about your anger and what you're tempted to do, don't talk about it on the phone. Don't make jokes about it, or idle threats. With plans to log every call, every email you make, this summer of 2009 might be the very last chance you have to say that you are upset and angry and furious with the government. So it might be good to start practicing biting your tongue now, just to be on the safe side.

Are you thinking, what the hell? Are the government planning on using anti-terror laws to control and contain an entire citizenry? That's shocking!

Well, then get out there and say something, do something, before it's too late. You don't have to march, and I don't advise rioting. You can write to your MP, your local paper, talk to your friends, your children, voice your displeasure at this torturing, terrorising, mendacious, malevolent executive that lies and lies and lies and wants to frighten and control us all just because it wants power. Non-violent righteous anger and a refusal to condone this by staying silent is what we need now. Enough, just say it, enough. Please.

Because despite what they insinuate, extremely strong feelings do not make a person an extremist, still less a terrorist. Just because those who attack animal testing laboratories are generally vegans or vegetarians with extremely strong feelings about the suffering of animals, it does not therefore follow that every vegan or vegetarian or animal-lover is a suspected animal rights extremist who condones or participates in attacks on property or people. Nobody sensible would ever suggest such a thing. It's actions that count, not words, after all.

Our government's actions have included: condoning torture, allowing extraordinary rendition to secret hell holes. Allowing British residents and British subjects to be swept up and carted off to foreign countries without a prima facie case being made in this country. Playing fast and loose with the right to trial by jury, the right to privacy, snooping, spying on us with a million cameras, taking our private data and selling it and losing it, and wasting our money and lying about that as well. Lying about the case for war, lying about the weapons of war that we export to states with appalling human rights records, and much more besides, and what have we done to try to stop them? A few marches, a few voices raised in protest.

Not much then.

Dame Stella Rimington, the ex Director of M15 for goodness sake, said that the government is exploiting people's fear of terrorism to restrict civil rights, handing a victory to terrorists, and she is quite right. I was asked to go on More4 News last week and discuss this point with Keith Vaz, Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, whom I gave evidence to when the government was debating whether it was a good idea to introduce a law allowing people they had their eye on to be held without charge for a month and a half - and I said that I wondered sometimes who the British government were more afraid of, terrorists or the anger of the British people.

I think terrorists are criminal scum. I think the British people are braver and better and bolder than anything that a cowardly, lying idealogue can throw at them. And that they know what is clearly bollocks and what is worth fighting for, living for, if it comes down to it, dying for, not that we are at that stage yet, thank God.

Fortunately, there is a rising tide of men and women who have mobilised, who are speaking out, who are fighting back - and you can get involved.

This Saturday, the Convention on Modern Liberty happens. Hurray!
Meet the new freedom fighers
Check out the marvellous Henry Porter blog
Visit the website - tickets for London have sold out, but this is nationwide.

And there's also more stirring stuff this weekend - I will be at the Convention on Modern Liberty and also leaping into a taxi halfway through the day to make a speech at

6 BILLION WAYS - Making Another World Possible

10am-8.30pm, Saturday 28th February 2009

at the Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA

(The nearest tube stations are: Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Old St. & Liverpool St.)

As climate, food and financial crises start to look like a GLOBAL MELTDOWN ...
Come to 6 BILLION WAYS and start making another world possible!

* DEBATES * FILMS * WORKSHOPS * ART *

Including discussions on:

Speakers include: Prof Tariq Ramadan (Islamic theologian), Mark Thomas (comedian/activist), Susan George (anti-globalisation writer), Karma Nabulsi (Palestinian academic), Meena Raman (environmental activist Malaysia), Ken Livingstone (former Mayor of London), Tariq Ali (writer/activist), Trevor Ngwane (Anti-privatisation forum South Africa), Yash Tandon (South Centre Uganda), Tony Juniper (environmental activist), Neal Lawson (Compass), Jean Lambert MEP (Green Party), Prof Gilbert Achcar (SOAS), Bianca Jagger (EU Goodwill Ambassador), Amit Srivastava (India Resource Centre, India), Jeremy Corbyn (Labour MP), Colin Firth (actor), Salma Yaqoob (anti-war activist) , Alistair Crooke (Conflicts Forum, Lebanon), Daud Abdullah (MCB), Usama Hasan (City Circle), John Pandit (ADF), Moazzem Begg (ex-Guantanamo detainee), Gareth Peirce (human rights lawyer), Baroness Lola Young (media/cultural activist), Taysir Arabasi (Palestinian Farmers Union), Nora Fernandez (Debt Commission, Ecuador), Andrew Simms (nef), Tarek el-Diwany (author) and many more ...

FILMS: War on Democracy, Palestine Blues, An Independent Mind, With or Without Fidel & In Prison My Whole Life

10am - 7pm Workshops, debates and discussions.
7pm - 8:30pm Final plenary with keynote speakers

Attendance is FREE but REGISTER and find out more here.

See the full programme by clicking here.


6 Billion Ways is organised by City Circle, Friends of the Earth, the Jubilee Debt Campaign, People and Planet, Rich Mix, War on Want and the World Development Movement.

There's plenty of ways to get involved and there's plenty of people jumping at the chance to do so. There's so much going on that there are 2 major events happening on the same day this weekend, and they're both going to be rammed. There is an energy and a spirit abroad, at last, thank God.

I'm proud and grateful to be a small part of this. Let's roll.

'Mr Chairman, no one is above the law'

Video via Neil from Amnesty

Meanwhile, via Democracy Now, some righteous signs to be hopeful about...

JUAN GONZALEZ: President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee to be attorney general, Eric Holder, has declared waterboarding to be a form of torture and has vowed to shut down Guantanamo Bay. At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder also pledged to restore credibility to the Justice Department and to serve as the people’s lawyer. If confirmed, Holder will become the nation’s first African American attorney general.

Here are excerpts of the hearing, including questions from Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy; Wisconsin’s two Democratic senators, Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold. This is Eric Holder.

ERIC HOLDER: Let me try to state this as simply as I can. It simply should not be the policy or the practice of the United States of America to turn over a prisoner, a captured person, to a nation where we suspect or have reason to believe that that person will be tortured.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Do you agree with me that waterboarding is torture and illegal?

ERIC HOLDER: If you look at the history of the use of that technique, used by the Khmer Rouge, used in the Inquisition, used by the Japanese and prosecuted by us as war crimes—we prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam—I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Do you believe that the President of the United States has authority to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture?

ERIC HOLDER: Mr. Chairman, no one is above the law.

SEN. HERB KOHL: Mr. Holder, for decades, this country has been looked up to around the world for its unwavering commitment to human rights and the rule of law. There is a growing consensus that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay has tarnished that image. While the past two attorneys general, the current secretaries of Defense and State, and the President himself have publicly said that they would like to close Guantanamo, no steps, as yet, have been taken.

ERIC HOLDER: To responsibly close the facility, I think that we have to understand who these people are, make an independent judgment of who they are based on an examination of the records that exist down there, so that we can treat them in an inappropriate way. I think substantial numbers of those people can be sent to other countries safely. Other people can be tried in a jurisdiction and put in jail. And there are possibly going to be other people who we’re not going to be able to try for a variety of reasons, but who nevertheless are dangerous to this country, and we’re going to have to try to figure out what we do with them. But I think that review that we’ll have to go through to figure out who these people are and in what categories they fit will take an extended period of time, and I think that is the thing that will prevent us from closing Guantanamo as quickly as I think we would like, but I want to assure the American people that Guantanamo will be closed.

SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: Is there anything in the FISA statute that makes you believe that the President has the ability under some other inherent power to disregard the FISA statute?

ERIC HOLDER: No, I do not see that in the FISA statute.

SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: Well, thank you. I think that’s a very important break in favor of the rule of law that we’ve been waiting for in this country for many years, and I appreciate that answer.

Amnesty's waterboarding video: warning - shocking

Amnesty International has today (22 April) launched a hard-hitting new film about “waterboarding”, the practice of torturing prisoners by partially drowning them.

Amnesty’s film, called “Stuff Of Life”, is set to be one of the strongest campaign films ever seen by cinema-goers when the film is shown from early May. What adds to the Stuff Of Life’s “shock value” is that it is effectively “disguised” as a bottled water or vodka advert, filmed in the “glossy” style usually seen in luxury consumer goods advertising.

The short film, which launches online today (at www.unsubscribe-me.org) and will be seen on some 50 UK cinema screens from 9 May, portrays a torture technique that is currently the subject of intense controversy in the United States, where CIA officials have recently admitted that their operatives have waterboarded “war on terror” prisoners in secret interrogations.

The waterboarding admissions, alongside revelations that videotapes of CIA interrogations have been destroyed, have fuelled intense debate about US treatment of prisoners in fighting terrorism. However, despite growing concern about waterboarding and other abusive practices, US President George Bush recently vetoed a bill that would have outlawed such so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

“Our film shows you what the CIA doesn’t want you to see - the disgusting reality of half-drowning a person then calling it ‘enhanced interrogation’.

“For a few seconds our film-makers did this for real - they poured water up the nose and into the mouth of someone who was pinned down with his head tilted back. Even for those few seconds, it’s horrifying to watch - the reality, in a secret prison with no-one to stop it, is much, much worse.

“Everyone who sees this terrifying film ought to take action to stop it happening in the real world - they should support our ‘Unsubscribe’ campaign.”

Malcolm Nance, a US security expert familiar with waterboarding as a counter-insurgency training technique, said:

“Having trained American operatives to withstand waterboarding, I can assure you that this truly scary film is right on the money - this is what it’s like.

“Let’s not mince words - waterboarding is out and out torture, and I’m deeply ashamed that President Bush has authorised its use and dragged the USA’s reputation into the mud.”

The film is part of the organisation’s “Unsubscribe” campaign, mobilising support for human rights in the “war on terror”. It comes after a similarly powerful film about “stress and duress” torture called “Waiting For The Guards”, released in October. Both films were the joint work of media agency Drugstore and acclaimed film-makers Marc Hawker and Ishbel Whitaker (DarkFibre films), and both feature the performance artist Jiva Parthipan.


Also see this post

339 days left and counting

With the cretinous crassness for which he is internationally famed, President Bush this week attempted to justify the use of a method of torture notably used by the Gestapo, the Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge.

Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent.^[2] In contrast to merely submerging the head face-forward, waterboarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex.^[3] Although waterboarding can be performed in ways that leave no lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death.^[4] The psychological effects on victims of waterboarding can last for years after the procedure


Making his point, President Bush referenced the London bombings...

( edited and updated)

It's quite hard to write this without wanting to put my head through the computer monitor but, (and breathe, Rachel, breathe), I have two choices here. I can ignore the unpleasant fact that my country is supporting a President who has okayed a method of torture associated with some of the cruellest, most abusive, murderous regimes in history, or I can continue to write and speak out about it.

Leaving aside the moral objections to the repulsive and degrading practice of State torture for one moment, there's the problem of the utterly self-defeating nature of the policy. Information obtained under torture is frequently useless because of the simple fact that if you torture someone or put them in fear of their life they will say pretty much anything you want them to say to make you stop torturing them. They will do anything, behave in a way that is completely out of character in order to survive. Anybody who does not understand this is in denial about about what torture is.

It is unendurable, that is the point of it. Water-boarding in particular, since it is not merely about inflicting atrocious pain, which can be managed to a certain extent using mental techniques, but activates the body's gag reflex and whatever your mind 'knows' about what is being done to you, and why, your body responds as if it is about to die and you can do nothing about it.

Want to know more? This man describes being waterboarded.

Bush's assertion that the families of those killed on 7th July 2005 would ''understand'' the use of torture makes me want to weep. As usual, nobody actually bothered to ask what the families or survivors of 7/7 thought, before invoking ''the victims of 7/7'' as a fig-leaf for a naked desire to look tough for political gain, or to excuse or explain foul or cruel practices.

As if everyone involved by chance on that day has but one voice and one view; as if there was something about bereavement, trauma and injury that reduces people to a point where they freely condone torture and any kind of abuse of their suspected enemies. Bush has just given himself away: this is the politics of revenge and hate as well as the politics of fear. It is either the reaction of someone who has been traumatised and is letting his unconscious desire to hit back dictate his actions, or it is someone who is so drunk on bellicosity and power that he has lost touch with what he is supposed to stand for: freedom and democracy and the rule of law.

Either way, it is clear that he is unfit to hold office, since he is behaving in a way that not only debases what he is sworn to protect but endangers the American people. And the people of many of cities and countries as well, including the people of London who use public transport.

It is much easier to hate those who forswear the rule of law and uses cruel and inhumane practices of execution, indiscriminate bombing, kidnapping (which is what rendition is) and torture. This is what we are supposed to stand against. Has Bush no sense of the message this sends out? Does he not understand that every photograph of humiliated, shackled, blindfolded prisoners who are being kept in jail without even having been charged with anything, every news story about rendition, every description of cruelty and every contemptuous breach of international law feeds into the propaganda loop of the terrorists, acting as a recruiting sergeant for a hundred more wannabe Mohammed Siddique Khans? And no, the solution isn't to stop reporting it. The answer is to stop it.

There is a baseline desire for revenge that I understand all too well. There were weeks in 2002 when I entertained the fantasy of seeing my attacker tied up in a chair, in a windowless cell, and me entering that cell with a hammer. But it was justice in a court of law that I wanted, and got. Revenge fantasies have no place in the criminal justice system or for that matter, in a government's foreign policy. The extent of the rage and the hurt of the individual victimised or dehumanised cannot dictate the response of a society to the evil act.

Torture doesn't work. It is a propaganda gift to your enemies, it produces noise, not information, and there is a damn good reason why after two world wars and the death of millions we decided to outlaw it. To have a President attempt to justify it by invoking the guessed-at emotions of the relatives of the innocent dead is craven and despicable.