Is this really a story? British governments have been torturing and murdering and abetting others to torture and murder for as long as I can remember and I can't think of a single case in which anyone has been made politically or criminally accountable for it. Jack Straw may be a duplicitous git but compared to Thatcher and Whitelaw he's pretty clean.
Err, yes I think it is a story. I don't accept that anything that happened in Northern Ireland was of anything approaching the scale of what went on in, for instance, the Maher Arrar case. And again, even if you were correct, I don't quite see how that would make it ok.
It doesn't make it OK. It just makes it "business as usual". I think far worse things happened in NI than in the Arar case. The security services were running Protestant death squads. Torture was extensively used, including on people detained without charge or trial. Besides, certainly under Thatcher, the UK government wa providing military aid and equipment to, eg, Chile, knowing full well how it was going to be used.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Blair and Straw in front of the ICC, but it won't happen, Nothing, except maybe the optics, will change. UK governments just have far too many ways of sweeping things under the rug and an impressive track record of doing just that.
"Extraordinary rendition" is kidnapping. Sending people to countries where they torture people is clearly illegal. Just because they used to do it before doesn't make it ok. (I know you've already said it isn't ok, but.)
The fact that this may be condoned (if not admitted) by the government that represents me if frightening, and it should be challenged.
I agree it should be challenged. You might also want to look at what the SAS is doing in Oman. I'm just a little - what's the right word - cynical that all this fuss is being made over ministers being rather passive accomplices of the Americans when nobody seems to give a damn that you have members of the House of Lords and senior commanders in Military Intelligence who were very active perpetrators of torture and murder.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-02-23 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-23 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-23 02:54 pm (UTC)Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Blair and Straw in front of the ICC, but it won't happen, Nothing, except maybe the optics, will change. UK governments just have far too many ways of sweeping things under the rug and an impressive track record of doing just that.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-23 04:44 pm (UTC)The fact that this may be condoned (if not admitted) by the government that represents me if frightening, and it should be challenged.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-23 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-23 04:42 pm (UTC)