Jim, I don't think Keith is an appeaser. He just approves of shooting people. In his world justice comes from the barrel of a gun. Indeed I suspect he'd have rather the UK assassinated ObL as a measure of our virility.

Notice how he sets out no legal justification of drone attacks - merely that they are common.

Don, pretending that waterboarding is not torture is pretty silly. It involves slowly drowning people, letting them cough their lungs up, and doing it again. "Stress positions" are no more justifiable - simply modern variations of the strappado. With torture you can get anyone to say anything. Just think Salem witch trials. You appear to be treating the world like a Stephen Seagal film.

The US does not set a great example for civil rights or the rule of law. Guantanamo bay was established precisely to keep detainees out of any available justice system. Its oppression of its indigenous peoples is worse than anything the UK ever did in Ireland (about which so many USAians wax wroth), and probably as bad as the world's first concentration camps - used by the UK against Boers.

Whether the USA is still involved in rendition is not the point. The fact of rendition is well established. Imagine that you are an innocent man, siezed in your home country, and flown to where you can conveniently be tortured until you admit to something you did not do. Some so seized may be guilty even though their guilt is not established, but a 100% record of accuracy in deciding who to seize and torture is simply inconceivable.


I would also mention that although the US is claiming that its torture regime found ObL they would say that, wouldn't they? I have seen other suggestions that it was the interception of one telephone call "from a trusted lieutenant" that actually enabled the USA to find ObL.