I would remind you I was a senior staffer of WEU, the European Defence HQ, so military intelligence of this time is not something I am utterly unaware of. My work included crisis management planning, so I was one of their customers.

Garbage In Garbage Out is particularly dangerous in Intelligence, as poor-quality data input produces output which is at best disinformation and at worst so deluded it gets people and Nations killed. The boundary between obtaining good-quality data through fear lies at the edge where respect is lost to desperation. It's the point at which fears become reality: "if what you tell us to save yourself from your fears is proved wrong, then you're not going to save yourself" is a very different thing from this, subjecting them to the reality of their own worst fears to the point of breaking the person so far apart that they no longer know what is truth and what is fiction and will tell you anything.

Therefore, as a customer, anything which perpetuates the error is to be utterly disparaged in action and intent: if what you do is dangerous to my planning, then if you won't stop it I can at least stop listening to it. But, this goes further, it undermines the US claim to act within a framework of law and opens its commitment to International Law to question - and as there's no such thing as a debateable commitment, you're either doing it or you aren't, then the question instantly becomes a critique that nobody can thereafter trust the US in its Treaty commitments.

Amongst that list of things the US seems unwilling to stop is ignoring the accountability of the CIA to its commanders. It is an INTELLIGENCE Agency, not a combat unit in its own right, something the Agency appears to have forgotten several generations back. There can be a need for instant intervention, but only on the basis of a truthful judgement, as opposed to one warped by prejudice, dogma and wilful blind ignorance. This was a lesson learned from the Inquisition hundreds of years ago.

In terms of detail, In the UK, the Home Secretary Theresa May, to whom the Intelligence Services report, is being questioned by the Parliamentary Home Office Select Committee today. The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee is equally outraged, and are holding MI5 and MI6 to account. The Police are interviewing the Ministers who were responsible at the time, as the start of an enquiry which is aimed at arresting any criminals under our jurisdiction. WHO, by contrast, is being taken to account in the US, by WHOM and WHEN? IS the Head of the CIA changing their procedures to stop this happening ever again? ARE your Police actively interrogating those in command at the time to get to the bottom of who to charge for these criminal actions?

As it is, the apparent answer in the US is "None" to all of these, that report seems to have been filed vertically in the garbage bin. This means both those who committed what are crimes in high places and those who should hold them to account, in the words of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Chair of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee doing the clean-up in the UK, "without fear or favour", all of those who should be doing something in the US - but are not - become just as unreliable as those who did it, both sides of the political spectrum, reducing your entire political system to "a penny-ante bunch of shysters" for taking authority but not using it. It's not pleasant, but it is real.

You may not like it, but that is what is real and whay is happening. Those who did it on the UK will certainly name names in the US, so it'll escape through the back door. Man up, US, come with us and clean up the bodies who did this. CIA for sure, probably parts of the NSA, State Department, some of the Senate Overview - which is probably why they are circling the wagons - but go where it goes.

It may hurt your sense of National self-identity, but do you really want to identify yourselves with such things? These replies smack of denial, "say it's not so". But it is so, and cannot be unsaid. The options are simple, take it seriously, act like an adult nation and clean up the mess, mostly by ensuring those who did it are taught a lesson they will never forget and will never again be in a position to repeat the offence, or continue as you are and be treated as yet another dictatorial hegemony unworthy of attention.

Not everything is well in the UK, but when things are bad, we do what's necessary to sort it. For a while, it started to look as though Labour's riding roughshod over any opposition might have displaced that, but now no more - this is simply a relic of the former period. Our cosy version of the two-party system has broken down, and that is to the good, both major parties are now facing accountability to the people.

It is said that for good to prevail, those charged with doing it must succeed every time: evil only has to happen once. Don't give it the chance.