If Blair fights for liberty he cannot condone torture (Daily Mail)

[struggle4progress]

11:32am 29th May 2005

As all the other pretexts collapsed, the Prime Minister came to lean heavily on moral justifications for the attack on Iraq, quietly forgetting that he had once been willing to let Saddam Hussein survive in power, if only he would abandon his supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Now that Mr Blair repeatedly cites the undoubted evil of Saddam's regime as the unanswerable reason for the invasion, the purity of his own actions must come under greater scrutiny. If we are fighting for the cause of liberty, and against cruelty and torture, then we are banned from using such methods ourselves.

But our actions - like those of the Americans - have not been as unblemished as the Government would like to pretend. This uncomfortable fact may have tempted Ministers to be sparing with the truth. If so, they must not be allowed to get away with it.

Opposition MPs are rightly raising questions over evidence that Mr Blair gave last year to the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee. They suggest that he misled that committee over British complicity in alleged torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American interrogators. He gave the impression that the role of British intelligence was far more virtuous than it really was. <snip>

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=350375&in_page_id=1787