From those crazed radicals at the Financial Times of London
Europe’s foremost guardian of human rights yesterday painted a chilling picture of how more than a dozen European countries became part of a global “spider’s web” spun by the US to kidnap and transport outside the reach of the law suspects in the “war on terror”. Such lawless practices, including the outsourcing of torture to friendly despots, are spreading like a lethal virus.
They amount to a moral capitulation by liberal societies and a surrender of the rule of law in the face of jihadi totalitarianism. If we behave like this, what exactly are we defending?
Many of the cases in the Marty report were known. But their presentation as a pattern called forth a storm of bluster and obfuscation from those implicated.
But rather than shooting the messenger they should look at the message the west is sending by betraying the values it urges on others, a hypocrisy in no way disguised by recourse to Orwellian legalisms such as “rendition”.
We should not need to make the case against torture. It is morally depraved. It corrodes the society that condones it. It elicits largely worthless information. As Craig Murray, the UK envoy to Uzbekistan fired for denouncing Britain’s use of CIA-supplied information extracted in Uzbek jails, put it: “We are selling our souls for dross.”