So it looks like we’ve identified the new Con Coughlin. Here’s a piece in the Torygraph that blames everything SIS might have done wrong in the Bush years on Tony Blair, built entirely on a single SIS source. When I first saw it, it weirdly didn’t have a byline, although it since acquired that of Peter Foster, writing oddly from Washington.
On the same day, Foster also dropped this turd:
Up on Capitol Hill, one aide agreed that Anglo-American relations had survived the Syria “no” vote, but also noted that “it did catch many here by surprise”, unlike the supportive statements by the French that had been “especially well received”.
Not, apparently, that our MPs appeared to detect any such misgivings, or the corrosive effect on the strategic relationship from defence cuts that see Britain being downgraded to what some in the US military describe as “niche status”.
Even on intelligence matters, Britain’s worth has shrunk since the Cameron government told Scotland Yard to investigate MI6’s role in the CIA’s kidnap and torture programme – a move that has curtailed cooperation and spooked the spooks at Langley.
This surge of activity was of course inspired by the coming news that yes, we let them do it at Diego Garcia.
“The relationship is only special if Britain brings something to table.”
Which means that it isn’t a special relationship, at least in the terms that it has been used by British politicians for the last 50-odd years.
“The Senate report, according to Al Jazeera’s sources, says that the CIA detained some high-value suspects on Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean island controlled by the United Kingdom and leased to the United States. The classified CIA documents say the black site arrangement at Diego Garcia was made with the “full cooperation” of the British government. That would confirm long-standing claims by human rights investigators and journalists, whose allegations — based on flight logs and unnamed government sources — have routinely been denied by the CIA.”
So much for conspiracy theories.
Jack Straw can get fucked.