A Note to the Editors of the Guardian

This Guardian story from yesterday surely looks like what newsie folks like to call a “stinging rebuke”. Except this particular rebuke ended up costing us a few thousand lives.

Ministers insisted that British secret agents would only be allowed to pass intelligence to the CIA to help it capture Osama bin Laden if the agency promised he would not be tortured, it has emerged.

MI6 believed it was close to finding the al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan in 1998, and again the next year. The plan was for MI6 to hand the CIA vital information about Bin Laden. Ministers including Robin Cook, the then foreign secretary, gave their approval on condition that the CIA gave assurances he would be treated humanely.

Apparently, all it would have taken is an assurance that we treat a guy who’d arranged for the murder of a few dozen US citizens “humanely”, whatever that means. So maybe that shouldn’t have been so difficult to do. The CIA Director at that time was George Tenet, which means that the President was…

The report criticises the Bush administration’s approval of practices which would be illegal if carried out by British agents. It shows that in 1998, the year Bin Laden was indicted in the US, Britain insisted that the policy of treating prisoners humanely should include him. But the CIA never gave the assurances.

George Bush?!?!? Ummmm…guys?

“In 1998, SIS [MI6] believed that it might be able to obtain actionable intelligence that might enable the CIA to capture Osama bin Laden,” the committee says in its report.

Wait…MI6 never actually had bin Laden? They just thought they could get some good intel on him. Guys? Guardian? Hello??

It adds: “Given that this might have resulted in him being rendered from Afghanistan to the US, SIS sought ministerial approval. This was given provided that the CIA gave assurances regarding humane treatment.” British intelligence made a similar request in 1999, and obtained the same response from Whitehall, but in the event MI6 did not provide the information.

Fellas? Mates?

George Bush wasn’t actually President in 1998. He wasn’t even a Presidential candidate in 1998.

You think it would have killed you to actually mention the name of the man who was the President in 1998? Or 1999? How about the name of the CIA Director?

Or would that have screwed up you whole “George Bush is a torturing, blood-soaked cowboy” narrative?

What does this story have to do with President Bush, except the snide insinuation for those folks too dumb to know that he was busy being the Governor of Texas? And of what import is it that the vaunted MI6 thought they might have possibly could have had some information that the CIA maybe could have acted upon, if only they had set aside their love for torture?

Depends on your agenda, doesn’t it?

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Category: Featured, Fighting the Islamists, Oh, THAT liberal media.