Explicit Assurances

The Upper Miliband has admitted that, contrary to "earlier explicit assurances", British territory has been used as a stopover for two flights involved in the Bush administration's kidnap-and-torture racket. Apparently this constitutes an "embarrassment". The territory in question was Diego Garcia, the island in the Indian Ocean which the British government stole from its inhabitants so that our closest and most valued ally could put an air base on it. As one would expect, the Bush administration did not inform the British government at the time because it was "not legally obliged" to do so; and we all know how seriously the Bush administration takes its legal obligations. However, the CIA are now "as confident as they can be" that no other kidnapees have been flown through Britain during the War on the Abstract Noun. The CIA also explicitly assures us, doubtless equally reliably, that neither of the victims who were on the flights that landed at Diego Garcia "was ever part of the CIA's high-value terrorist interrogation programme" - in other words, they were not tortured, only kidnapped and held without trial. The flights were "mistakenly overlooked in previous US internal inquiries carried out at the UK's behest", which shows just how much trouble our closest and most valued ally is prepared to take on our behalf.