Puddles on the Paper Trail

Documents relating to the British government's role in the CIA's secret kidnap and torture programme appear to have suffered some discreet mutilations of their own. The Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns claims that records of flights to and from Diego Garcia are "incomplete due to water damage". Diego Garcia, of course, is the Indian Ocean territory which was stolen from its inhabitants by the British so they could give it to the Americans to play with; its use for rendition flights was the catalyst for one of the Other Milibeing's numerous moments of political abjection, when he was forced to apologise for the Reverend Blair's customary disregard for mere earthly notions of truth. The files' regrettable state of involuntary hydraulic redaction has emerged at a rather delicate point, given recent revelations that a hundred and fourteen Home Office files seem to have walked away or fallen down the back of someone's sofa or been eaten by badgers. Were it not for the manifest inability of either ministry to organise two hands and a flashlight into an arse-finding conspiracy, one might be inclined to suspect that something fishy was going on.