[This is the headline over an article by Ian Bell in today's edition of The Herald. The following are the first four and the last two paragraphs.]
Since this seems to be the week for offending American opinion, let's cram Stalin and the CIA into the same sentence. It's not too much of a stretch. History relates, in gory detail, that the NKVD and sundry other forerunners of the KGB routinely achieved their ends by threatening the families of prisoners. It concentrated minds wonderfully.
The important difference is, of course, that Stalin's psychopaths as often as not carried out their promises to murder children and rape women. They did not serve freedom's cause, either. Still, the point is that there is nothing new in the dark, repulsive world of torture. And its practitioners always claim a higher purpose.
How should we respond, then, to the long-suppressed internal CIA report into the activities of certain of its agents in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks? Cancel a few holidays? Boycott bourbon? Remind ourselves that there is mounting evidence that Britain, too, has been in receipt of intelligence extracted illegally?
Eric Holder, the US attorney- general, has elected to publish the report and has appointed John Durham, an experienced federal prosecutor, to investigate a dozen or so cases. That's progress, of sorts. It will dismay the White House, inflame the Republican right and partly satisfy the American Civil Liberties Union. Whether it will redeem America's sense of rectitude is another matter. (...)
A country that believes it can treat alleged terrorists in any way it sees fit, and then fails to deal with the truth of its actions, is a poor candidate in the moral leadership stakes. Its President's own claims to leadership, especially when he chooses to lecture others, then lose all credibility.
So remind me: what was it that was so especially heinous about the recent actions of Scotland's government?
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