Thought for the Day

I see that "torture" is back in the news again this morning after George Bush talked about his memoirs and has said that his decision to condone the technique of "water boarding" was because the White House lawyers advised that it was legal under the US Constitution.

Now, naturally, there will be those in the US that dispute that on the basis of an alternative interpretation of the Constitution, but then there will also be those who dispute it on the basis that the practice is "illegal" under "international law", however I wanted to throw a thought out for a second.

If you were to pop along to Hereford for a chat with the SAS, or perhaps contact the likes of Andy McNab and ask them about many of the alleged "torture" techniques (we're talking sleep deprivation, wall standing here as well as water-boarding), I'm guessing, based on reading McNab's Immediate Action that they'll tell you that they train for them.

Now, you could argue that they do this because the enemies they face are not as enlightened as ourselves so we have to assume that they'll resort to such thing, however, isn't the reality far more that we train our very best soldiers to be prepared for this sort of thing because we know only too well that we'd use the similar techniques to break someone if we really needed to break them?

Anyway, I digress. The real question and thought I have is this. Why is it we are so quick to condemn ourselves and call for legal recourse sometimes on an international scale in respect of the likes of George Bush and "war crimes", yet at no time was there ever a call for a war crimes trial for the likes of Saddam Hussein who authorised far worse in his time?


is the outrage when our own soldiers have been subjected to these techniques