From the Mouths of Mikes

Believe it or not, things have actually started to get busy at work... I KNOW!!

As I have neither the time nor inspiration at present, I thought I'd share some of Dr Mike's wisdom. Mike is a clever clogs and frequently gives me updates of what is going on in his head re things political.

And thus I present what may well become a regular feature: Political Stuff from Mike's Head.

Last night, SBS screened the US PBS Frontline documentary entitled "The Dark Side", examining the role of key players in the US administration, Vice-President Cheney in particular, as well as the role of intelligence agencies in recent conflict in the Middle East.

It mentioned something which I'm surprised not to have seen crop up in the anti-torture debate. You know the general argument that torture is bad idea because it can often result in false information, and that if you've got some guy strapped to electrified wires he'll just tell you what you want to hear?

How’s this for a specific example: You know the argument that Saddam had mobile biological and chemical weapons facilities, that he was supplying al-Qaeda with these, and that he was weaponising them for long-range missile use? Bush trotted this one in his State of the Union, telling us that we knew this for a fact. Cheney repeated on several occasions. It was the trump card that Powell played in the United Nations. It was the story we heard here, in Britain, and elsewhere.

Well guess where they got that intelligence?

That's right.

Torture.

It was something that was told to Egyptian security forces who were torturing a prisoner from Afghanistan that the CIA had turned over to them – you know, rendition.

This guy finally cracked and told them that yes, OK, they were right, Saddam had been supplying them with weapons, lots of them, are you happy? And they sent the info the US and the US took it as gospel, printed it up and used it to justify the invasion.

That’s a pretty good example of why, even if you don't have qualms about torturing people, the information you get isn’t reliable.

You can view the documentary online, and it's well worth it – particularly to see how the CIA handled the situation.

Hear bloody hear!!

Stay tuned for more Mike ramblings until we convince him he needs to start his own blog.