Working at a newspaper, there is a lot of news we don’t get to fit on a page. Either there is not enough space because of ads on the page or the story just has to make way for something that is more “newsier”. I don’t understand why, but we get to play information Gods every evening and clean up all the mess before the deadline hits.
I know you’re wondering that if it’s so important, then why can’t you just drop these other items you call “news”? I do, a lot of times. If I can’t, into the blog it goes.
Hi ho.
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Former M15 head admits for first time ‘illegal’ water boarding technique worked
London: Former M15 head Eliza Manningham-Buller has admitted for a first time that the water boarding technique provided intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks but denounced it as an immoral and illegal technique.
“It’s not the case that torture always produces false information and actually it’s clear that torture can contribute to saving lives, but I don’t think that’s the point. The point is that it is not something that is right, legal and moral to do,” she said.
At BBC Reith lecture in Leeds, she criticized former American officials for making ‘exaggerated’ claims about the technique,The Telegraph reports.
“I don’t agree with all the claims that the American people make, some of the statements are exaggerated but I don’t want to get into specifics,” she added.
Former US president George W Bush had claimed that interrogating senior al-Qaeda operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a 9/11 attack architect, through water boarding technique helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States.
Lady Manningham-Buller decried the Central Intelligence Agency’s enhanced interrogation techniques which simulated drowning and were subsequently banned by the Obama administration.
“Torture is illegal in our national law and in international law. It is wrong and never justified. It’s a sadness and worse that a previous government of our greatest ally the United States chose to waterboard detainees,” she said.
The argument that lifesaving intelligence was thereby obtained, and I accept that it was, still does not justify it. Torture should be utterly rejected even when it may offer the prospect of saving lives, she added.
Lady Manningham-Buller said she was proud that MI5 refused to torture the Second World War prisoners when in the early years we stood alone and there was a high risk of us being invaded and becoming a Nazi province.(ANI)
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj4uWXxGxQk?wmode=transparent]