No Longer Any Excuses

Last night, BooMan argued that releasing Bush era terror memos wasn't as simple as just having Eric Holder make them public.

You can think about it like this. When you try to recruit someone to spy for you against his own government your number one obstacle is not overcoming their innate patriotism. You've probably already identified some weakness on their part (substance addiction, homosexuality, a sick child, etc.) that you can exploit. Your number one obstacle is convincing them that you can keep the arrangement a secret and that you can take care of them if anything goes wrong. If your government cannot keep a secret, them you'll have a hell of a time convincing anyone to spy for you. Therefore, it's bad idea for the government to discuss clandestine operations in public.

What's true about recruiting agents is tenfold more true about foreign intelligence services. You cannot expose a foreign intelligence service as being complicit in torture, for example, and think that they will ever cooperate with you again on sensitive intelligence matters.

That's the legacy that the Bush administration left us. If we have a full airing of the black sites, the extraordinary renditions, and the 'enhanced interrogations', it will severely damage our vital relationships with several foreign intelligence services. And that can really and truly put our country at unnecessary risk.

This morning that argument became an utterly moot point. The Brits announced their own "truth and reconciliation" investigation into torture and human rights abuses.

MPs are to undertake the most far-reaching inquiry into Britain's role in human rights abuses in decades as allegations mount to suggest that officials repeatedly breached international law.

The Commons foreign affairs select committee will examine Britain's involvement in the detention, transfer and interrogation of prisoners held during the so-called war on terror. Among the matters to be examined later in the year are allegations, reported in the Guardian over the past two years, that British intelligence officers colluded in the torture of Britons held in Pakistan and Egypt.

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, will give evidence to the inquiry although he and Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, refused, earlier this year, to appear before parliament's joint committee on human rights, which is looking into reports that British officials were complicit in torture.

The foreign affairs committee will investigate:

• The case of Binyam Mohamed.

• Allegations of British complicity in torture.

• The practice of extraordinary rendition, including the possible use of the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia.

• The transfer of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

• Allegations of sexual abuse at the British embassy in Baghdad.

• The oversight of private security companies employed by the Foreign Office.

Mike Gapes, the committee's Labour chairman, said this would be the first time it would attempt to investigate the range of allegations about British conduct. "We are very concerned about these, and thought it was important to branch out," he said. The committee has yet to decide whether to ask the security or intelligence agencies to give evidence.

As you can see there by that last sentence, the Brits are struggling with the intelligence question as well, the argument is that revealing anything about our intel sources and methods will do far more damage to our country than the continuing mistrust that refusing to release the information is causing or will cause. However, that's no longer the point. The Brits have all but played our hand by deciding that the intelligence agency evidence question is not stopping them from launching a full inquiry.

At this point I don't see how Obama can now continue to refuse to hold similar hearings. It needs to be done. Period. Redact the methods and sources if you must, but after this, there's no longer any excuse. Particularly given the very, very real possibility of the British investigation implicating American officials in some way, we now have no choice. The British Parliament has made Obama's decision for him.

The UK and the US are so inextricably linked that US officials have to and will be implicated in the British inquiry. Sunlight is about to be shined on the whole black, rotten mess underneath the rock that it has been buried under. The risk of this happening means that the US should now conduct its own investigation before the British one embarrasses the US any further.

And regardless of the state of the intelligence question, the Brits are again proceeding with a full inquiry. We now look like fools because of our President's stubborn refusal to do the same. Nobody will trust us on anything anyway.

The Brits are doing the right thing and in doing so they have forced Obama's hand. We need to as well. We now have no choice in the matter.