DRIP...DRIP...DRIP

SLOWLY, week by week, revelations about some of the murkier aspects of the War on Terror are leaking out. One week it is the admission by the US authorities that torture has been used in questioning of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The next week it is convictions under Britain's Terrorism Act that are overturned on appeal because they were wrongly given in the first place. Then yesterday Foreign Secretary David Miliband had to stand up in the House of Commons and admit that earlier statements by Tony Blair and Jack Straw denying any British involvement in America's policy of “extraordinary rendition” had been incorrect. Under this policy suspected terrorists are moved around the world to secret locations where they can be subjected to interrogation of an extreme kind. Tony Blair and Jack Straw, when he was Foreign Secretary, were repeatedly asked whether US planes involved in “extraordinary rendition” had ever landed on British soil. The answer was always a categorical denial. Yesterday, however, Mr Miliband admitted to two instances in 2002 when such planes had landed at the British overseas territory, Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, where the US has a base. This revelation followed the provision of information from Washington that had not been previously released to London. What does it say about the state of Anglo-American relations that it has taken the US five years to come clean about a matter on which senior British ministers were under heavy fire from Parliament and the media?