More Torture Memos

Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has initiated quite the holiday storm over in London. He left his post last year in a dust up over implicit UK and US involvement in Uzbeki torture and, as former government officials are wont to do, wrote a book about his experiences. When he ran the book by the British Foreign Office, they demanded that he delete all references to two British government documents (and return any copies that he had in his own possession, to boot). Murray's response: "Aaah, no" (or perhaps stronger words to that effect).

He posted the documents to his own web site, and they're devastating. Despite insistence to the contrary, both the US and the UK have been benefitting from Uzbeki torture and using information gleaned from it. Although Murray's site and the documents are currently online, they had apparently been suspiciously unavailable for a short time. If it goes down again, the documents are available at Daily Kos and various other sites around Lower Blogsylvania. For the time being, this is a bigger story in the UK than in the US (just like previous Brit torture memos), but there are a lot of implications for the Bush Administration and its attraction to torture. Look to the blogs to keep the story alive for the time being.