Did you hear? The United Kingdom has decided that maybe, just maybe, it shouldn’t be subservient to the United States anymore.
Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee said the government should be “less deferential” toward the Americans and take a more realistic view of the relationship. In a report published Sunday, the committee said that, while ties with America remain close, it is important to recognize that Britain is just one of many countries with important U.S. links.
It’s not hard to see why the UK may be feeling this way since they were unable to squelch investigations into complicity in the torture of detainees, a program started by the Bush administration. Now, politicians and government officials in Britain are trying their best to run from that complicity.
The government protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects, the former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed last night.
She also said the Americans concealed from Britain the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks.
“The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing,” Lady Manningham-Buller told a meeting at the House of Lords.
She also admitted MI5 were slow to recognise that the US was torturing detainees. Asked if Britain protested, she replied: “We did lodge a protest.” She declined to elaborate but it is believed that the protests were made at ministerial level.
Yes. We PROTESTED the use of torture, but, didn’t do anything to actually STOP it. Yet, NOW that it is all coming out, British politicians are worried they are seen as America’s “poodle”.
“The perception that the British government was a subservient ‘poodle’ to the U.S. administration leading up to the period of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath is widespread both among the British public and overseas,” the report said. “This perception, whatever its relation to reality, is deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the U.K.”
Actually, what has damaged Britain’s reputation isn’t perception, but, the facts that are now emerging; Tony Blair DID follow George W. Bush into war with Iraq and the torture of detainees. He turned Britain INTO America’s poodle.