U.S. Knowingly Using Info Obtained by Torture

Who are Bush's best allies in the war on terror? Not Canada and Mexico, our neighbors to the north and south. Not France and Germany, our allies for the past fifty years. Nope, Bush's closest buddies are Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Pakistan, Lybia, Uzbekistan and the like.

This makes a certain sense, since Saudi Arabia knows a lot about terror -- they practice it on their own people and spend their oil wealth spreading the virulent perversion of Islam called Wahhabism around the world. Pakistan knows a lot about WMDs -- they've sold equipment and know-how to rogue nations and terrorist groups all over the world. Czar Putin of Russia has crushed the fragile new democracy in his homeland and brutalizes minorities he doesn't like. China uses the war on terror to justify its persecution of people in wacky cults like Falun Gong and the cultural genocide of the peace-loving Tibetans. Lybia is also a long-time terrorist state who harbored the thugs that blew up a commercial US airliner.

And then there's Uzbekistan. The UK just withdrew its ambassador. An outraged response to some Uzbeki impropriety? Just the opposite -- the outspoken ambassador who recognized the hypocrisy of collaborating in a war on terror with a govt like Uzbekistan had become a political liability.

"Earlier this week, details were revealed of a furious memo [Ambassador Craig Murray] sent to the Foreign Office, complaining that the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was using information passed on to it by the CIA but originally obtained in Uzbek torture cells," reports the Independent.

"As well as being morally and legally wrong, the practice was unreliable because prisoners under torture could be expected to say whatever their tormentors wanted to hear, he warned.

"And he wrote: "We are selling our souls for dross.""

Murray created a stir in 2002 when he had the temerity to criticize that country for the brutal conditions of its jails -- where two prisoners were boiled to death.

That's right, the US is knowingly using information obtained by torture. What better way to fight the war on terror?

You can tell a lot about someone by their friends. What do governments like these say about us?