Spineless excuses for complicity in rendition flights

SO the Taoiseach and Dermot Ahern are miffed at the ‘bad timing’ of the revelations by the European Parliament’s Temporary Committee that 147 CIA flights landed in Ireland.

‘Sure, don’t they know an election looms!’

When Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern says he accepts US assurances that Ireland is not being involved in rendition/torture flights, we need to put this into context. He is speaking of a White House administration that lied about weapons of mass destruction, lied about Iraq being involved with al-Qaida and September 11, hedged about its surveillance programme on its own citizens and equivocated about the status of Guantánamo detainees so they could be quasi-legally tortured.