Travel advisory Part 2

British foreign secretary David Miliband was today accused of letting himself be "duped by the US on a colossal scale" following the publication of new claims about the interrogation of terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, a UK-controlled island in the Indian Ocean. "In my presence, in the White House, the possibility of using Diego Garcia for detaining high-value targets was discussed," Richard Clarke told Time magazine. This follows last month's Commons foreign affairs committee report that America's word can no longer be trusted when it comes to claims about torture.

"The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future. We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US."

In the short term lying works: Cheney gets to use British territories for his "enhanced interrogations." But in the long term what happens is: it gets found out, as it always does, and the first chance the British public get they vote whoever got duped out of office. A new government comes in, and this one isn't so friendly to US interests. A crucial alliance gets loosened.