I am appalled at the way in which modern armies continue to use old fashioned torture. The United States which talks a lot about 'rule of law' and 'human rights' has a huge blind spot when it comes to its own use of techniques that most decent people would understand to be torture. In the US it seems that at the highest levels of the Bush / Cheney / Rumsfeld administration, torture was considered to be a normal and essential part of the methods to be used.

The British army also seems to have embraced the use of inapprpriate treatment of people in their custody. It is unacceptable.

What people fail to understand is that bad behavior has no role in achieving security. The practice of torture by the US army and its intelligence community has alienated all sorts of people, who would otherwise be friends. This is utterly stupid.

Peter Burgess