The allegations of allied complicity in torture point to a complete moral failure
There was no single reason why Britain and the US went to war in Iraq. The motives that inspired George W Bush and Tony Blair have been variously dissected, analyzed and psychoanalyzed. It is too early for history to have formed a settled view on the war, but the case that it was a monumental error gets ever more compelling.
Most of the official justifications for war, on grounds of security from terror and weapons of mass destruction, have been discredited. The only element of moral authority left in the decision might be that Saddam Hussein ran a murderous regime, characterized by torture and extra-judicial killing. It could indeed have been the duty of western powers to intervene against such atrocity. But the western occupiers quickly became complicit in atrocities of their own, as new leaked military documents reveal.
The files, passed to WikiLeaks and reported in today's Observer, reveal how allied forces turned a blind eye to torture and murder of prisoners held by the Iraqi army. Reports of appalling treatment of detainees were verified by the US army and deemed unworthy of further investigation.
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