Terrorism

A heartening, very interesting - and highly unusual - intervention by the Lord Advocate: Scotland's top prosecutor has said the case has not been made for extending the length of time terror suspects can be detained without charge to 42 days. BBC Scotland has learnt that Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini gave her opinion in a letter to the Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael. She said the change from the current 28 days was not supported by "prosecution experience to date"... "While there has been a limited number of cases in Scotland which were investigated in terms of the Terrorism Act 2000, I am not aware of any case where an extension of the period beyond 28 days would have been required.

The government's proposals for incarcerating suspects for up to 42 days before being required, however inconveniently, to produce a charge are, naturally, appalling. How can you be so sure? Well, they must be: 65% of the public supports them. In other poll news, ICM puts the Tories on 42%, Labour 26% and the Liberal Democrats on 21%. This is extraordinary: how can one in five Britons be prepared to vote for the Lib Dems?

I suspect that MPs are sufficiently craven - and willing to put the government's political prospects ahead of any petty concerns about principle or, god help us, justice - that they will endorse the government's appalling proposal that terrorist suspects can be held for up to 42 days before the state need produce a charge. In a better, more sensible world, all MPs would read John Major's article in The Times yesterday. For good measure Major, who of course survived an IRA assassination attempt himself (a mortar attack on Downing Street that blew in the windows during a cabinet meeting), decries the illiberality of the government's ID card proposals and (in England) its determination to have everyone's DNA held on a government database.

Via Samizdata, this seems to be a quite appalling story. The Guardian reports that:A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the "psychological torture" he endured in custody.Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website for his research into terrorist tactics.

Gordon Brown flies to Washington today (where, inter alia, he will have meetings with McCain, Clinton and Obama) so, naturally, this is the cue for fresh fretting over US-UK relations. Nile Gardner, currently exiled at the Heritage Foundation, duly volunteers for duty: Divine intervention might be required to improve the state of U.S.-UK relations, which have deteriorated since Blair left Downing Street last June. While the Anglo-American “special relationship” continues at many levels behind the scenes — from intelligence cooperation to collaboration over missile defense — significant signs of strain are beginning to show over the handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the broader war against Islamist terrorism.

Matt Yglesias sees walls going up in Baghdad and wonders if the US Army is using Northern Ireland as its template: I believe this technique comes to the US Army's counterinsurgency theorists via Belfast, where I believe they have been effective in helping the British maintain a degree of order. To some extent, this brings us back to the question of strategy. If tactics employed in Northern Ireland can be made to work in Iraq (and maybe they can) even though Iraq has ten times as many people as Northern Ireland does and even though Iraqis don't speak English and even though the sectarian violence in Iraq is undergirded by concrete fighting over valuable resources, then does this really seem like a wise strategic undertaking? It doesn't seem that way to me.

Melanie Philips, I'm afraid, continues to show signs of becoming Britain's answer to David Horowitz. Her latest salvo culminates in this absurdity: Annapolis is America’s Munich — and Israel is the new Czechoslovakia. Previously Philips, unsurprisingly, lamented John Howard's defeat in Australia. For myself, I rather think that 12 years in office is long enough and, absent an entirely hapless opposition, it's important to turf incumbents out of office, regardless of which party they happen to be. (It is not a good sign for Gordon Brown that Labour will have been in power for 13 years when the next election is held). Still, none of that matters.

John McCain tells ABC's This Week that - shockingly! - torture is " a very important issue to me" and consequently that he can't guarantee that he will vote to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General if the nominee continues to fudge on the question of whether or not he believes waterboarding constitutes torture. McCain, noting yet again that it was a favourite method of Pol Pot's happy warriors, would, one senses like to vote No but there's the problem that... well, let's go and see what the GOP blogs are saying. Here's Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, confirming that supporting the use of waterboarding would indeed seem to be a prerequisite for anyone hoping to win the Republican nomination. This (cheese-eating?

Chris Orr wonders why Fred Thompson's work - albeit just a handful of hours - on behalf of the Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing is not receiving more attention. Fred Thompson, Terrorist Lawyer! Well, OK. Thompson says his opinion was sought on the venue question, leading Chris to say: Thompson's mention of "venue" issues, too, is a little misleading. We're not talking about whether someone is tried in Manhattan or Queens here. As far as I can tell, we're talking about whether two indicted terrorists would be extradited from Libya to face justice. (It took years, but in 1999 they were finally handed over for trial in the Netherlands.) I'm loathe to defend Thompson, a man whose candidacy has no compelling rationale justifying it, but Chris being unfair.

Memo to terrorists: you've missed your opportunity. It's too late now. Just pack up and go home. John Smeaton  - the Pride of the Clyde and scourge of terrorists everywhere - returns to work today. Mr Smeaton, sharp-brained readers will recall, is the baggage handler who famously "set aboot" the lunatics who tried to bomb Glasgow Airport last month, delivering a swift and punishing kicking to the would-be terrorists. Mr Smeaton became the embodiment of Glasgow's image of itself: pawky but hard as nails, proud to live up to the old motto of Kings of Scotland, Nemo Me Impune Lacessit - roughly translated as Wha Daur Meddle Wi Me? or No-one Attacks Me With Impunity. In fact, as the terrific Smeato fansite demonstrates, Smeatomania has reached splendidly absurd levels.