Rendition - Powell Points The Finger

Although Blair and Straw stick to the official "Rendition, what rendition?" line, people in the know are beginning to drop hints the size of a daisy cutter. first Condi said that European governments should shut up if they knew what's best, but now Colin Powell makes the message even clearer.

"There's a little bit of the movie Casablanca in this, where, you know, the inspector says 'I'm shocked, shocked that this kind of thing takes place'.

"Well, most of our European friends cannot be shocked that this kind of thing takes place... The fact that we have, over the years, had procedures in place that would deal with people who are responsible for terrorist activities, or suspected of terrorist activities, and so the thing that is called rendition is not something that is new or unknown to my European friends."

It is the public who are outraged by this, and very soon they will become outraged by their own governments complicity in rendition, torture and secrecy.

Meanwhile on Planet Bush we learn that

Iraq is now a strong ally against terror and a force for democracy in the Middle East.

Of course, not so strong that Cheney could visit without such secrecy that even the Iraqi government weren't told he was coming.