The Beeb says:

The US admits to picking up terrorism suspects but denies sending them to Arab nations to face torture.

Since when did the CIA need 'Arab nations' to do its torturing for it? We know for a fact that they're a dab hand at the art of the strappado, electrocution, freezing, sexual humiliation, rape, mutilation and any other extent or extremity of violence and perversity that they decide to arrogate to themselves as a right.

However, because the report has firmly stipulated that the fourteen European countries that colluded in this were fully aware of what was taking place - were not dupes, in other words - the response has been curiously defensive. Blair says that the report has "added absolutely nothing new whatever to the information we have". This wording suggests that the report was somehow supposed to augment the information available to Mr Blair himself, as if he is entitled to grade the report for how useful it has been to him. I'm sure, however, that he was already fully aware of what he was up to. No one has accused him of being a somnambulist. What he has been accused of is allowing the CIA to anchor an important limb in its torture circuit in the UK, and of being complicit in the slicing of Benyam Mohammed's penis. If I was the kind of man to be interviewed by GQ, I might tell them that a suicide attack would be too good for the Prime Minister.