Inhumane or Super-Human?

Having terminated, at a minimum, tens of thousands of Iraqi people's lives and ruined millions more, the Ministry of War and the Colonies Including Scotland has admitted that the human rights of almost ten Iraqis have undergone "substantive breaches" during the ongoing war on unpleasantness. A "very small number of troops" were responsible, according to the Minister for Cheap Armed Forces; the rest have conducted themselves, predictably, "to the highest standards of behaviour" conceivable by a New New Labour minister.

Seven members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment were put on trial after a three-year investigation; a hundred witnesses were heard, ninety-two per cent of whom were not Iraqis. A certain Donald Payne pleaded guilty to inhumane treatment of the subject race and was jailed for not quite as many years as some people get for being suspected of anti-democratic activities; everyone else was acquitted. The treatment involved "hooding, handcuffing and placing of terrorist suspects into stress positions, as well as depriving them of sleep, in order to make them more likely to answer questions"; as one would expect from functionaries of New New Labour, the matter of whether the answers thus obtained would be true was evidently not one of significant concern. Still, the unaccompanied Donald Payne, indulging in his disgusting hobbies entirely alone and without the knowledge or consent of his superiors, must have had a rather exhausting time of it.