"The Language Of The War On Terror"

Henry Porter, The Observer:

Reading Gordon Brown's article in the Times last week, I was struck by the disturbing echo of Blair's 2002 WMD dossier. He may be sincere, but his conjuring of nightmares, the many hypotheticals followed by solemn avowals of principle and statesmanship, was exactly the formula which took us into Iraq.

Brown is still talking in the language of the war on terror, a campaign that turned out to be as much against the rule of law as terrorism, and which has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people, enabled torture in Guantanamo and, as the Guardian revealed last week, the unlawful detention of suspects in nightmarish prison ships.

The proposal to hold people for six weeks without charge, or even giving them a reason, is part of that desperate, panicky convulsion which has seen the end of so many liberties in Britain.