CONDOLEEZZA Rice is now saying: "As a matter of US policy, the United Nations Convention against Torture extended to US interrogators wherever they are, whether they are in the US or outside the US."

This is just another smokescreen. As usual, though, the main medium of television, where most people first hear such news, merely quotes herwithout questioning the content of her statement. It has never been merely been a question of rendition being used just so that Americans can torture people once off US soil. It is the fact that many countries to which people are being rendered themselves use torture. It is these countries' interrogators that carry out the torture on behalf of the US. And not just the US if a recent Sunday Herald report is accurate - on behalf of British security forces as well. As reported then, while we Brits may not be active on the kidnapping side we seem to be actively supplying the questions for the torturers.

If we allow this to continue, can anyone tell me, apart from the obvious difference in scale, howwe would differ from the German generation criticised for not standing up against Hitler?

Alisdair Scott, 6 Sandeman Place, Luncarty, Perth.

NEVER has the politics of the school playground been more like the world order than today. The wee men with theirwee gangs, Milosevic and Saddam, being tried in US kangaroo courts for pursuing, killing and torturing people they claimed were insurgents and terrorists. Meanwhile, the big men, Bush and Blair, with their big gangs, are doing the same thing with invasion, kidnapping and imprisoning "suspects" for life, and they are getting off scot-free.

It would be great if some sort of headmaster figure would come along and sort out the bully boys, Bush and Blair, and bring back to us fairminded people a sense of moral justice.

W P Kerr, 56 Sandyknowes Road, Cumbernauld.