George W. Bush, as promised, “has vetoed a bill”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/10/usa.humanrights which would have outlawed the CIA’s use of waterboarding to torture suspects.

Bush said that any attempt to restrict CIA interrogators would weaken them in the fight against al-Qaida. He claimed the CIA had used its own secret methods to foil several attacks, including plans to attack Heathrow, to fly a plane into the US Bank Tower in Los Angeles and to hit the US consulate in Karachi.

In the UK meanwhile, there are growing demands for an independent inquiry into the use of UK territory by the CIA’s rendition flights after it emerged last week that flights had landed at Diego Garcia.

Last month, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, apologised to MPs, admitting that contrary to "earlier explicit assurances" two flights had landed at Diego Garcia, the British Indian Ocean territory where the US has a large airbase. He said the flights had refuelled there, and each had had a single detainee on board who did not leave the aircraft. British and US officials have refused to give details about the two detainees other than that one was in Guantánamo Bay and the other had been released. Miliband said he had asked his officials for a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.