Yet it is more than a certainty that no American raised the question of Israel’s notorious Khiam jail in southern Lebanon – in which

Yet it is more than a certainty that no American raised the question of Israel’s notorious Khiam jail in southern Lebanon – in which hundreds of Shia prisoners have been routinely tortured with electricity applied to fingers and genitals – nor the massacre of 105 refugees in a UN “safe haven” in southern Lebanon in April, a bloodbath which occurred in the course of an offensive to which Mr Portillo originally gave his moral approval. Very definitely no B-52s over Saudi Arabia.Then there is the friendly little island of Bahrain, home base of the US Gulf fleet, from where its admiral was yesterday directing two of his warships to fire their cruise missiles at Iraq. Less than a mile from the admiral’s wardroom stands the headquarters of Bahrain’s security police, where the regime’s opponents – who demand a return to parliamentary democracy but stand accused of trying to overthrow the regime – are routinely tortured with beatings and sexual abuse. Chief torturer is a Jordanian army colonel who acts as translator for the man who runs the security police, former British Special Branch man Ian Henderson. Mr Portillo, needless to say, has never been known to beat his breast over these peccadilloes. But Saudi Arabia still plays host to 5,000 US servicemen, and just happens to hold the world’s largest oil reservoir. A mother and daughter were executed this way in Dhahran; the youngest woman to be executed in the pro-Western Gulf, a Sri Lankan girl, was shot by firing squad just after her nineteenth birthday for allegedly killing her employer’s baby, a charge she denied.The whipping of young women by men is a common punishment for female prisoners accused of illicit relations in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

Women have their scarves removed before male executioners slice off their heads. And here again, we can be sure they did not raise Saudi Arabia’s habit of subjecting men and women accused of murder, rape or drug-dealing to secret trials in which they often have no defence counsel – followed by public beheading outside mosques on Friday mornings. In two Egyptian jails, warders punish prisoners by forcing them to rape each other More than 20 have been killed in one prison. Neither side would discuss their talks but we can be sure there was one subject on which General Shalikashvili did not question Mr Mubarak: the systematic use of torture by the Egyptian state security police on those suspected of violently opposing the regime.

But we can be sure that loyal Egypt will see no B-52s.The Americans also called on the Saudis during their pre-bombardment tour of the Middle East. Electricity applied to genitals, cigarette burns and beatings are routine in the intelligence offices at Lazoughly Street in Cairo and in Alexandria, where the general and the President were chatting. For if iniquity were the trigger for air attack, then the B-52s would be carpet-bombing the Middle East for weeks.
General John Shalikashvili, we are told, held a friendly conversation with Hosni Mubarak just before the cruise missiles were launched, to test the Egyptian leader’s reaction to the coming blitz. And even our very own Michael Portillo, the Secretary of State for Defence, was thundering forth about Saddam’s “terrible record of humanitarian [sic] atrocities.” All true

Saddam Hussein is a wicked man. His prison cells are filled with torture victims, his hangmen on 24-hour duty – women are executed on Wednesdays and Saturdays – and his secret police maintain raping rooms below their offices.

But if the military targets were specific, the moral indignation was also highly selective. Some diplomats feared, however, that discussioncould become harsh if divisions over the missile strikes surfaced.. The moral was simple. Act like a beast and the B-52s will come winging in from Guam, just like they did yesterday “When you abuse your own people …

you must pay the price,” President Bill Clinton told Saddam Hussein. Implementation of the arrangement was put on hold by the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, at the weekend because of concerns for the security of UN officials working inside northern Iraq.The Security Council had been scheduled anyway to discuss Iraq yesterday and was expected to confirm a formal extension of the economic sanctions imposed after the Gulf War in 1991. US diplomats indicated that the memorandum of understanding establishing the pact would have to be renegotiated. Any resolution is likely to take more than one day to negotiate, however.