The CIA/MI6 And Colonel Gadaffi: Ifn' Yew Lize Down Wif Dawgs, You Gits Fleas

John LeCarre's secret of success is that he simply relates rather more polite versions of the idiocies that are carried out in our names.

(The release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing seemed unexplicable at the time. Now, the event is, well, perhaps, plausible and understandable. The governments of the US and the UK left the families of the victims hung out to dry. After all, the reasoning might go, that thing occurred in 1988, you know. How bad can the loss of a child to a terrorist murderer still hurt after all those years, and we have bigger fish to fry, and...)

From the BeeBeeCee, ever the bearer of glad tidings:

US and UK spy agencies built close ties with their Libyan counterparts during the so-called War on Terror, according to documents discovered at the office of Col Gaddafi's former spy chief.

The papers suggest the CIA abducted several suspected militants from 2002 to 2004 and handed them to Tripoli.

The UK's MI6 also apparently gave the Gaddafi regime details of dissidents.

The documents, found by Human Rights Watch workers, have not been seen by the BBC or independently verified.

But, wait, there's more, and more to come!

The papers outline the rendition of several suspects, including one that Human Rights Watch has identified as Abdel Hakim Belhaj, known in the documents as Abdullah al-Sadiq, who is now the military commander of the anti-Gaddafi forces in Tripoli.

The Americans snatched him in South East Asia before flying him to Tripoli in 2004, the documents claim.

Mr Belhaj, who was involved in an Islamist group attempting to overthrow Col Gaddafi in the early 2000s, had told the Associated Press news agency earlier this week that he had been rendered by the Americans, but held no grudge.

Riiight.

What could possibly go wrong?