On Sunday, President Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley told US networks that Ms Rice would address the issue "in a comprehensive way".

"We comply with US law, we respect the sovereignty of the countries with which we deal, and we do not move people around the world so that they can be tortured," Mr Hadley told Fox News Sunday.

And in an interview with CNN, he said that providing information about certain operations "would help the enemy... it would put countries who are co-operating with us at risk"

Note that these are not denials. Rather it is evidence that the US is intepreting international law and ordinary definitions to its own ends.

The issue of severeignty is interesting. Some countries' law effectively excludes planes simply refuelling in airports while transitting as still being in international territory. Perhaps those with a better knowledge of the laws in the relevant countries (including Scotland which has its own laws) can clarify. Agencies like customs or immigration only tends to be involved once someone tries to leave "airside". In many cases at ost only a manifest would have to be lodged and this would list something like " 4 passengers - Mr W,X, Y, and Z.

We then get to the qusetion whether the alleged prisons would violate national sovereignty. Since we know many countries are forced to accept that US military personnel are exept from local law and that US jurisdiction applies to them and their bases, it depends what you mean by sovereignty. US bases, embassies and some US facilities in large compounds are regarded as US territory. That's why women about to give birth are (and I know this from a friend's experience) urged to have their babies in a hospital within these sites. If they do so they satisfy the "native born" provision for standing for the US presidency. Bush would therefore argue that the prisons within US bases are not on the territory of the country that hosts them. I believe just such an argument was given to avoid Cuban criticism of Gitmo Bay. On the other hand, when they are challenged about this in US courts, they claim the US Supreme Court has no competence because it is not on US territory. It's these sorts of legal niceties that the weasel words of Rice will exploit.

 As for not moving them around to be tortured - again it depends what you mean by torture. We know the CIA has been authorised to use "waterboarding" which has been described as torture by the Pentagon in the context of the treatment of US prisoners. For the CIA is is merely an extreme measure short of torture. By the way, other methods described in the CIA document were also described as torture by the European Court of Human Rights when they were referred to it in the context of British treatment of prisoners in Northern Ireland.

Of course the US could be trying the Blair technique to enable the UK to extradite to countries known to torture. Effectively they write to the country concerned and ask "you won't torture these prisoners if we send them to you, will you" to which the country writes back "of course not". Voila! You are not extraditing them to be tortured.

I also find the concept that telling the truth would "help the enemy" interesting apart from it being a tacit admission that the US is lying to its allies and friends. Are they suggesting that by telling say the UK that the flights stopping at Prestwick have renditees on them would "help the enemy" How? Because even Blair would be forced by the knowledge to rescue the prisoners? Or that the governments of these countries are so unreliable that they would publish the information? Or perhaps the real truth is that the Bush Administration considers the Europeans the enemy?

Be ready to carefully deconstruct anything Rice says in public - and anything the US cronies like Blair or Berlusconni (and Merkle?) might have to say in answer to questions in press conferences.