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BBC:

Gordon Brown says he will review the cases of Iraqi interpreters who have been told any claim for asylum in the UK will not be given special treatment.

…but…

No 10 said the issue would be kept under review, but previous decisions were unlikely to be overturned.

These Iraqi interpreters must be kicking themselves. If only they were millionaire businessmen or long distance runners, they’d be sitting pretty and none of this fuss would have happened.

Then the Defence Secretary, the abject Des Browne, said his piece:

He said about 20,000 Iraqis had helped British forces since 2003.

Nice scary number that. 20,000. It should carve off some support for these potential freeloaders and benefit scroungers. That’ll be the Daily Mail and Express vote successfully neutralised if nothing else. It is nice to see that Des has been thoughtfully counting the number of helpful Iraqi citizens. One wonders if he’s keeping count of those being tortured and drilled to death one by one. What do you think?

And how about this…

“That’s why the prime minister has made it clear that we will review how best to [carry out] our duty of care to these people.

“That’s in hand, I have a responsibility on that, as does the foreign secretary and we will report to ministers in the autumn.”

Mr Browne also said the government would “move at the appropriate pace” to get its policy right in relation to duty of care “to all of those whom we have a responsibility to”.

‘In the autumn‘? ‘Appropriate pace’? This isn’t good enough. These people are dying right now. And not by a nice swift, lights-out bullet to the back of the head. They’re being power drilled in the hands and legs and head so their mutilated bodies can serve as warning to others. Those 91 interpreters could be dead ‘in the autumn’.

Do you really want to be on the same side of the argument as somebody as morally compromised as Des Browne? If not, please write to your MP and sign the petition.

Update: The letters page from today’s Times.

Update updated: The 8.10 slot on Radio 4’s Today programme (RealPlayer required).

And more: Des Browne on the Today programme. May induce vomiting.

More: Jamie is thoughtful on this:

I think it’s unlikely for opsec reasons that there’ll be a formal public announcement. People need to be extracted quietly so as not to tip off the insurgents that the process is underway, for one thing. What seems to have been achieved so far is getting the issue a bit more front and centre. Next job: keeping it there.

As I say in the comments, let’s hope doing it on the quiet is the plan. It doesn’t detract from the fact however that, from the outset, the Government’s default position on this was “fuck ‘em”. Hence people getting turned away from the UK embassy in Damascus and the power-drilled bodies lying about the place.