And how has this money been spent? Certainly not on social projects or rebuilding initiatives. Rather, the reporting indicates, the money has been funnelled to Karzai's cronies as bribes in a corrupt attempt to buy influence in the country.

A couple of days ago I was invited onto RT Arabic TV to do an interview about the ongoing clusterfuck that is Syria, with a particular focus on the is...

Where to start with this tangled skein of media spin, misrepresentation and outright hypocrisy?

In the same way that President Obama signed the invidious NDAA on 31 December last year, despite his previous protestations about using his veto, it appears the US government has sneaked/snuck through (please delete as appropriate, depending on how you pronounce 'tomato') yet another draconian law during the festive season, which apparently further erodes the US constitution and the civil rights of all Americans.

Extradition, in other words, does nothing for the fight against terrorism. On the contrary, it is a self-serving red-herring designed to conceal the dubious systemic failures of British and American security agencies from public knowledge, while vindicating their unaccountable powers to override the rule of law.

While it is unlikely that anyone bar Silverstein's source and perhaps a few insiders could state with any authority whether or not his alleged leak is a sure thing or a red herring - and in the long run, it doesn't matter.

Recent remarks by the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, leave us wondering if the Secret Intelligence Service is preparing to 'fix' intelligence on Iran, as his immediate predecessor, Sir John Scarlett, did on Iraq.

So cleverness is, of course, necessary. But it is only part of the answer. What we desperately need in our leaders and advisers and what we desperately lack is something more subtle; it's an understanding of how people live, bolstered by brains, but leavened with a great big dash of humility.