For 10 years British politicians like Jack Straw, Gordon Brown and David Miliband have flatly denied that the British state was complicit in torture during the war on terror.

The west's intervention has caused a security vacuum and set in motion events that aren't good for Libya, for the United States or for the world.

Critics of the Libya intervention warned that dropping bombs in a country and killing civilians, would produce blowback in the form of those who would then want to attack the US.

When Hillary Clinton asks 'How can this happen in a country we helped to liberate?' one is tempted to answer with the Spanish proverb – breed crows and they will pull out your eyes.

It is hard not to notice, and be disturbed by, the vastly different reactions whenever innocent Americans are killed, as opposed to when Americans are doing the killing of innocents.

The Libyan revolution, fanned and fuelled by bogus 'liberators' David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy, is in danger of degenerating into a chaotic, violent free-for-all.

Instead of learning the lessons from the last decade of endless war, Barack Obama, David Cameron and their Nato allies are threatening more war against Syria and Iran.

UK personnel controlled armed drones in Libya last year – despite the repeated government insistence that the UK has only ever operated armed drones in Afghanistan.

“This is not the new Libya we fought for and we may have to take up arms again if the corruption and greed continue. This time against the new government.”

Will a new government legitimised by the ballot box be able to rein in the militias and re-establish law and order? Or will the militiamen continue to jail, torture and kill with impunity?

The United Nations and human rights groups accuse militias of doing what Gaddafi's torturers used to do, with whips, chains and plastic hoses.

NATO refused to look into allegations of the scores of civilian deaths that independent investigations said it caused, so it is impossible for the official tally to rise above zero.

If Iraq and Afghanistan were not enough evidence of what happens when the West wages war in the name of "humanitarian intervention", the chaos in Libya is yet another warning.

Military interventions typically make humanitarian situations worse than before, not better, a point dramatically illustrated by the hundreds of thousands of deaths that resulted from interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While Gaddafi's political prisoners have been released, their places have been taken by up to 7,000 new "enemies of the state", "disappeared" in a dysfunctional system, with no recourse to the law.

Libya looks like an excellent investment for the UK: $500 million spent bombing the country for six months could bring British business a return of $300 billion putting it back together again.