On yesterday's Stephanie Miller radio show, guest and former CIA agent Larry Johnson offered compelling reasons to think the CIA may have inadvertently acknowledged that the tapes weren't destroyed. You can listen to that here:

http://stephaniemiller.com/files/mp3/2007_1210_johnson.mp3

Japanese and German soldiers were executed at the conclusion of WW2 for torturing (including the use of water-boarding) American soldiers . Those quaint Geneva Conventons saw the wisdom of such a deterrent.

So, count me confused that it was OK to execute the Axis guys for these crimes against humanity and yet now we need to turn a blind eye and let the CIA guys off the hook because they were performing their duties in the interest of national Security. What the hell do you think those WW2 soldiers were doing it for? Kicks? Maybe, but more than likely they were trying to obtain intelligence from the poor bastards being boarded. Were these Axis soldiers only following orders from the top or free lancing? It didn't seem to matter back then. They were held accountable for these crimes and the sentences carried-out.

Fast forward to the Bush Chronicles. There isn't a living soul who now believes torture hasn't been utilized by Bushit's lemmings in his incompetent and misguided war on terror. One of the CIA interrogators has already come forward. Torture was performed and sanctioned by Fredo, Bush, Cheney and the rest of the neocon clowns running this country and it's citizens into the ground. Apparently by the Democrats too.

This is unbelievable. Utterly unbelievable. The Democrats are in this up to their teeth, which are are surly chattering right now at the exposure of their knowledge and complacency in these endeavors. Schumer, Rockefeller, etc. My God. Where are "we" to turn for moral and ethical guidance when "our side" has signed-on to these tragic and awful means-to-an-end?

Help me out here people. Have the lines so blurred that the checks-and-balances regarding our cultural fabric have become this far buggered? Nauseating...

Ya think, Dana? Perhaps your obscene understatement ought to apply to:

Every member of Congress who looked the other way when the Geneva Conventions were classified as "quaint", every one of them who turned away from Guantanemo and the so-called 'black" sites, those who winked or sighed at multiple extraordinary renditions, that exclusive little group who received ever so brief briefings on waterboarding, not to mention the defensive posturing, waffling, ducking, and just plain stonewalling going on about telecom amnesty and the passage of serial unconstitutional laws.

Note to MSM: you are complicit in enabling, protecting, defending, and justifying the destruction of the American democratic process.

Dante would have had a field day concocting a new circle of Hell for all of you.

You pathetic traitors to democratic principles deserve to keep each other company.

The prevailing assumption seems to be that the tapes were destroyed because they showed CIA torture. Gerald Posner has written that during the interrogation Zubaydah named three Saudi princes who had prior knowledge that a major terrorist attack was planned for 9/11, as did the chief of the Pakistani Air Force. All three Saudi princes died suspicios deaths within a week of each other. The Pakistani officer died thereafter in a plane crash.

So maybe the tapes were not destroyed because of the information given, not because of the methods by which it was gotten. Furthermore, there must be a transcript for review by analysts who were not present at the interrogation. In addition, Bush himself has said that Zubdayah gave up "important information." There is no way that information has not been preserved. So why hasn't Congress asked for the transcript?

What happened to the administration's muscular assertion of its imperial (sorry, Constitutional) powers? After all, it's certain the tapes reveal only "aggressive interrogations" in a legitimate effort to keep the nation safe from terrorism. Indeed, as we've been told repeatedly (usually during election cycles), such interrogation methods have stymied one plot after another. And since the tapes are now destroyed they cannot possibly contradict the administration's silky view of recent history, that muscular aggression in the fight against terrorism cannot be construed as torture.

Of ALL the Bushie minions, the only one that comes across as anything like sympathetic to me is Ms. Perino. Like I mean, my God, Bay of Pigs? Isn't that in the country of Sumatra on the island of Indonesia? She is just so fabulously hapless, and well... So unintentionally more honest than any of the rest, you cynical press corpse. What a hoot!

Michael Vick received 23 months for torturing dogs. I guess he'd been better-off torturing Muslims...

...to get Harriet Miers, under oath, to testify. Maybe she can shed some light on who the "lawyers... within the White House and the Justice Department" were, and what everyone knew about the contents of the tapes.

And, for good measure, they could ask her what she knows about firing USA's for political reasons, the prosecution of Don Siegelman, and maybe a few others.

to protect the identities of interrogators. Why does Valerie Plame-Wilson's name not come up in relation to protecting the identity of CIA agents/operatives? connect the dots, please.

peace,

st john

I keep hearing George Costanza upon being called to account for having sex with the cleaning lady at work. "Was that wrong of me?" Of course, had he only known that that was frowned upon, he wouldn't have done it.

Had the CIA only known that there was a policy in place that they shouldn't just destroy stuff when Congress was investigating it, they surely wouldn't have done that. But Myers only said she didn't think they should destroy it, which is different, and -- you know -- they don't really have any of their own lawyers at the CIA.

I'm no fan of the CIA, but I find it ironic that it was the White House that told the CIA to take the gloves off, and now they're trying to blame the CIA for destroying the tapes.

I recall that before the second invasion of Iraq, the CIA was questioning whether Iraq really was a danger to the West. Later, they were blamed for bad intelligence that convinced Bush and Co. to invade.

Deja vue all over again?