I haven’t been able to clear up the mystery either, beyond the fact that a former CIA officer aware of the details of the 2002 interrogation of the two al-Qaeda suspects told me that the tapes’ images were "horrific." He believes that although the interrogations fell within the guidelines provided by the Department of Justice, if the public ever saw them, it would conclude that "enhanced interrogation" is just another name for torture.
I was revisiting covered ground and noticed the highlighted line which didn’t grab me the first time I read this article. First, it strikes me as an odd thing to say. The last two sentences don’t make sense. one says that "the interrogations fell within the guidelines provided by the Department of Justice," as if that meant something. When I read those guidelines, they sound like a prescription for torture to me. Invoking the Golden Rule, if you did those things to me, I’m sure I’d feel tortured. The next sentence says, "if the public ever saw them, it would conclude that ‘enhanced interrogation’ is just another name for torture." I’m sure that’s correct too, because enhanced interrogation’ is torture. So what does that have to do with destroying the tapes? The absence of the tapes doesn’t change the fact that we tortured our prisoners. And the fact that the tapes showed it for what it obviously is doesn’t justify the act. Wiping down a crime scene to get rid of fingerprints doesn’t change the fact that the body in the middle of the floor is a murder victim. And this next point, picked up by emptywheel, also remains unanswered.
But what’s really too bad is that Durham hasn’t been tasked with explaining the broader mystery of why, in the first place, is the CIA is even interrogating prisoners of war. The 1947 National Security Act established the CIA as a civilian spy agency, not as some Pentagon backroom where you get to do things you don’t want the American people to find out about. But more to the point, the military is much better equipped to interrogate prisoners. It has its own interrogation school at Fort Huachuca, not to mention hundreds of language – qualified and experienced interrogators. It also has the Uniform Code of Military Justice to deal with interrogations that have gone bad [some almost inevitably do]. Unlike the CIA, military interrogators have immediate access to legal counsel. It’s not an accident that military misdeeds such as those at Abu Ghraib go right to trial, while CIA investigations drag on for years — and drag down morale.
I’ve made a number of superfluous posts lately – quoting the same things over and over, repeating myself, ending without conclusions. I’ve either got acute Alzheimer’s or it means something else. I think what it means is that I’m about to understand something that I didn’t formerly understand, but I’m not there yet. And it might be something that everyone else already knows, but I don’t know it yet, or don’t know it in the right way. But this seems related, "why… is the CIA is even interrogating prisoners of war"? I don’t know the answer to that.
I’ve read some answers to that question, even speculated on a few myself, but they’re unsatisfying. In fact, there are a number of questions like that one that we seem to have answers to, but maybe not the answer. Why did the OLC have a John Yoo in it in the first place, turning out Memos that changed our government? so quickly? Why suspend the Geneva Conventions? Why "the Dark Side" in Cheney’s Meet the Press interview five days after 9/11? Why marginalize the State Department, having appointed the Secretary of State yourself? Why the "Axis of Evil," the "War on Terror?" Why the "Unitary Executive" or "American Exceptionalism," or unwarranted domestic surveillance, or any of it? What was wrong with the way our government was structured before?
While many of the changes they made seemed to fit their "conservative" principles and their orientation to the "business community," a lot of the changes didn’t fit in that box. And some of the changes seem older than this Administration with roots that antedate their election.
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