Keep our Torturers Safe

I realize that most people don't care whether our government tortures people, unless the people being tortured happen to be within your monkeysphere.

But if you happen to be one of those who do care, then this story might interest you. Therein you will find detailed how the CIA videotaped its agents torturing "al qaeda operatives" it had "detained", and how when it started to look like, hey, someone might eventually see this and, you know, like register some kind of objection to it, they then dropped it down the memory hole.

In a letter to CIA employees, CIA Director Michael Hayden (aka "Minister of Love") stated that the tapes were destroyed, not to avoid any kind of legal repercussions or negative publicity, but "to protect the safety of undercover officers".

Forgive me. This is transparent bullshit, and insults the intelligence of all primates, much less those who: (a) can read, and (b) have knowledge of our government's scrupulous past practices with regard to protecting the identities of its covert agents.

But allow me to state for the record why this is an utter absurdity:

(1) Obviously these tapes could have been modified so as to hide the identity of the agents (i.e., the torturers) involved while still preserving other relevant information;

(2) Obviously the CIA has procedures well designed to keep secret documents secret;

(3) Obviously the CIA is not in the practice of destroying all documents in its possession which, if leaked, would divulge the identity of its agents;

(4) Somewhat less obviously (and I know it is considered heresy to question this), but is it really credible to simply assume that "al qaeda operatives" have sufficient counter-intel capabilities to get ahold of these tapes, identify the agents, find them, and carry out an act of revenge against them? Are you fucking serious?; and

(5) As has been vociferously asserted over and over again by the Preznit himself and all of his minions, "al qaeda operatives" want to kill us all, every single one of us, and they will do so if at all possible. This being unquestionably true (after all, the President said it!), why then if all Americans are targets, would we think these particular people (i.e., the torturers) would be singled out for some kind of special, targeted extra-bad-death-jihad? Simply incredible.

These tapes were destroyed to cover up criminality on the part of our government. Nothing more, nothing less. Our government kidnaps people, who may or may not have done anything wrong, locks them in a dungeon, tortures them, and then destroys any evidence of its wrongdoing. We are safer because of this.