Torture Tapes -- or Proof of Incompetence?

Did torturing 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed produce good information -- or just a good feeling?

Newspapers and politicians condemn the on-purpose deep-sixing in 2005 of tapes showing interrogation of terrorist suspects.  Their reason?  The world now will never know whether Central Intelligence Agency questioners used torture but will assume they did.

Blawgletter says:  of course they tortured those guys!  If the tapes still existed, they would absolutely show genuine torturing of flesh-and-blood terrorists.  Actual torture.  Real terrorists.  And some substantial part of the U.S. would feel perfectly fine about that.

But we wish the CIA hadn't buried the evidence not because the tapes would prove torture.  No.  We would have liked Americans to see use of the "techniques" so that they could judge for themselves whether barbarity elicits reliable information. 

So put us down as suspecting that the CIA burned the tapes less to hide proof of torture and more to destroy yet another demonstration of its incompetence.

Barry Barnett

No logic was tortured in the writing of this post.