So the CIA taped a dunking and then destroyed the tapes... The time line between the dunking and the destruction is irrelevant...What matters is the "purpose" of the taping and the purpose of the "destruction". Was the recording made to show how "it" was done to trainee CIA waterboarders, to show how fast subjects caved in (30 seconds) under the threat of "dying" by "drowning" (although they would not, but don't know that) or to record a "confession" to make sure all the words are analysed for porkies and baloney...???

Either way, the importance of the tapes — if tapes are made — is crucial to history. Unlike TV station that recycle their camera tapes, after transfer to the master editing machines, because it's costly to have a zillion tapes already duplicated of "hum and err" to file... (Me-think that even if the original tapes have been destroyed, there could be some transfers to disc or greater memory sticks, lurking somewhere...)

It is obvious the destruction of the tapes was to avoid the public or unauthorised personnel to cast their eyes on what is obviously torture... which according to the US President, Embarrassment Bushit the Minus, the US does not do...

Why bother taping if one is going to destroy the recording after that...???

As the cartoon says "training and quality control purposes"!... like the telemarketers on the other side of the crackly old telecom line... Yes they want to make sure you won't be swearing at them if you take a dunking on their stupid offer... Since telephone recordings "for training and quality control" started to bother my butt, many young trainees have listened to the recordings of me, loud and clear on the subject. Unfortunately, smart twisted supervisors give my phone number first to the poor kid on his first time on the job...

Why bother... 

In 2002, Marine Colonel Ralph H. Kohlmann, who is now the chief judge of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, wrote a paper on the bushit administration’s plans to use military commissions to try Guantanamo suspects, concluding that "even a good military tribunal is a bad idea." 

This week, twenty-eight retired generals & admirals wrote to the House & Senate intelligence committees, urging them to require the CIA to abandon harsh interrogation techniques.

Among the signatories were two retired Army generals who investigated the Abu Ghraib detainee abuses in Iraq, General Paul J. Kern & Major- General Antonio M. Taguba. 

And the House approved legislation yesterday that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding & other harsh interrogation tactics, drawing an immediate veto threat from the White House & setting-up another political showdown over what constitutes torture.  

The measure, approved by a largely party-line vote of 222 to 199, would require US intelligence agencies to follow Army rules adopted last year that explicitly forbid waterboarding. It also would require interrogators to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.  

The rules, required by Congress for all Defense Department personnel, also ban sexual humiliation, "mock" executions & the use of attack dogs, & prohibit the withholding of food & medical care.  

The passage of the bill, which must still win Senate approval, fulfills a promise by House Democratic leaders to seek a ban on interrogation practices that have prompted the condemnation of human rights groups & many governments around the world.  

It comes amid a furor over the CIA's announcement a week ago that it destroyed in 2005 videotapes showing the use of harsh interrogation tactics on two terrorism suspects.  

Whilst the clown in the outhouse says that the US “doesn’t do torture”, he has vowed to veto the measure, arguing that limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual would prevent the US from conducting lawful interrogations of senior al Qaeda terrorists, to obtain intelligence needed to protect Americans from attack, the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.

Little about the conditions of Bashmilah's incarceration has been made public until now.

His detailed descriptions in an interview with Salon, and in newly filed court documents, provide the first in-depth, first-person account of captivity inside a CIA black site.

Human rights advocates and lawyers have painstakingly pieced together his case, using Bashmilah's descriptions of his cells and his captors, and documents from the governments of Jordan and Yemen and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to verify his testimony.

Flight records detailing the movement of CIA aircraft also confirm Bashmilah's account, tracing his path from the Middle East to Afghanistan and back again while in U.S. custody.  

Bashmilah's story also appears to show in clear terms that he was an innocent man. After 19 months of imprisonment and torment at the hands of the CIA, the agency released him with no explanation, just as he had been imprisoned in the first place.

He faced no terrorism charges. He was given no lawyer. He saw no judge. He was simply released, his life shattered.  "This really shows the human impact of this program and that lives are ruined by the CIA rendition program," said Margaret Satterthwaite, an attorney for Bashmilah and a professor at the New York University School of Law. "It is about psychological torture and the experience of being disappeared."  

Bashmilah, who at age 39 is now physically a free man, still suffers the mental consequences of prolonged detention and abuse. He is undergoing treatment for the damage done to him at the hands of the U.S. government.

On Friday, Bashmilah laid out his story in a declaration to a U.S. district court as part of a civil suit brought by the ACLU against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing accused of facilitating secret CIA rendition flights.  

Inside The CIA's notorious "Black Sites"

With everyone in the news on the attack over the CIA destroying a few tapes that may have showed off some minor incidents of torture (maybe), everyone seems to be missing what's really important here.

If there's no evidence, then who are we to say that it actually happened? No one, that's who.  

Scientists have recently done experiments that showed that our memories are incredibly flawed. You show someone a photo-shopped picture of that student who stood in front of a tank at Tiananmen Square and add in a couple more people, that's how folks remember it happening all of a sudden.

There's evidence that shows that every time we remember something, we have just as much chance of recreating the memory as we have actually recalling what happened.  

So who's to say that that whole "waterboarding" thing wasn't all in your imagination? 

Taping Over History

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released Thursday.

Shortly after the tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, Mr. Goss told Mr. Rodriguez that he “agreed” with the decision, according to the document. He even joked after Mr. Rodriguez offered to “take the heat” for destroying the tapes.

“PG laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat,” according to one document, an internal C.I.A. e-mail message.

According to current and former intelligence officials, Mr. Goss did not approve the destruction before it happened, and was displeased that Mr. Rodriguez did not consult him or the C.I.A.’s top lawyer before giving the order for the tapes to be destroyed.

------------------

see toon at top.