CIA Michael Hayden may win the annual award for most circular argument as he simultaneously argued that the CIA made tapes in 2002 of interogations in order to offer agents an additional layer of legal protection, but that Hayden ordered those same tapes destroyed in order to protect the identity of the agents that the tapes had been made in the first place to protect.
As I diaried recently, Larry Johnson pointed out that this doesn't even come close to passing the "bullshit test" as any 14 year old with MacBook Pro could enpixelate the agent's faces.
The Bush Administration has always been built on falsehoods, deception, obfuscation, and outright lying. This latest escapade is probably one of the lamest and most absurd excuses ever proffered since the much cliche'd " the dog ate my homework."
There is a reason why the Unitary Executive Theory is nothing more than a theory, albeit a poor one at that. Because if the WH and Bush truely believed in the UAT, these tapes would have been released under Bush's authority and offered as evidence that not only that torture worked but these tapes helped capture the planners of 9/11 and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.
The tapes make the Bush Administration look like the thugs that they are. A low level Al Quaeda operative is tortured into revealing false information that not only exposes the crappy quality of our "intelligence but also how ineffective enhanced interrogation techniques actually are.
So much to the chagrin of the 24 set, torture is a failed, morally deprived method that is a war crime pure and simple. No amount of spin or b.s. will change that fact.