Does anyone find it ironic that U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)sets on his ass when The Bush Administration spies on Americans, tortures in our name, refuses to produce documents and has destroyed paper and email trails?

BREAKING . . .
Breaking, from TPM

Justice Department launches criminal probe of destruction of CIA torture tapes.

Late Update: AP reports that Attorney General Michael Mukasey has named an outside prosecutor to handle the criminal investigation.

Later Update: Who is John Durham? Paul Kiel takes a look at the deputy U.S. attorney in Connecticut whom Mukasey named to oversee the investigation.

Update:  Gunny6247 has a diary too

The ongoing controversy over the destruction of CIA torture tapes raises several more unanswered questions.  The answers call into question the very basis of the Bush Administration’s so-called Global War on Terrorism.

These are questions about selection. Who and why, and why not others?

Why were four particular "high-value" detainees water boarded?  But, why weren’t the other 11 who were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques", and why were these 15 tortured out of the nearly 100 prisoners the CIA acknowledges it has held in secret custody around the world?  What characteristics or experiences do they have in common?

MORE below . . .

Let's be frank here.  

The recent  discovery of documents related to the torture videotapes that were destroyed is old news, not new.  The fact is that since 2001, our government has tortured, lied about the torture, and destroyed court ordered evidence and documents of the torture.  In other words, they've done everything they can to cover their own asses.  

Ask Jesselyn Radack.

If you don't know who Jesselyn Radack is, rest assured that Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, De Pue, Cherthoff and other high ranking officials do.   Jesselyn Radack was the ethics advisor at the Department of Justice in 2001 at the onset of  America's emerging torture policies.  She was also one of the first to witness how far this administration would go to destroy evidence of their torture and to attack anyone who revealed them to the public.

Take a short trip down memory lane.  

Newsweek reports today that the White House pressured the CIA to erase tapes recording the interrogations of two key, related al-Qaeda figures, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahom al-Nashiri.  Harriet Miers, President Bush’s personal lawyer, was the principal White House negotiator with the CIA on how to manage emerging public awareness of torture during these interrogations.

What the American people aren't being told, yet, is that waterboarding effectively erased the memories of an al-Qaeda leader in custody -- and possibly several other major figures involved in planning attacks -- who knew the details of what the CIA had learned in advance about al-Qaeda training and planning for 9/11.

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