Posted by
Chris Jones on Friday, December 07, 2007 4:11:38 PM
It was a foregone conclusion that Democrats would call for dog and pony shows
hearings and investigations after the CIA admitted to destroying
interrogation tapes. So right on cue that's exactly what they did,
complete with "faux" outrage and references to Richard Nixon.
From The Huffington Post:
Congressional Democrats Friday demanded a full Justice
Department investigation into whether the CIA obstructed justice by
destroying videotapes that documented the harsh 2002 interrogations of
two alleged terrorists.
A day after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden told agency employees
the tapes were destroyed in 2005, members of Congress, human rights
groups and lawyers for accused terrorists said the tapes may have been
key evidence that the U.S. government had illegally authorized
torture...
In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the Senate's No. 2
Democrat, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, asked for a
probe of "whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and
withheld information about their existence from official proceedings
violated the law."
In a Senate floor speech Durbin dismissed the CIA's explanation that
it was trying to protect the identities of the interrogators. "We know
that it is possible and in fact easy to cover the faces" of those who
appear on camera, Durbin said. "This is not an issue that can be
ignored."
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused the CIA of a coverup. "The
agency was desperate to cover up damning evidence of their practices,"
he said in floor remarks. "We haven't seen anything like this since the
eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in the tapes of President Richard Nixon."
-Chris Jones
The Hot Joints