Hold on, pause. This is not a politics rant, at least not in the traditional sense. I’m not going to argue the ethics of waterboarding, or foreign diplomacy or anything like that. This is going to be a musing on something I heard on the radio today that just made me stop and go “what?” in that ‘the logic of that statement is escaping me’ type of voice.
I won’t bother repeating what the waterboarding fiasco is, as most of you probably already know. There was a short radio section that had some guy talking about two tapes showing waterboarding incidents that were destroyed by the CIA–and created by them mind you. The gentlemen talking about this remarked that he thought , and the CIA thought, this was a brilliant move on their part because we don’t want those tapes getting in the hands of extremist Muslims (his words, not mine). Basically, they’d get mad and have a fun day with the tapes and having it shown on the net and the like would be very bad. On that point I would agree.
Here is where things got “what?”-ish. If you don’t want the extremists or anyone babbling about the existence of the tapes and being upset that, my lord, there is evidence that the CIA actually did use waterboarding torture, then why in God’s name would you announce that the tapes exist in the first place! Extremists don’t need the tapes to be pissed off about them. They don’t need to see them. The fact that you’ve just announced that the tapes exist goes completely against the whole point of not playing them on TV. If anything, this is a great example of the CIA trying to cover up evidence of something that is, technically, illegal. And now not only has the CIA talked about it, but so has Mr. Radioman, who has no idea what the hell he is talking about in the first place. If the extremists were going to get mad about seeing the tapes, they’re going to be just as mad now that it’s out in the open that the CIA condones the use of waterboarding to acquire information.
Great job idiots. Could this government do any more stupid, idiotic, moronic, imbecilic things? You be the judge. That one up there is high on the list.
(P.S.: There’s a possibility I missed something on this story, but either way it sounds stupid to me, so I’m ranting about it.)
