War Crimes And The Destruction Of Evidence, Ctd

A reader makes an excellent point:

So here's a question for the torture defenders:

Let's assume that these methods are (1) useful (2) safe when performed under the OLC guidelines (3) necessary to keep as options for the future

 

If so, how could tapes of successful interrogations (or even some which were not successful) not be the single most valuable training tool available to future generations of interrogators? How could they not have any "intelligence value" as a training tool? 

So why were they destroyed? We know why, of course. They shock the conscience and prove that the United States is a torturing nation. Without them, the lies, increasingly threadbare, can nonetheless continue. With the tapes viewable, as with the photos at Abu Ghraib, the war crimes trial begins. And Bush and Cheney go into the dock first.