Some of the conservative establishment fear waterboarding scandals may damage our human "intelligence" agencies. I can't say that I think too much of the CIA or the FBI--it seems as though whenever they're put to the test, they fail. They sometimes even manage to fail against incompetent enemies. They are bureaucrats and, like all bureaucrats, their greatest fear is that some day they may actually be held accountable for their activities. They've arranged their organizational structures with that fear first in mind.
OSS/CIA let the Soviets steal the bomb, the invasion of Korea was a complete surprise, the CIA told Truman the Chinese would not intervene in Korea, the CIA conceived, planned and executed the Bay of Pigs operation (at least on this occasion Kennedy inflicted some accountability, taking out the top CIA leaders), the CIA failed in multiple assassination attempts on Castro, the CIA did not know of the Soviet's massive bioweapons program, the Soviet Union's collapse "surprised" the CIA, the CIA/FBI could not prevent 9/11--and that's just off the top of my head and in the public domain. If such a miserable succession of failures hasn't demoralized this ossified, scleroticized, bureaucratized pair of dinosaurs (is it really true they're not union-run?)--I hardly think a bit of "waterboard" publicity will. But, if it does--good. Maybe we can get some new blood in there and introduce some competence.
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