Why did the CIA destroy the torture interrogation tapes?

According to TMPmuckraker, because they were direct evidence of war crimes:

Of course, Hayden just inherited this whirlwind. His predecessors, George Tenet and Porter Goss, sowed it. And to a greater degree, it's the fault of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, John Yoo and John Rizzo, who created a blatantly illegal interrogation program for the CIA to implement. Those on the tapes torturing Abu Zubaydah and Detainee #2 were, loyally, doing what those men wanted. But Tenet must have known that what's on those tapes is evidence of criminal activity. That's a much more plausible explanation for why he stopped taping interrogations. And it's also probably why Rodriguez, with Goss' tacit or explicit consent, destroyed them. If Michael Mukasey is the same man of integrity he was before he became attorney general, he'd call that criminal conspiracy or deliberate obstruction of justice.

What will probably end up consuming the remainder of Bush's term is an inquiry into the cover-up. But it's always the crime -- torture, systematic and approved by the highest levels -- that demands focus. And it was the CIA's decision to distract whomever it could from knowing about the crime.

Add to the list of war criminals our own little torture enabler, the Catholic St Thomas University's Robert Delahunty.

Special prosecutor for War Crimes

John Dean makes the great point over at Talking Points Memo that the Democrats should make their approval of Mukasey for Attorney General contingent on his promising to appoint a Special Prosecutor for War Crimes, similar to what the Dems did in 1973 when Richard Nixon nominated Elliot Richardson for A.G. Richardson made the promise to appoint a Watergate Special Prosecutor, which eventually led to Nixon's impeachment.

Dean concludes "If the Democrats in the Senate refuse to demand any such requirement, it will be act that should send chills down the spine of every thinking American."

My favorite dog Spot says: "A man [Mukasey] so compromised or confused in the face of so easy a moral choice will not make an effective and moral leader."

BTW - how sick are Democrats Charles Schumer and Diane Feinstein - who have promised to vote for Mukasey, even though he won't say that waterboarding is torture.