Commentary

*Cross-posted from History News Network

There are nineteen definitions of “terrorism” in federal law today.  International accord on the metes and boundaries of “terrorism” has proved as elusive, with governments lining up along predictable divisions. When is violence against civilians justified and therefore exempt from censure? Agreement is beyond consensus.  Perhaps terrorism is inevitably fraught with taxonomical difficulties.

In November 2005 the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two early detainees in the Bush Administration's "war on terror." Two years later, the news breaks and the Administration assures us that the tapes from 2002 had nothing much of interest on them and that their destruction was nothing out of the ordinary. Don't be so sure.