The Love We Make -- Premiering this weekend on Showtime

We all have our own personal stories on 9/11: where we were, what we saw, who we lost. The thing is, I don't know if I necessarily feel like sharing them, just because it's been ten years. It feels exploitative, and wrong. Which is, of course, exactly why we'll be inundated with 9/11 coverage today. Channel after channel, they are going to rehash the tragedy, with all the hysteria and hyperbole they can muster. But will they media take an honest eye to what happened? Will they admit that changed subsequent criticism of George W Bush? 'Course not. We'll have to relive collapsing buildings and sad survival stories and pictures of children who grew up in the last ten years without a parent. Personally, I'd rather watch the Mayles brothers' documentary of the Concert for New York that grew out of the tragedy.

ABC's "This Week" - Part of the network's Sept. 11 coverage.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Part of the network's Sept. 11 coverage.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Katty Kay, John Heilemann, Rick Stengel, Helene Cooper. Topics: Is Perry Like Reagan, The Westerner Who Can Defeat The Establishment Romney? In Bad Economic Times, Would Perry's Far Right Rhetoric Get Overlooked?

CBS' "Face the Nation" - White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Vice President Joe Biden, former Bush White House chief of staff Andrew Card, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, Rumsfeld and others as part of the network's Sept. 11 coverage.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Remembering 9/11.

"Fox News Sunday" - Brennan, Rumsfeld, Giuliani; Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

ABC's "This Week" - White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel; House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. CBS' "Face the Nation" - David Axelrod, White House senior adviser; Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa.; Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. NBC's "Meet the Press" - Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council; FreedomWorks chairman and former Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas; Democratic Leadership Council chairman and former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn. CNN's "State of the Union" - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Ensign, R-Nev.; Gov. David Paterson, D-N.Y. "Fox News Sunday" - Former CIA Director Michael Hayden; Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Denyce Graves, opera singer.

As the latest from the Wall Street Journal and Politico reveal, the apologists for George W. Bush's regime of detainee torture are circling the wagons. While one anonymous Bush official claimed the Obama's release of the torture memos "laid it all out for our enemies," former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in an op-ed written with his CIA counterpart Michael Hayden proclaimed, "The President has tied his own hand on terror." Of course, in his 1700 word screed, Mukasey never acknowledges the possibility that the brutal tactics he defends might be illegal and require prosecution. And that comes as no surprise; back in 2007, Michael Mukasey derided such questions as "hypothetical."

To be sure, Hayden and Mukasey trot out all of the usual Republican talking points. Obama, they charged, not only disclosed "successful" CIA interrogators' "secret sauce" to terrorists, but ensured the agency would return to its timid ways:

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.

Despite revelations as recently as three weeks ago that "not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions," Mukasey continued to insist that Abu Zubaida was "coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh" and by extension, 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

But while Mukasey today brushed off any notion that the Bush administration's so-called enhanced interrogation techniques "disgraced us before the world," during his confirmation hearings he hedged his bets.

Following in the footsteps of Alberto Gonzales, who during his own February 2005 confirmation hearings deemed Senators' questions on presidential authorization for torture as a "hypothetical situation," Mukasey tried to skirt the issue of the legality of the practices in question. As ThinkProgress recounted, Judge Mukasey in a written response to Democratic Senators in October 2007 took the same line as his predecessor:

In the four-page letter, Mukasey called the interrogation technique "over the line" and "repugnant" on "a personal basis," but added that he would need the "actual facts and circumstances"" to strike a "legal opinion":

"Hypotheticals are different from real life and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical."

But during the hearings themselves, Mukasey made clear he was already familiar with at last some of the facts, including at least one of the memos released yesterday:

"The Bybee memo, to paraphrase a French diplomat, was worse than a sin, it was a mistake. It was unnecessary."

And like Gonzales, Mukasey refused to disavow specific "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding.

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Back in December 2007, Americans learned that then-head of the CIA's clandestine service Jose Rodriguez two years earlier ordered the destruction of at least two videotapes of detainee interrogations. Today, government lawyers revealed the number of tapes destroyed was much higher, totaling almost 100.

That shocking revelation prompts two questions. First is the issue of whether the videos might have revealed enhanced interrogation techniques constituting torture, actions which might have both jeopardized detainee prosecutions and led to legal action against CIA and Bush administration officials themselves. A second, less serious question goes out to conservative propagandists and Bush apologists: do you still believe Jose Rodriguez deserves a medal?

As ThinkProgress relayed this morning, the AP is now reporting that the effort to conceal the interrogations of Zacarias Moussaoui and another suspected Al Qaeda operative was far broader than originally thought. That news came in a March 2 letter to Judge Alvin Hellerstein as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU:

"The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed," said the letter by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. "Ninety two videotapes were destroyed."

The letter also reports that "the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit, including a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe the destroyed contents, and the identities of those who may have viewed or possessed the recordings before they were destroyed."

Which is the last thing that likes of conservative commentator and failed Bush Labor nominee Linda Chavez wants to see happen.

In her Decemeber 21, 2007 column titled "Destroying CIA Tapes Deserves a Thank You," Chavez argued that the 2005 decision by Rodriguez should be lauded. Chavez expressed her gratitude that Rodriguez destroyed evidence of "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding, acts which may have violated U.S. law and American treaty commitments:

In the next few months, his name will likely be dragged through the mud, and he will be vilified as a rogue official engaged in a massive cover-up. I think he deserves a medal...

Even though he is likely to become a scapegoat, what he did was right. He protected not just his men but all of us. I, for one, thank him.

Of course, Chavez is far from alone in wanting to reward those concealing the criminality of the Bush administration.

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While telling the nation that he's getting a colonoscopy---did Bush just admit that the US has been torturing?

President Bush signed an executive order Friday prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects..

The White House declined to say whether the CIA currently has a detention and interrogation program, but said that if it did it must adhere to the guidelines outlined in the executive order. The order targets captured al-Qaida terrorists who have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said on Friday it provides clarity for CIA interrogators and other agency officials worried about the legal liabilities of their involvement in secret detention operations.

Why the clarification if there was never a problem to begin with?