Senate confirmation kabuki
We can all stop worrying. "Bloody" Gina Haspel won't restart the CIA torture program if she becomes CIA director. At least that's what the headlines say.
LATimes: Gina Haspel tells Senate panel she won't let the CIA resume abusive interrogations
WashPost: Gina Haspel, Trump’s pick to lead CIA, pledges she won’t restart interrogation program
Except that isn't exactly what she said.
What Bloody Gina said had a bit more nuance.
Haspel vowed that under her leadership the CIA would not restart an interrogation program that employed torture techniques. “I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral, even if it was technically legal. I would absolutely not permit it.”
OK. So she wouldn't "undertake activity that she thought was immoral".
Fair 'nuff.
Torture is immoral by anyone's definition, so then...wait. What?
In exchanges with senators, Haspel was both defensive and evasive when pressed to expound on her views on the morality of the CIA’s use of torture. She repeatedly refused to characterize the program in hindsight as “immoral”. “My moral compass is strong,” she said.
Oooohhhh kkkaaayyy. Torture is immoral for everyone that doesn't go by the moniker of "Bloody Gina".
That puts things in a different light.
Haspel repeatedly declines to answer "yes" or "no" as to whether previous interrogation techniques were "immoral" https://t.co/2MMmZpk0Jd
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 9, 2018
Well Senator Dianne Feinstein won't let Bloody Gina get away with those sorts of non-answers.
Feinstein was more circumspect. "It’s no secret I’ve had concerns in the past with her connection to the CIA torture program and have spent time with her discussing this," the senator said in a statement. But she added, "To the best of my knowledge she has been a good deputy director.”Feinstein told The Bee Editorial Board that she had Haspel over to her home for dinner after the latter moved from London, where she'd served as chief of station for the CIA's Europe Division back to Washington, D.C. in 2017 to take over as deputy director of the CIA.
Oh, well. The important thing is that Bloody Gina can fix the real pressing problem at the CIA: gender diversity.
Haspel can help fix the CIA’s gender problem
Because it's important that women have the same equal opportunity to torture innocent people that men do.
Comments
Expect Elaine Kamarck to tell us that
Progressives could find themselves celebrating if they let the party leaders in the Senate do their job, and confirm Haspel ... because, you know, gender equity. Woohoo.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Ya know...
There's a special place in hell for women who don't support women torturers.
It's called Emily's List.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
She won't restart it,
but has it ever stopped? I admit, I don't know the answer to that but I would bet it has not stopped. Nice weasel word there.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
My thoughts exactly
It's amazing how this country has
flipped into being so evil that people
who once tortured are considered to
serve in
ourtheir government.I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
And mine.
Glad to see it's already been covered
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Breaking ceilings
and other people's bits and pieces is what Gina Haspel does.
What's not to identify with, if you're a DC Dem?
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Waterboarding: A Reminder
When torture was routinely used during the Bush Years following 9/11 and the 2003 Iraq Invasion, most elected Democrats objected vociferously to illegal methods used to extract information from prisoners. Now? Not so much.
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
Oh, goody!!
Bloody Gina and Brutish Dianne had dinner together, so everything is wunnerful, wunnerful.
I humbly ssuggest
that the most immoral thing Haspel has done was to accept that dinner invitation.
On to Biden since 1973
Yep, the McResistance Kabuki dance.
The McResistance democrats have supported huge military budget increases, broader AUMF authorization for the president. Up next, a new CIA torture director.
And a majority of the democratic base will fall for it, because the McResistance is keeping the focus on identity issues.
We're effed.
Mike Taylor
All of Pro-Hillary Twitter...
Is worshipping the ground Feinstein is walking on today.
I guess I know why the order was given.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
But she promised...
She wouldn't know moral from immoral if it hit her in the head.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Ali Soufan,
former FBI counterterrorism interrogator, has written and spoken widely about his work along with his partners interrogating high-level Al Qaeda prisoners both before and after 9/11. His history of the actionable intelligence he acquired before prisoners were removed from his custody and then tortured by CIA contractors is crucial to understanding the desperation of deep state actors in misrepresenting and covering up this madness.
In his book, The Black Banners, Soufan describes what he suggests is the cover-up of very bad, wrong-headed decisions to torture prisoners who were providing actionable intelligence. But as a reader, I see it quite differently. Every time Ali Soufan and his partners acquired important information, for example when they learned the identity of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, CIA contractors were brought in to remove the source from Soufan, begin the torture, and in some cases subsequently release the prisoner!
So my reading of this crime is that CIA was continuing its support of Al Qaeda and removing terrorist suspects from FBI scrutiny. In other words, they were preventing them from providing crucial intelligence. The example of information about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is most alarming because KSM was a student at a college in North Carolina near a CIA training center for jihadists, which CIA whistleblower Robert Baer described as specializing in remote-controlled detonation of explosives, the assembling of car bombs and bus bombs. Even if the cover-up of this relationship was with hindsight and "embarrassment," its effect was to protect Al Qaeda.