Gina Haspel looks like she put on a “consent decree” show for the Senate Intelligence Committee—neither admitting or denying that she had supervised and approved torture in the past, but promising never to do it again. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:
2nd UPDATE: After refusing to directly answer questions about her history as an alleged torturer, Ray McGovern decided to ask Gina Haspel a question or two of his own and he wound up in jail for it, reports Joe Lauria.
Updated with news that McGovern returned home and details of him being charged with Unlawful Disruption of Congress and Resisting Arrest.
Instead of facing a judge to defend herself against prosecution for violating U.S. law prohibiting torture, 33-year CIA veteran Gina Haspel on Wednesday faced the Senate Intelligence Committee in a hearing to confirm her as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Haspel does not look like someone who would be associated with torture. Instead she would not be out of place as your next door neighbor or as a kindly grade-school teacher. “I think you will find me to be a typical middle-class American,” she said in her opening statement.
Haspel is the face of America. She not only looks harmless, but looks like she wants to help: perhaps to recommend a good gardener to hire or to spread democracy around the globe while upholding human rights wherever they are violated.
But this perfectly typical middle class American personally supervised a black site in Thailand where terrorism suspects were waterboarded. It remains unclear whether she had a direct role in the torture. The CIA said she arrived at the black site after the waterboarding of senior al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah had taken place. Some CIA officials disputed that to The New York Times. The newspaper also reported last year that Haspel ran the CIA Thai prison in 2002 when another suspect, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was waterboarded.
Even if she did not have a direct hand in overseeing the torture, she certainly acquiesced to it. And if that were not bad enough, Haspel
Haspel: Won’t say if torture is immoral. (Screenshot from Today Show)
urged the destruction of 92 videotaped CIA “enhanced interrogations,” conducted at the prison in Thailand, eliminating evidence in a clear-cut obstruction of justice to cover-up her own possible crimes.
To continue reading: Haspel Says CIA Won’t Torture Again as Ray McGovern is Dragged Out of Hearing
Boy Goebbels doesn’t have anything on Joe Laurie. I am willing to bet that Haspel has not pulled more teeth, cut off fingers, burned someone, used the rack or driven nails into knees than Laurie.
But Laurie does torture the truth. Since our own troops are subjected to waterboarding and sleep depreviation is it torture? If so why aren’t the military on trial for the systematic torture of American troops?
Were the interogation techniques illegal-no.
Were they known of and authorized by the same Demorats now posturing in front of the mind numbed press-you betcha.
If another 9/11 hit guess who would be screaming for real tirture-Pelosi and Schumer.
By the way, isn’t it grand that the man who handled this was our own John Brennan? Obama’s own beloved lap dog?
By the way, the Geneva Convention describes the treatment of illegal combatants-those waging war without legal uniforms and insignia-as being put up against a wall and dispatched as violently as possible. So in my mind those who argue against the treatment of illegal combatants have never served, never will, and really don’t care so long as they aren’t inconvienced.
To them I say we need no part of you, not your approval, not your presence, not your letters to the Times. Rather go to your safe spaces and let men defend against the forces of darkness while you proclaim your virtue by sacrificing babies to the Lord of Darkness hoping for a high office if they win.
To me you are worse than a hemaroid.