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Trump's Pick for New CIA Director Is Career Spymaster (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a AP report: President Donald Trump's choice to be the first female director of the CIA is a career spymaster who once ran an agency prison in Thailand where terror suspects were subjected to a harsh interrogation technique that the president has supported. Trump tweeted Tuesday that CIA Director Mike Pompeo will replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and that he has selected Gina Haspel to replace Pompeo. Haspel, the current deputy CIA director, also helped carry out an order that the agency destroy its waterboarding videos. That order prompted a lengthy Justice Department investigation that ended without charges. Haspel, who has extensive overseas experience, briefly ran a secret CIA prison where accused terrorists Abu Zubayadah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
So it's OK for her to be the Deputy director, but once she gets to climb one rung of the ladder that's a big problem?
Wasn't I married to her once?
Thanks CNN.
I didn't get that impression from his Wikipedia page.
And they worked really hard not to use pronouns in the article summary just to avoid highlighting that fact. They use "Haspel" three times, but the words "she" or "her" don't appear once.
Harsh interrogation technique supported by the President? You mean Obama, right?
Exactly. Plus, don't forget that Trump is a misogynist. I mean how could he appoint yet another old white guy to the most prestigious job in the US Intelligence Community. Wait.
Don't give credit to fake news CNN for that. The Donald used his mighty hands to shift that Overton Window all by himself. Sad!
I'm against torture, (however much people use weasel words to underplay whatever "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used).
It brings us down to the level of those who seek to destroy our society and its hard-won liberties and values.
(I'm certainly not against them in battle or cold blood if they're caught in the act...)
I'm also against the increasing trend of leaking:
according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
WTF? Intelligence officials briefing the press? Prosecute them!
Sorry, should read "...killing them in battle..." of course
Obama banned torture.
I imagine you're one of those people we call "liars", though, so this knowledge will not change what you say in the future.
Typical Internet slander from the alt right. Post a big fucking lie 50,000 times and people get confused, start thinking "Well, maybe... who knows what Obama did or didn't do."
In fact Obama was extremely vocal against waterboarding. He banned that practice of the Bush administration.
Cheney was the one who kept calling it "enhanced interrogation techniques" while insisting it wasn't torture.
Cry us a river, snowflake.
Considering that Obama is the only real president the US had in recent history, I understand your confusion, but no. The President in this context means Bush the Lesser.
So you're saying we should treat women differently and shouldn't be outraged that she destroyed video documentation to hide torture and approves of harsh methods as we would even if it were a man doing the same thing?
Only because she's an apologist for torture and an enemy of freedom, I'm sure.
'Last idea I heard' Trump might not want that but his intentions are worthless. There are illegal immigrants to send back to Mexico while their US-born children stay in the country. The associated detention program will be overrun by "tough on crime" ICE jack-boots and, thanks to Trump, untrained local police. Multiple repeats of Abu Grahib will occur.
Obama was OK with it so who are we to judge?
...then she'll make a great CIA director! 8)
Where's the option to mark a story with a -1 Troll? If this story were any more inflammatory it would contain trigger warnings for snowflakes.
Rex Tillerson was ill a couple days ago and I wonder if the fake news media is blowing this up as a ouster when in fact Tillerson is being replaced due to health reasons. Personally, I like Trump's style of rapid replace if need be, why keep people around if they don't perform or cannot perform their duties.
Obama is the reason we have Trump. If you consider that an accomplishment then oh well.
Obama's administration just transferred prisoners it wanted tortured to ally countries to do the dirty work so they could keep their hands clean.
CNN before: "He's the ex CEO of Exon Mobil. He's trash". CNN after: "Rex Tillerson is a Hero. He stood up to Trump"
It is possible for both of those statements to be reasonable. It's possible for him to be trash, and also for him to be heroic.
So the first diverse CIA director ever who is being nominated IN THE MONTH OF THE WOMAN is being demonized on Slashdot I see?
Well Boris, I suppose if the qualification for the job was being a woman, that might be evidence of misogyny if people question it. But it isn't
So all whataboutism aside Ivan, We might look at this as true equality, where a woman is judged on her merits, not her gender.
And there are some questions there. See how equality works......Petra?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yes, he was extremely vocal about it and then proceeded to DO nothing besides lipservice. Remember when he closed Gitmo after campaigning on that?
This guy's great, one of the best. I want to welcome her/him on board.
[Wait 2 weeks]
Well it didn't work out but I want to thank him/her for his/her service.
Next!
So, Trump fired Tillerson just hours after this: https://twitter.com/ZekeJMille... . Delicious.
The word and the action is "TORTURE"
Oh man, THREE Russian names. Has anyone ever told you how clever you are? Disagreeing with someone politically and accusing them of being a foreign troll, wow. That's like, super funny and original. You must be a writer for Jimmy Kimmel or something.
What are Pompeo and Haspel's views on the Russian state using chemical weapons to try to murder people in a NATO member country? Will Trump allow them to criticize his best pal Putin?
Nope, that's still a Bush policy. To be fair, Obama's administration would instead tell other countries where "people of interest" were and let those other countries arrest them. In many countries that's likely to get the arrested person tortured, but it's at least a small step in a better direction.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
It's been five years since former US spy chief James Clapper lied to Congress about the NSA's giant surveillance program, and the statute of limitations for his crime is coming to end, guaranteeing him a peaceful retirement.
On March 12, 2013, Clapper, then director of national intelligence, knowingly lied to the US Select Committee on Intelligence, when he was asked by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) whether the National Security Agency collected "any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans."
"No sir. Not willingly," Clapper said.
The full extent of Clapper's unabashed dishonesty was revealed to the world just three months later, when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked troves of documents to Wikileaks detailing the agencyâ(TM)s vast, warrantless surveillance of American citizens.
In 2009, professional baseball player Miguel Tejada pleaded guilty to lying to Congress after giving false testimony about performance-enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball.
"He admitted to lying to Congress and was unremorseful and flippant about it," Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told the Washington Examiner. "The integrity of our federal government is at stake because his behavior sets the standard for the entire intelligence community." Massie was referring to Clapper, not the baseball player. Just to be clear.
In other news, an unprecedented number of former CIA agents are running for office in 2018 as Democrats. Once in the CIA, always in the CIA. They will always represent the Agency's interests, no matter what walk of life they progress to. Get out there and vote, people. Bring a couple of friends to vote. It's the only way we'll get our country back.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's extreme waterboarding with trump and kim jong. ONLY ON FOX NEWS!
It's all relative to what the alternative is. If you've got a Dean Acheson or George Marshall waiting in the wings, and you go for a Warren Christopher instead, Warren Christopher is trash. If your alternative to Warren Christopher is Rex Tillerson, then Warren Christopher is a hero.
If your alternative to Rex Tillerson is Mike Pompeo, then Tillerson looks like a hero. The Secretary of State is the country's top diplomat, and Pompeo has no relevant experience. He's a short-term tea party Congressman who's been at CIA for a year, barely enough time to get his bearings. The only Secretaries of State in living memory with less experience in foreign affairs were William Rogers and Cy Vance.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
obama banned cia torture
Obama is the reason we have Trump.
Bullshit. Hillary is the reason we have Trump.
Has it occurred to you yet that it makes more sense that you're the Russian spy troll sent here to make progressives look even more dumb?
Shouldn't it be "Spymistress"?
Or is that sexist?
Nonsense. Rendition dramatically increased under Obama.
He tried and congress would not let him. At one point he even said his inability to close Gitmo was one of his greatest failures as president.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
We're hiring the best and brightest to come join the best team ever assembled in the history of teams. Benefits include:
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Leaking is remarkably rarely prosecuted, especially given how much administrations complain about it. The reason that administrations don't pursue leaking more aggressively is that the people in the administration want to preserve their own ability to leak.
Leaking is an essential part of the way government works. It's going over the head of the regular channels and appealing directly to the people. This can be done for both personal/professional reasons, and for patriotic reasons.
There has only been one exception to this pattern I can remember: the Obama administration. Obama didn't complain much about leakers publicly, he just quietly went after them. Only 13 people have ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, and eight of those thirteen were on Obama's watch.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I did a nothing called a ban. (on waterboarding and several other torture methods).
He did a lot about gitmo but were met each time to strong opposition.
You are a very big liar. You are a very ugly person. Everyday in the morning in front of the mirror, you probably think: "today, I will again be full of shit. My life dream is becoming true, I will be the biggest asshole ever!".
Yeah, he really did. Stop spreading lies.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/175/end-the-use-of-torture/
Im as liberal as they come and agree with you 100%
Your own link is from 2011. Are you aware that he was president for another 5 years and renditions skyrocketed during that time? Tell us again about his promises to close Gitmo.
No, the Democrats putting Hillary on the ballot is why we have Trump.
Waterboarding, as practiced under the Bush administration, is not torture. It is simulated drowning that does no physical harm. It is not the same as water torture as practiced by the Japanese in WWII. The Japanese would force a hose down a victims throat and then pour water into the person until their belly was distended. Then the Japanese would beat the victims belly until it burst. That is torture.
Also, contrary to left wing propaganda, torture does work. That's why the armed forces have classes in how to resist torture. The final lesson of that class is that you will break but whatever 'secrets' you have are only useful for about 24 hours. After that, any damage that results is on your commanders for ignoring you were captured and knew the 'secret'.
Obama was extremely vocal...
Aren't words grand?
Meanwhile, your own link is from.. oh, that's right, you haven't provided one. Maybe instead of doing nothing but "nuh uh! you're wrong because I said so!", you should try backing up your claims?
You keep saying this like its true when it simply isn't
Man, did a social justice warrior steal your girl at some point? What's with all the pointless rage? Just have a beer and focus on your own shit for a bit.
When the current president has no respect for them why shouldn't they leak info regarding his tenure?
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Margaret Thatcher was a woman who was intelligent and stong, but also a cunt
Theresa May is a woman, who is an idiot and weak, but also a cunt
Condoleeza Rice is a woman, who is very intelligent, but also a cunt
Hillary Clinton is a woman, who is somewhat clever, but also a cunt
Women, like all other human beings, are more than capable of being total cunts. Take you, you're a cunt.
Er, is being a career spymaster a bad thing for leading the CIA? Just wondering.
Yeah, he really did. Stop spreading lies.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/175/end-the-use-of-torture/
Tell us how Obama never used "extrajudicial killings" via drone strike - even against US citizens, even though it often caused "collateral damage".
So Obama banned torture, but turned to not only just killing "suspected terrorists" but also anyone nearby.
That's an improvement HOW?!?!
It was all just a weasel way of avoiding any consequences from his decisions.
The phrase "first female director" is 8 words into the first line. I don't think referring to her by name instead of by pronoun is any attempt to hide her gender. They only say "he" once and it's in the context, "Trump tweeted...and he..." I don't see them working to avoid anything.
I'm also against the increasing trend of leaking:
according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
WTF? Intelligence officials briefing the press? Prosecute them!
You do realize a lot of "leaks" are actually supported or directed by the administration or upper leadership of an agency, right? It's used as a way to control narratives, refute information that is about to be released by a news agency, as a way to get out information without making a formal statement, or even just to maintain relationships with friendly media.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
the american propensity to fall for hucksters' cons is why we have trump
Obama is the reason we have Trump. If you consider that an accomplishment then oh well.
Agreed. Obama was so bad we elected a billionaire reality tv star who's never held a political office. Considering his lack of politics he's doing surprisingly well but that's not the point.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Only women with a "D" next to their name are afforded such courtesies. Carry on!
He tried and congress would not let him.
You appear to be employing selective memory. He made the same argument about congress being a roadblock to fixing immigration. He maintained that position. After 3 or so years, when it finally suited him, he declared "I have a phone and a pen" and proceeded to do what he liked.
Now, you could argue whether he was right or wrong to act unilaterally without congress. You can also point to the problem those who supported Obama's actions on immigration face: an executive order by one president can be undone by another president. However, it is patently disingenuous to say that he did not close Guantanamo because congress would not let him.
Had he really wanted to close it, he would have closed it. After all, he really wanted the Affordable Care Act, and that made it through congress. Any failure to close Guantanamo, end rendition, and/or end "enhanced interrogation" is a direct result of a lack of real desire to see it done.
When Slashdot really was a bastion of tech nerd news. Now it's mired in nothing but political garbage. If I wanted Drudge, I'll go to that website.
I WANT NEWS FOR NERDS... WHERE DO I GET THAT ANYMORE? ANYONE?
I'm dreadfully serious here. Help a guy out.
The list of people who have either quit or have been escorted out of the White House by security continues to grow. The Trump administration has broken all records in regard to staff turnover, and it's only been a year.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...
THE BEST PEOPLE
You are welcome on my lawn.
Any failure to close Guantanamo, end rendition, and/or end "enhanced interrogation" is a direct result of a lack of real desire to see it done.
Yes, he should have followed in the footsteps of Andrew Jackson to do whatever he wanted.
The selectivity is yours, first you blame Obama for a prison at Guantanamo that Bush opened, then you expect us to ignore how stridently you opposed Obama attempting to close it.
Your Obama-Derangement Syndrome continues to demonstrate itself as having reached the terminal stage.
You probably blame Obama for not ending the Korean Conflict.
No, too many people voting for Trump is why you have Trump. Don't try to shift the blame.
The good news is they only need to pay her 72% of what they normally pay the CIA director. That 28% savings can help fund the wall. Double win!
Idiots like you with no moral or intellectual fiber are why we have Trump.
How do you sell your soul? Who do you sell it to? What's it worth? If I sell my humanity, am I no longer human? If I sold my humanity, and am no longer human, wouldn't that then make me different from them, or are you saying they're not human either? Could I sell my humanity yet still be different from them?
Hold up, so if someone is a woman, during a special month, that gives them a pass when it comes to torture and destruction of evidence?
(Also, why does the CIA even HAVE prisons? Why are we openly discussing something our guys are doing that's internationally illegal. Oh, I'm sorry, "something our gals are doing...", yay diversity and all that)
Considering that the alternative would have been Hillary...
THANK YOU, OBAMA!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"diverse CIA director"
What the hell does that mean? Does she have ten totally different hobbies or something like that?
Ezekiel 23:20
Hmm... Hard to decide which one of the assholes I wanna waterboard first.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1. Is waterboarding torture?
2. Has waterboarding ever extracted useful information?
3. What great harm does waterboarding do to those performing it? Please provide some factual info, not just your opinion
It starts to feel a bit like Celebrity Big Brother. Every week someone else has to leave.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Whataboutism is strong in this one
> Pouring water on someone's head is not torture.
They put bags over the head of their prisoners and then poured buckets of water over it from dusk till dawn, so they couldn't breath. If you were subjected to the same treatment, you'd enthusiastically confess in less than 10 minutes that you personally eye witnessed UBL entering a masonic lodge in Antarctica and having anal sex with a black goat there, which then transformed into a sabbatical witch who gave him a love potion to kill the president with.
The only Secretaries of State in living memory with less experience in foreign affairs were William Rogers and Cy Vance.
You're showing your age there.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Nonsense. Rendition dramatically increased under Obama.
Why don't you provide a citation for this claim. I'm not one to usually exclaim CITATION REQUIRED as this is an internet forum, not a research paper, but when you make extraordinary claims you should back them up.
From looking at your post history, I can't tell if you're a troll or just a horribly ineloquent contrarian. Then again, what's the difference?
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
This is why politifact, snopes and the rest are shit.
Because he's right: It was a Bush policy.
That's all that matters. It doesn't matter that Droney O'Bama was a seething, incompetent warmonger who loved chewing soap at our allies to get them to commit atrocities in our name. BUSHDIDITFIRST.
But we all love Bush now, because bankrupting the nation, destabilizing the Middle East, and causing terror to spread on a scale never before seen is so much better than mean tweetz, so go figure.
I think he genuinely wanted to, but I also don't believe he resorted to a broad use of executive power lightly. The Affordable Care Act was his great congressional push and after that he lost congress. There are certain things the executive branch can act on and certain things it cannot. Selective enforcement, which is basically what he did with the immigration problem, has long been an area where the executive branch has great latitude. Moving a military base/prison isn't the same thing. As a Constitutional scholar, I'm sure Obama was aware that he would not win in court if he attempted to shut Gitmo down without congressional approval.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I don't really have an opinion on Haspel, I am just very encouraged that Trump appointed someone who seems qualified for the position.
Given his track record, I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if he appointed the VP of marketing for Kraft foods the CIA director.
Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Yes, he was extremely vocal about it and then proceeded to DO nothing besides lipservice. Remember when he closed Gitmo after campaigning on that?
He tried all he could within his power to close it. In the end he managed to almost empty it despite all the obstacles thrown in his way.
Since I must assume you know that, describing what he did as 'lipservice' is a very nasty manipulation of the truth. What is even worse is that there are enough idiots to accept and propagate this kind of vile distortions. You don't have to like Obama, but knowingly slander him with this kind of sly talking points is disgusting.
https://twitter.com/AP_Politic...
Where does this nonsense come from? The people of America keep parroting that they are the "good guys" but who is deluding them into believing this garbage? Is it Hollywood with all their superhero movies? Is it the public education system? The media? The president? Obama once unironically claimed that Americans are exceptional. He said it with a straight face in public. LOL
By the way, what kind of a simple mind simplifies everything into "good guys" and "bad guys" anyway? I wonder if Americans even realize how the rest of the world views them. It must be quite a culture shock for those who manage to venture past their couch and refrigerator to find out that "good guys" is the last thing on people's minds when Americans are mentioned.
A lot of folks were tortured while he was HNIC of the United States.
Now now, he's a real president, you have to accept that. But the last republican president to be elected to office by the majority vote was George HW Bush in 1989.
Obama was so bad
At what? He came into office during an economic crisis. He stabilized the economy and it has done extremely well since. He also expanded healthcare to millions of Americans without it, which addressed one of the great moral failings of this country. He appointed experts to the various agencies and bureaus he oversaw. He took steps to protect our environment that led to an explosion of green technologies. No major wars were started during his presidency. America regained good standing with the international community that was squandered by the Bush era.
I could go on. What more could he have really done? History will judge Obama very favorably. He will be remembered as one of the greats.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I'm also against the increasing trend of leaking
Why? Information frees.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Wow, I don't think I've ever seen anyone use the Politifact Truth-O-Meter unironically before
I hate to respond to myself, but I will include a quick caveat: I wholly disapproved of how Obama handled Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and the NSA data collection as a whole. It's an unfortunate stain on his presidency. However, I would be a fool to believe any of the men who ran against him would have been any better. McCain is scary pro-military and Romney isn't much better.
Obama moved society in the direction of being better. If we judge a president only by their failures and not by their greater body of work, all presidents would be failures.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
are you deliberatly thick.
A president can sign what the fuck he likes, it does not mean it is immediatly what happens...
republicans blocked it, they had the majority, you thick fuck!
Your own link is from 2011. Are you aware that he was president for another 5 years and renditions skyrocketed during that time? Tell us again about his promises to close Gitmo.
I can blame Obama for a great many things (including torture), but I can't really blame him for not closing Gitmo. Congress refused to authorize any funds because they wanted to keep the detainees there, and both Congress and the states refused to allow any detainees to be moved to any mainland detention facility out of safety concerns, as if they were a bunch of super-spies that would somehow escape and commit terrorism. Obama's choices were to keep the detainees in Gitmo or release them, and the latter would have been politically disastrous.
See? Now that's American-style humor. Much better.
For the first two years, they did not. Democrats had a super majority, and the opposition had no veto power. This power was used extensively. It was not used, however, to close Guantanamo Bay.
What he said is irrevelant to what he did.
Which was drone the fuck out of a bunch of civilians.
Not being a constitutional law professor I'd argue that as Commander-in-Chief he'd have a lot firmer standing closing Gitmo than some of his other executive actions. It was likely a low priority with him, having more symbolic than practical substance. Something perhaps more politically beneficial to rue than to act upon.
What part of "harsh interrogation technique" and "waterboarding" did you miss in the summary? While there is probably a contingent of people here who care the new head is a female, I would be far more care about that aspect of her career.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Whether an executive order from Obama to shut down Gitmo would have been challenged is IRRELEVANT to the fact that he did not issue such an order. He didn't even try.
As a Constitutional scholar he should have known that holding anyone indefinitely and without trial was a violation of the Constitution and that, despite what some claim, the rights mentioned in the Constitution are meant to apply to all people, not just American citizens.
And also on that note Obama issued Executive Orders almost as many time as G.W.Bush. (Obama 276, Bush 291)
Her travel in Europe is somewhat restrictive, though since certain countries there would arrest her on sight, given her background in running Thai torture houses.
So you the dood who has never read a newspaper over the past 30 years, huh??? CIA's got a great record, you believe? Drop much acid, bubba????
Waterboarding by the CIA was something that helped terrorists. Our doing it gave a powerful recruiting tool to terrorist organizations: it allowed them to show that the U.S. are not the good guys. This was a stupid stupid thing to do, and we should object to her being Director because we should not reward people for doing stupid things in their job.
Oh yes, it was the waterboarding that led to ISIS and Al Qaeda believing the US was evil.
You mis-interpreted what I said. ISIS and Al Queda believe the U.S. is evil, and utilize America's use of torture as a recruitment tool to get people to sign on to that belief.
It had nothing to do with brainwashing, fanaticism, extremist religious leaders, or any of that.
They have to recruit. They have to turn people into fanatics, and they do that by showing that we are the bad guys, and they are the people opposing the bad guya. When our message is trying to be "we're the good guys, we want to help you," their pointing to the U.S. using torture pretty much zeros out that argument, getting people to listen to the fanaticism and extremist religious leaders.
Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity?.. dont worry, you fit right in with Trump's gang of pety criminals, raepists, and fascists.
Freedumbs for all!
What should be bothersome, esp to western allies, is that she is inept and only moved up by being part of the far right wingers. She is, for all intents and purposes, a far right fascists who does not care really about America, what we stand ( stood ? ) for, or even our Constitution.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We wanted to see "Spy Mistress." Not only technically more accurate, but much cooler on so many levels...
Meanwhile you have THE BEST relationships with women.
BIGLY.
the type of person that is attracted to terrorist organizations has never, ever believed that the U.S. was part of the "good guys"... regardless of the existence of waterboarding methods.
This would be true if the world consisted of only two clearly distinct types of people "the type of person that is attracted to terrorist organizations" and the type that isn't, and if the type that "is" will always go and join Al Qaeda without any convincing. But the world is not, and they don't. People are anywhere in any range in between. Radicals have to be radicalized. Angry young men are plentiful, but they don't become terrorists until they have their anger focussed and fanned and, most particularly, given a target. "Terrorists" don't pop up out of nowhere, they are recruited and radicalized.
They might get radicalized to say "my country is repressive, I need to fight for more freedom for myself and my brothers." They might say "I need to fight to leave my country and go to America where I can open a falafel stand and get rich." Or they might get radicalized to "America is evil and wants to destroy us and our way of life and we need to fight it."
Our use of torture is a tool that gets organizations like ISIS or Al Qaeda the ability to take these angry young men and turn them to that last option.
Just like you can't convince a truther than 9/11 wasn't a conspiracy, a birther that obama is an american, a fookooshimar that fukushima will kill every single person in japan and then some, a typical terrorist has an image of the West that does not need to be based in reality or fact.
But how did that "typical terrorist [who] has an image of the West that does not need to be based in reality or fact" become a terrorist? How do they get that image of the west? They are radicalized. We are giving the terrorist organizations the tools to do that.
I take you've never met anybody from the middle east, right? They aren't born saying "I need to kill infidels". They have to be recruited.
We get rid of the idiot that is making this stuff happens and all the idiots who are on their knees letting him do it. The Republican party has no backbone. They let this twitter buffoon do whatever he wants to the detriment of our nation. It is time real Patriots step up and get rid of these fools and all their alt-right white nationalist idiocy. Time to take back our nation from the nazis like our grandparents did in the old days.
That you even use the terms "cuck" and "soyboy" doesn't say much for you as a person.
ftfy
No, too many fuckwits for Trump is why you have Trump. Don't try to shift the blame.
Thanks for posting some counter points vs the groupthink. It's interesting to consider all sides of an issue.
On much of this, we are ALL talking to of our ass. We simply do not know. We really can't answer "is water boarding torture" for two reasons. First because we haven't experienced it and don't really know what it's like. We can only parrot what someone said on our favorite echo-chamber TV program. Secondly, the question itself is absurdly binary. Water boarding is clearly very unpleasant. It's also clearly far less severe than most of what what traditionally be considered torture. There is a continuum, a range of degree, and framing it as a yes/no question is silly.
We can't really answer the other questions brought up, for the same reasons. "Does water boarding work?". Again treating that as a yes/no is silly. Of course subjects may give untrue answers, so there is a need to think about whether their answers are logical and consistent with other information available. (And "consistent with" doesn't mean "duplicative"). Also as you point out we train our special forces how to limit the amount and importance of the information they reveal because prisoners DO reveal valuable information. A good question would be "how well does water boarding work under each of the following sets of circumstances ...?". The answer will be different under different circumstances. Probably none of us here are interrogation experts, so none of us know how well it has worked under any given set of circumstances.
Lacking so much relevant information, here's my opinion:
As a general policy, the United States should stand as a beacon of freedom, liberty, and human rights. The US is not a nation created around a certain ethnic group, the country was created based on certain principles; we should exemplify those principles.
Having said the above, in the very RARE case that we capture someone who has knowledge of an ongoing plan to blow up a bunch of innocent people, our agents should stop that disastrous attack using whatever methods are necessary to get the information from the murderous terrorist we've captured. And I don't want to know what they did to the terrorist. Handle it. Those instances are very rare.
And they are America's literal equivalent to concentration camps.
Especially, because as a German, I know very well, how little we Germans were actually aware of the horrors going on in there, back then. We just as much believed them to be what you now believe those black sites to be.
Wikipedia once had a page with a map and list of a couple of them. That site mysteriously ... vanished. (If you know where that one with the map is is, please post a link.)
I still know that the Polish prime minister resigned, after it was found out, that there was one of those "black sites" on Polish grounds. (Which isn't exactly a funny thing to Poles, given how much it instantly reminds them of the POW and concentration camps that their people suffered in.)
Dear America: Please don't become us. We were us, and it sucked, even for us! To say the least ...
Also, there won't be any powerful world leader countries to pull you out. (I can't imagine China and Russia and the EU sending troops to a country with that many nukes.)
You understand Gitmo popuplation went from thousands to a few dozen right? While Obama wasn't able to close it completely he absolutely did a hell of a lot more about it than you're giving him credit for.
Obama was hampered pretty intensively by openly hostile legislators. Trump is hampered in the same way just by different legislators. The difference is that Obama caved probably too often to give Republicans something in the deal. That is why the ACA ended up a crappy steamy pile of your favorite soft serve.
Obama got a lot done despite his opposition, but these days we don't deal in facts anymore. He had no ability to force legislation to fix his Gitmo issue, no ability to force ACA the way he wanted, so he negotiated on both and did what he could. That means Trump was easily able to undo a lot of what he did just as the next President will undo what Trump is doing with his executive orders. The main difference is that Obama put a lot of thought into his orders and Trump is just flinging shit everywhere then having to back pedal because he stands for nothing except more money and power for himself.
So he nominates first ever woman. Per all the other blathering on the internets about women, she should have smooth sailing through confirmation. Inoculates against attacks from the left .
Brilliant move.
Whataboutism is strong in this one
You can't claim "Obama banned torture" while ignoring what he replaced it with: extrajudicial killings that caused "collateral damage", you Obama-worshipping utter fuckwit.
How'd that red line in Syria turn out?
How about that "reset" with Russia?
How about Obama's "Fuck the EU!" moment that caused the Ukraine-Russia war?
And I bet it really hurts your head the Donald Fucking Trump is actually doing something with North Korea that might actually work.
Oh yeah, it probably hurts even more that the US economy is now actually growing under Trump's tax cuts and economic deregulation after 8 fucking years of fake "recovery" because of Obama's progressive attempts to "remake the US economy".
I ber that the fact that the US economy starts explosive growth only after Trump ended Obama's efforts to Venezuela-ize the US economy really gets your goat, doesn't it?
Whether or not your a Trump supporter, isn't a large number of firings exactly what's to be expected if he's "draining the swamp"?
These are all bureaucrats within the administration, not elected positions. The fear this brings you notwithstanding, hiring and firing here is the job your country elected him to do.
He's firing people that he hired. So, if that's "draining the swamp" then it means that he brought the swamp with him in the first place.
You are welcome on my lawn.
LOLOLOLOL.
Good thing trump came along. I heard
Obama was gonna put all white straight
Men into fema camps. His plan to get rid of term limits might work as well. Then he can be president for life. Open our borders and let the Muslims take over.
Ohhhhh wait.
See I can tell lies too.
That you take offense to those words says a lot about you as a person.
Has it occurred to you yet that it makes more sense that you're the Russian spy troll sent here to make progressives look even more dumb?
It's about time someone figured that out. And your statement is silly, because I wouldn't have to figure anything out. Just call me Afonasii, and Vashe zrodovye!
Although the clue is reall trolls seldom answer questions like yours, Grigori. Just sayin'
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Oh man, THREE Russian names. Has anyone ever told you how clever you are? Disagreeing with someone politically and accusing them of being a foreign troll, wow. That's like, super funny and original. You must be a writer for Jimmy Kimmel or something.
All of the above. Plus I'm located at the south pole.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Since we're talking about trump, could you continue telling us all the reasons Obama was worse? Ya know, since Hillary didn't win. Is there nothing we can't blame on Obama?
If you elect an ex-CIA boss to president in the next elections, the US would finally have someone to match Putin (more or less).
At least, they could talk shop quite easily.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Or the GDR? Or North Korea? Or China? Or Soviet Russia? Etc.
People are deluded about laws and rights being "absolute". They forget that paper only means something, if the people with the biggest clubs adhere to it. The law of the jungle is, has, and will always be the only law. Everything else is a rule enforced by the rulers.
That's why "intellectual property" is so silly. Actual (physical) property is property, precisely because if somebody tries to take it from you, he gets his ass kicked by the rulers, or by you. If that isn't the case, we can say it's your property as much as we like... reality won't care. If it will be taken, it will still be taken, and stop being yours, until you manage to take it back.
And with "intellectual property", due the laws of physics (esp. the limits of causality), that is impossible to enforce. (Apart from it only existing for a bunch of cokehead criminals to leech actually hard-earned money from us by abusing artists, without having to work for it in return.)
...
Why dont he just pluck us vets eyes out and pour in salt.
Nothing good happening at VA ever.
Leaking, like espionage, is often a genuinely good thing for human civilization, because they can reveal intentions in a way that well-prepared media events do not.
So I've actually been to Gitmo... The biggest issue they had with the prisoners there was what to do with them. Congress would not allow them to enter the US, and the US military/government would not send them to a country that would disappear/kill/torture them. For example, when I was there they had a fairly large group of Chinese Huygers (sp?) They knew were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet they were stuck at Gitmo because they couldn't be brought to the us, and they couldn't be sent back to China. These people were effectively stateless through the actions of the us government. So they were in limbo.
Eventually I believe a south American country accepted them but they were stuck there for years.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
When I find out who's been hiring all these terrible unsuitable people, I'm going to fire the guy, no questions.
Actually no, Hillary got more people votes, but the electoral college nonsense gave us Trump
Suddenly the new law in Poland regarding Polish Concentration Camps has an interesting spin on it that I hadn't previously considered.
The more interesting aspect to this is that the former CIA director is becoming head of State.
What country is going to want to meet with the U.S.'s former head spy (responsible for such things as rendition, water-boarding, Guantanamo Bay, etc.)? Or, even allow him into their country? No country that values human rights would.
That along with all of the open positions he hasn't even tried to fill and it looks like Trump is trying to kill off the State Department. Is this his first move in turning himself and his family into Caesars?
To say that torture doesn't work is to say that all of the torture done to extract information for millennia doesn't work. You'd think that after a couple of thousand years of torturing people and finding that it always yields nothing that someone would say "Hey, this is a waste of time!" before the US in the politically correct age we're in where we feel that we have to treat terrorists with compassion.
Just because of that, I have a hard time not calling BS whenever I hear that torture doesn't work. It does work, it has worked, and anyone arguing otherwise is ignoring reality and replacing it with feel-good hippy crap.
If you want to argue morality, then we could have a discussion based on something with valid points. Arguing that it doesn't work is BS.
Abu Zubaydah:
Zubaydah was extensively interrogated; he was water-boarded 83 times[2] and subjected to numerous other torture techniques including forced nudity, sleep deprivation, confinement in small dark boxes, deprivation of solid food, stress positions, and physical assaults. While in CIA custody, Zubaydah lost his left eye
The woman is a monster. A regular patriot in US military.
Fuck that tired Obamabot bullshit. Obama no more needed a special bill to transfer prisoners out of Gitmo than Bush needed a special bill to send them there. And Obama didn't intend to close it so much as move it to a SuperMax in Illinois - which is why people like Russ Fiengold voted against his plan. The problem with Gitmo wasn't its location, it was the utterly lawless system of endless detention of mostly innocent people. One Obama had no intention of ending.
This was all known waaaay back in 2009. So fuck you along with your propaganda.
You understand Obama continued to hold people in Gitmo that had been cleared for release under Bush, right?
Pretty much complete bullshit. Obama didn't need an act from Congress to transfer inmates of the gulag into federal prisons or to release them, any more than Bush needed a special act to send them there in the first place.
Obama no more needed a special act to transfer Gitmo prisoners to federal custody on US soil than Bush needed a special act to send them there in the first place. He also could have sent an Article III judge there to conduct trials. Who cares if the building was still there as long as the prisoners were freed from the gulag.
But Obama had no intention of ending the gulag, but to move it to a Supermax prison in Illinois - which is why senators like Russ Feingold voted against his neocon proposal.
And the moment Obama took office, it became his policy, same as drone murders are now Trump's policy. And Politifact is toilet paper.
If Obama ended extraordinary renditions, how is it "his policy"?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Because he didn't end them. Any more simple answers to simple questions?