May 2018 Archives

UPDATE: Haspel Confirmed

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10-5 to support Gina Haspel's nomination for CIA director Wednesday. Haspel's defense of torture practices she facilitated at a CIA black site in Thailand in 2002 -- that they were "legal" at the time -- disqualifies her from assuming the role of CIA director, argues professor emerita Marjorie Cohn. Failure to condemn the rescinded opinions of John Yoo invites a repetition of the brutality the professor authorized. Haspel provides little assurance that she wouldn't, like former vice president Dick Cheney says, "do it again."  

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture," the Convention Against Torture states unequivocally.

Cohn finds Haspel's moral compass "elusive." In her non-responsive replies to whether she would follow presidential orders, in particular to authorize waterboarding, the nominee channeled John Yoo's deflection on the subject of executive entitlement to crush the testicles of detainee children: "I do not believe the president would ask me to do that." 

Congress may elect to find torture "legal," but they can't make it moral. Shame on Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Bill Nelson of Florida, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mark Warner of Virginia, and their approving constituency.

So much for the Democratic Party's commitment to human rights. 

It's Up to Us to Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime. And All Their Sponsors!  

The U.S. "War on Terror" has always been about persecuting Muslims, torture being the modus operandi of a cruel system of institutionalized Islamophobia. The nomination of Gina Haspel to head the Central Intelligence Agency confirmed what we already knew: political impunity thrives in an authoritarian environment. And blaming the subjects of abuse endears you to white supremacists.

"Torture haunts U.S. politics like a ghost... hidden, repressed, denied and lied about," says sociology professor Lisa Hajjar. Secrecy, unaccountability, and lies conspire to suppress public protest of its use. President Obama's aversion to prosecution of the officials responsible for ghastly crimes undermined the power of international law -- and enabled the resurrection of torture policy by Donald Trump. Obama's executive order ending the use of John Yoo-approved "enhanced interrogation techniques" failed to abandon the use of extraordinary rendition, whereby suspected terrorists were sent to black sites, including the notorious facility in Thailand ruled with depraved indifference to human life. 

"Because of U.S. exceptionalism, or the idea that we are a country without flaws, any deviation from our idealistic notions of who we are is treated as just that -- a deviation," writes Dr. Maha Hilal, Co-Director of Justice for Muslims. An estimated 3.45 million Muslims in the U.S. are "living in a climate of hostility," reports National Geographic, "their faith distorted by violent extremists on one end and an anti-Muslim movement on the other."    

Don't count on Congress to disqualify CIA director nominee Haspel for her role in the spy agency's torture program. Without sustained nonviolent protests in the streets, creating the kind of political situation in which Trump/Pence appointees are removed from power is met, "Bloody Gina" will be promoted next week with accolades for her "service." In the name of her victims, we say NO to torture and the system that employs its use.