Why I'm Against Gina Haspel - By Sen Rand Paul

[DonViejo]

Trump’s nominee to run the CIA is complicit in torture. She shouldn’t be in charge of an agency that already has problems with accountability.

By SEN. RAND PAUL March 18, 2018

ver the past several days, there has been an increasingly granular debate about the degree of Gina Haspel’s participation in the torturing of detainees at the CIA’s Thailand “black site,” with neocons going out of their way to try to defend the president’s choice to run the agency in the wake of Mike Pompeo’s departure for Foggy Bottom.

Some details may be disputed, but it remains true that Haspel ran a secret center in Thailand where prisoners were tortured.

There is no question that during her career, Haspel participated in and helped develop the program that our own government has labeled torture. Though there have been the typical suggestions that she was “simply following orders,” Glenn Carle, a former CIA interrogator, has described her as “one of the architects, designers, implementers and one of the top two managers of the [Enhanced Interrogation Techniques program] and a true believer, by all accounts, in the ‘Global War in Terror’ paradigm.”

This does not sound like someone who was simply “following orders.” This sounds like someone who was giving them, which I would argue is far worse.

Nor is it debatable that she was present in Thailand when Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was waterboarded three times in late 2002.

more
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/18/rand-paul-gina-haspel-cia-217653?lo=ap_a1

[Sherman A1]

1. Rand Paul will make a lot of noise

On a round or two of the Sunday talks, a few interviews on the breathless cable news shows, perhaps a dramatic filibuster on the floor of the senate and then fall right into line when the vote comes.

[kentuck]

2. He also said he did not like the Special Counsel law...

...and would not say if he would vote to keep Mueller in his position.

[Ferrets are Cool]

3. I would go to jail before I would "follow orders" to torture ANYTHING,

much less a human being. Torturers are the worst of the worst....only a bit higher up the ladder than those who order it.

[OliverQ]

4. Rand Paul also just said on Tapper that while

he wouldn't encourage firing Mueller, he doesn't think the Mueller probe should exist. Screw Rand Paul.