Gina Haspel as CIA director? It's a test of America's conscience.
By Paul Waldman March 14 at 1:38 PM
President Trump has named Gina Haspel to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, immediately raising questions about the torture program the Bush administration devised after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a program in which Haspel was an active participant.
Unfortunately, the discussion of this issue is already showing the same pathologies it always has: the denial of what our government actually did, the cloaking of terrible crimes in euphemism and vagueness, and the general whitewashing of one of the most indefensible things the U.S. government has ever perpetrated. It is absolutely vital that we have all our facts straight so that Haspel’s nomination and our own recent past may be judged honestly.
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Because torture is against the law, the administration tasked some of its lawyers with writing a series of memos that would claim that whatever it was doing to its prisoners wouldn’t actually qualify as “torture.” To read these memos is to descend into a bizarre and horrifying world of legalistic brutality. Among their claims are that it can’t be torture if the president orders it. That torture is only torture if causing pain is itself the “specific intent,” so it can’t be torture if you do it to gain information. And that it isn’t torture unless what you inflict rises “to the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.”
This was all presented under the absurd euphemism “enhanced interrogation,” which the Bush administration invented to convince the public that there was something thoughtful and careful about what they were doing, and which some people continue to use today. I’m sure than in Haspel’s confirmation hearings, we’ll hear it many times.
But it wasn’t “enhanced interrogation,” or “harsh interrogation methods,” or “rough interrogation.” It was torture. Torture is defined clearly in both U.S. law and the U.N. Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory: It’s the intentional infliction of intense physical and/or mental suffering for the purpose of extracting information or a confession. No one has ever articulated what differentiates “enhanced interrogation” from torture, because it’s impossible.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/03/14/gina-haspels-nomination-for-cia-director-is-a-test-of-americas-conscience/?utm_term=.84f7f15dee30
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He had up-close and personal experience with just how sick and soul-twisted it is to torture human beings. This is a chance for republican christians to honor Christ, and to give the thumbs-down to Haspel.
