Why Pick a CIA Torturer to Run the CIA?

[McCamy Taylor]

Gina Haspel's main claim to fame is that she is a CIA torturer. So, why pick her to run the CIA? One possibility is that Putin hopes to blackmail the CIA. The torture program under Bush is still a big black mark for the agency. The CIA almost certainly went along with Dick Cheney and the Project for the New American Century and the Wars for Oil and Halliburton and Enron out of respect and love for George Bush Sr. He won't be with us forever. Meaning that the blackmail info that Iran--and Russia---hold over the Bush family/CIA (Votes for Hostages) won't be much use in the near future.

Perhaps Russia is hoping to neuter the U.S. spy agency by threatening to expose its dark secrets. Remember those missing torture tapes? Maybe Russia has them. Maybe Russia will try to convince the CIA that if Democrats take control of Congress, there will be investigations, war crimes tribunals, arrests, indictments----

Good luck with that. If the Democrats did not indict the Bush era war criminals in 2009 they are not likely to do it now.

Or maybe they have pee tapes of Ms. Haspel. Someone who tortures may be into other kinds of kink.

[Anon-C]

1. Trump has his Goebbels campaign manager Erik Prince is his

...is his Himmler. Haspel will do what Prince says and privatize the CIA while he fights banana wars and uses the intelligence community against the "non-elect" here at home.

But hey that's just like my opinion man.

[mr_lebowski]

6. 8 year olds, dude ...

[procon]

2. What choice does Trump have but to scrape the dregs from the bottom of the barrel?

No one worth their salt would risk their reputations and careers working in the Trump administration.

[FarCenter]

3. Proven expertise?

[jmowreader]

4. You're probably giving too much credit to the Russians

The most likely reason is Trump knows the Senate Democratic Caucus will do anything they possibly can to keep her out of this position, and our fighting her will give Trump two different lines of attack: the Democrats claim they want more women in leadership but fight when a highly qualified woman is presented for confirmation, or the Democrats don't care about national security because they're fighting the nomination of a new CIA Director with vast experience in the CIA.

Next most likely: he knows how badly this is pissing off everyone with even a shred of human decency, and rejoices in our anguish.

Always possible: Trump wants to resurrect and expand the "extraordinary rendition" mission of the CIA, possibly to US citizens. We have a president who thinks Rodrigo Duterte's goon squads are a good idea, and he's trying to get the death sentence approved as a punishment for drug dealing. If Trump wants to put the US government in the torture business, Gina Haspel would be his best choice for Director of Central Intelligence.

[flibbitygiblets]

5. WADR, I think you're giving too much credit to tRump.

Putin probably ordered tRump to put in a torturer for CIA for the same reason he told him to nominate Rick Perry for Energy Secretary and Betsy DeVos for Education: to show that the US is hypocritical, inept and unworthy of the world's adulation. To delegitimize us. So Russia won't look so bad, because if we are all equally bad, then what Russia has done is not such a big deal, right?